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Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus | Murray Bail
6 posts | 12 read | 7 to read
Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Eucalyptus is Murray Bail's best and most moving novel. On a country property a man named Holland lives with his daughter Ellen. Over the years, as she grows into a beautiful young woman, he plants hundreds of different gum trees on his land. When Ellen is nineteen her father announces his decision: she will marry the man who can name all his species of eucalypt, down to the last tree. Suitors emerge from all corners, including the formidable, straight-backed Mr Cave, world expert on the varieties of eucalypt. And then, walking among her father's trees, Ellen chances on a strange young man who in the days that follow tells her dozens of stories set in cities, deserts, faraway countries... Eucalyptus is both a modern fairy tale and an unpredictable love story played out against the searing light and broken shadows of country Australia. 'You will never forget what is at the heart of this book-one of the great and most surprising courtships in literature.' Michael Ondaatje 'A book so fresh and strange that it is like no other...Eucalyptus is...a beautiful freestanding and audacious piece of experimental art. And if that sounds fearful, it is also a humane, smiling book full of the flat-voiced humour of country people who have a great twinkle of kindliness and kinship behind the tough exterior. It reminded me of very little else I had read except perhaps for Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Love in the Time of Cholera, though Eucalyptus is much less embellished and baroque...' Peter Craven, Australian Book Review 'The first thing to say about Eucalyptus is that it is a wonderful story brilliantly told. Like the great stories in the hands of the accomplished tellers, its essence is simple but, also like them, it is deceptive. The narrative voice is laconic, slippery, inclined to aphorism and homily, conscious of its own storytelling manoeuvres and of a literary tradition that it both acknowledges and rejects. In Eucalyptus he finds, through the multiplicity of trees and the stories they engender, a way to discover and triumphantly release the beauty and affection of a resistant land and a tight-lipped people. There is not a false note...a complex remembrance of individual eucalypts becomes part of the emotional fabric of a moving, exhilarating love story.' Australian '[A] magical new novel...it's a pleasure simply to be immersed in Bail's caprice-prone mind..."Beware," Ellen's father warns her, "beware of any man who deliberately tells a story". Eucalyptus, with its pixilated wit and technical wizardry, is storytelling as "deliberate" as it comes. But the only warning readers need is that it leaves you hungering for more - far more - of its author's strange and spry imaginings.' New York Times Book Review 'Bail organizes his novel with impressive poise. Digressions on the properties of different types of eucalyptus trees, on storytelling, on father-daughter relationships, the social significance of tears, and the implications of dying in a vertical rather than a horizontal position, alternate with the tales of immigrants and wanderers...By incorporating these in ways that tug new meanings out of the central narrative, Bail generates a fictional hybrid. Eucalyptus reads like one of Patrick White's elaborate allegories, taken over by an affable Australian cousin of Italo Calvino.' Times Literary Supplement
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MrsMalaprop
Eucalyptus | Murray Bail
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Pickpick

This copy of the 1999 Miles Franklin winning novel Eucalyptus has been sitting patiently on my #tbr shelf for many years. After several failed attempts at reading it….success! The time was right as I‘ve just read Bail‘s ex-wife Helen Garner‘s latest book of diaries which cover the period when he wrote this, his best-known work. I‘ve been voyeuristically immersed in he & Garner‘s late 90s world. Their marriage failed just as this was released.

MrsMalaprop @CarolynM I realise I didn‘t say what I thought if the book in my review 😆. ‘Like not love‘ I think. An odd, interesting, bleak little fable. @LeeRHarry I think it‘s a favourite of yours? 3y
LapReader What‘s that snack? I want it. 3y
MrsMalaprop @LapReader It‘s my favourite summer snack: Walkers Highland Oatcakes with Meredith Dairy Marinated Goat‘s Cheese and sliced nectarine 🤤😋. 3y
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LeeRHarry Yes it is a favourite of mine 😊 haven‘t read it for an absolute age, I‘m not sure if would hold up if I was to reread it now. And, confession, I had no idea that he is HG‘s ex- husband - I feel I should have known as I have read some of HG‘s non fiction ….anyway 😏 (edited) 3y
LapReader I didn‘t realise either @LeeRHarry 3y
MrsMalaprop @LeeRHarry @LapReader Garner is careful about not naming him. She refers to him as ‘V‘. I learnt about it years ago through personal connections: his sister was a friend of a friend of mine. I am also a mega fan of Garner as was my mum. 3y
CarolynM Hmm, might be worth giving it a try 3y
54 likes7 comments
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MrsMalaprop
Eucalyptus | Murray Bail
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My final read for 21 was Aussie icon Helen Garner‘s 3rd volume of diaries, covering 3 years (95 - 98) during which her marriage to Murray Bail was disintegrating; the years he was writing the tagged book, a classic I‘ve had on my #tbr for years. I‘ve picked it up many times, but couldn‘t get into it. I am now struck by the biographical elements (knowing what I do from Helen‘s diaries). Fascinating life/art parallels. #currentlyreading #ozfiction

CarolynM Oooh, interesting! I swore never to read another Murray Bail after Homesickness (ugh!) but people tell me Eucalyptus is really good. I look forward to seeing what you think. 3y
LeeRHarry @CarolynM oh yes I bailed on Homesickness - ugh indeed! 3y
28 likes2 comments
review
Rissreads
Eucalyptus | Murray Bail
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Mehso-so

#Ozfiction
Ok so I feel a bit un-Australian as I didn‘t like this book as much as I hoped I would. The story idea was interesting but something was off and it just wasn‘t executed well for me, and the story felt a bit disjointed. I wasn‘t invested in the characters.
@TheAromaofBooks
I cheated with my #bookspin and #double spin numbers. I didn‘t want to read either of them so I added them together to come up with this book, number 13.

TheAromaofBooks haha whatever it takes to get a book off the list!! 4y
Reggie That‘s how I feel when I don‘t like a queer read. Like somehow my gay license will be revoked. Lol also, I like your book math! 4y
Rissreads @Reggie it‘s a win because it‘s still a book off my tbr! I‘ve just started World war Z and loving it! ❤️ 4y
CarolynM I think it's very Aussie to not go along with the hype. There's lots of #ozfiction I don't like. 4y
MrsMalaprop That‘s interesting. As you know I‘ve had this on my #tbr for ever. I‘ve started it a few times & it just never took...I will get to it one day. 4y
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Acquija
Eucalyptus | Murray Bail
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Pickpick

Brilliant modern-ish fairy tale