Rodney Hall (1) (1935–)

"The truth is that if we are to be any use tomorrow we have to accept what happened yesterday - so you may be sure there's something amiss when one hears so much about what we will do in the future while there's never a peep about what we have already done."

Rodney Hall is an utterly absorbing writer, and The Grisly Wife is another great success, haunting, atmospheric, darkly funny, and painful in its profundity. In the late 1860s, a radical preacher sails from England to Australia to set up a mission in a remote part of the east coast, with his posse of female followers and his virgin wife, Catherine Byrne, the narrator of the novel. The emigrants set up their new home in the (fictional) settlement of Yandilli, the site of Hall's previous novel [b:The Second Bridegroom|747111|The Second Bridegroom (Yandilli Trilogy, #1)|Rodney Hall|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1266632691l/747111._SX50_.jpg|733254] which was set around 1838, making this novel a thematic sequel.

Catherine - narrating her tale years later to an initially unnamed listener - is, like many of Hall's protagonists, a figure on the outskirts of her own culture. Like The Second Bridegroom's convict, who experienced the painful dawning of recognition when forced to interact with a society different to his own, Catherine is asking herself questions about social expectations, cultural norms, a figure of suppressed doubt amongst those who would see the choice between belief and savagery as a binary one.

"Ambition is a curious urge, don't you agree? being as much as to say if I do not surrender my place in life to struggle for a different place (some other person's place) then I will not quite fully live."

The novel falls squarely into the long tradition of tales about starchy British colonialists facing off against the Australian bush, attempting valiantly to replicate their culture in a location so very hostile to it. But it is also a novel about belief and doubt, about human connection, and the ways we attempt to navigate our lives as individuals while also existing in tandem with others. It is perhaps a slightly tougher read than Bridegroom on the grounds that Catherine's memory flits from idea to idea, year to year, seemingly haphazardly and with a more idiosyncratic speech pattern (she is rather like Emily Dickinson, with her love of dashes above all other punctuation).

The goal of literature is to discover. The goal of Australian literature is usually to discover what defines our country, our people. Hall suggests that we may not like what we find, but we have little choice, bound on a wheel of fire that must, someday, come full circle.… (altro)

"Here in New South Wales...the real and the fabulous have not yet gone their separate ways. There is nothing to prevent our fables taking root here. And we have brought plenty of them with us."

What a revelation! Rodney Hall, a two-time Miles Franklin Winner (and seven-time nominee) has always been on my to-read list for that reason, but (in retrospect disappointingly) no-one has ever taken the time to recommend him to me. Indeed, his collective oeuvre has fewer than 400 ratings on Goodreads and around 60 reviews. Mr Hall, how the world has wronged you.

The Second Bridegroom is a sublime piece of literature, set in the 1830s as a convict escapes his dire conditions along the coast of Australia somewhere south of Sydney. In the bush, he finds himself part of a ceremony among local Indigenous people, whom he can barely comprehend even as people, let alone as practitioners of another culture. To say much more would be to spoil an exhilarating read, buoyed by Hall's delicate, exquisite prose and his ability to conjure a world lost to us (arguably two worlds). His narrator, apologetic for upsetting his reader with the mere idea that this other beings might be "men", is an authentic and engaging viewpoint into a mindset. Hall's work fuses the 1830s with the present day, raising questions about our shared past while exploring beyond individuals into the very essence of humanity, power, dignity, grief, and faith.

"Do you hear that as you read my words? Do you know the grief we know? Does life mean what you thought?"

Hall is clearly a writer's writer, but I believe that he could be engaging to all readers of quality Australian literature. I hope his reputation remains.… (altro)

Rodney Hall as poet emerges from this novel, well worth reading in its complex, twisted prose, although perhaps best placed at the end of the loose trilogy of novels. Although it is not connected to them plot-wise (aside from a couple of subtle references), this story of lust, fear, and captivity on the harsh Australian coast at the end of the 19th century builds much of its strength from Hall's other explorations of such a world.

I am just going to post one of the many powerful passages from the novel, rather than attempt to come to terms with the experience of reading Hall. He deserves to have a much stronger presence on Australian bookshelves.

"Sitting round the oil-lamps of a winter's night, Pa read Lives of the Saints at the rate of about one sentence an hour. Mum read even more dreadful things in the darkness beyond her own familiar dark. And we played a card game called Happy Families.

When the wind blew from the north-east, which it often did, we could hear a distant crash of waves down at the cliffs below the twenty. And when we had gone to bed - as we preyed on each other, breathing each other's snores, turning together in our separate sleep so our bed-springs made harmony or screamed in someone else's nightmare - the cracks between the planks of the rough walls gaped wider and hair-fine glints of a silver sheet turned its wave to our drowning eyes; our bodyheat went sleepwalking till the dogs grew restless and put up their pointed noses and the horses, musing as they stood round in mockery of sleep, bent to stir the fog with caressing tongues and shook magnificent necks in the moonlight of a mare's eye.. While the ocean, that relentless heart, beat beat beat away at the rocks."… (altro)

Just exquisite from start to finish. My (brief) reviews can be found at the pages of the individual novels: [b:The Second Bridegroom|747111|The Second Bridegroom (Yandilli Trilogy, #1)|Rodney Hall|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1266632691l/747111._SX50_.jpg|733254], [b:The Grisly Wife|747112|The Grisly Wife (Yandilli Trilogy, #2)|Rodney Hall|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1241158473l/747112._SY75_.jpg|733255], [b:Captivity Captive|747132|Captivity Captive (Yandilli Trilogy, #3)|Rodney Hall|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|733275]. Brought together, these three novels detail the lives of the alienated and bitter residents of a small settlement on the east coast of Australia throughout the 19th century, in a dense, lyrical prose that moves this reader to tears.… (altro)