I really enjoyed this novel's beautiful language. Malouf brings the Australian environment alive, from the buzzing teeming insect life to the soil and the people that live off it. This is a novel that is very much alive, brimming with sweat and heat. It's also a work about isolation and the human spirit. I really felt the isolation of Australia compared with the home of Europe, which is ironic given that I'm a New Zealander and for me Australia is a close neighbour. It brought home to me how courageous the early settlers were to reach out across the entire world and to move to such an alien land.
Sadly the feelings of alien-ness can become alienation and fear of difference. The indigenous people of Australia suffered (and still suffer) for their alien-ness. Yet they are at home in the land, it is their Eden as one character describes it. This character goes out and tries to understand and engage with the alien wildness of this new country, but his botanical knowledge is rebuffed and what is upheld is the ability to cast Australia in a mould of Europe with ripe soft peaches and asparagus. The settlers don't want to lose their life that they knew. You can see why this is, the vast unknown must have been overwhelming. How does the human mind process so many unknowns?
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