I nearly didn't read this novel. I had a bad feeling about it based on the cover art of my 1978 Penguin edition, and then the first paragraph features a character using some truly awful, awful racist language. But because I made a hesitant decision to keep reading this author of social novels, I now know that Niland was reproducing what would have been an authentic way of talking about Australia's First Nations in the era and milieu of the novel, and he had a purpose for doing that. He goes on to show with confronting clarity how endemic racism impacted on some of his characters.

And he also shows that his central character, against all the odds, had agency in his life and made a success of it. And that's why we see this character as one of a couple dressed in smart middle-class clothing, with a derelict old white man behind them on a park bench.

The 1959 Angus & Robertson cover is entirely different. I don't know who did the cover art but it clearly signals the 'noir' character of its contents. The 'big smoke' is Sydney in the 20s and 30s, and this Sydney is '.. is a character. It talks. It works on its own. It plays fair and it plays foul.' Niland's Sydney is peopled by characters living in poverty, and they are not blessed by affectionate communities or loving families as in the fiction of his wife Ruth Park, the author of novels also set in Sydney: The Harp in the South (1948); Poor Man's Orange (1949) and their prequel Missus (1985). To quote my review of The Harp in the South:

...while they live in one of the roughest parts of Sydney, and there is drunkenness and violence, theirs is a community which will offer friendship and compassion when it’s needed.

That's in short supply in The Big Smoke.

Niland (1917-1967) was the son of an Irish shearer. He began his writing career as a copy boy at the Sydney Sun, working at the Redfern railway sheds to augment his earnings. But he then chose to travel, work and live amongst the people he wanted to write about. In Australia and the Pacific, he worked as an opal-miner, a circus hand, a stevedore, and a woolshed rouseabout and these experiences amongst ordinary working people and the underclass informed his fiction and gave it powerful authenticity. Characters in The Big Smoke — a steeplejack, a street sweeper, a night watchman, a paperboy, a seamstress and a waitress come from the world of poorly paid dead-end jobs doing manual labour. (Actually, I'm not sure that Veronica's aunt and Gemma's father pay anything at all to the relatives who work for them.) Small business, such as it is, consists of Sleepy Gus's burger café, Spitz's rag-and-bone trade, Aunt Bridie's dressmaking, and Chiddy Hay's work as a boxing promoter. There's also a priest, a prostitute and a couple of housewives.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/03/16/the-big-smoke-1959-by-darcy-niland/… (altro)

Segnalato

anzlitlovers | Mar 16, 2023 |

The Shiralee di D'Arcy Niland

The Shiralee is an Australian classic; the story of a swagman who comes to have his daughter in tow as he roams the continent working transient jobs and living out of a bag. The four year old is the shiralee, an Australian word for “burden”. What transpires between this man and his daughter is as sweet a transformation as I have ever encountered. He is all toughness, and she has inherited her share of it from him, but even a tough nut can be cracked and the love of a child is often the perfect nutcracker.

I loved the very Ausieness of this book. The expressions that are so quaint and foreign to me would no doubt be common fare for an Australian, but they gave it a regional flavor that hooked me immediately. It was difficult to think of this innocent child being dragged through what is so often a brutal and unkind environment, one in which other people are often the worst dangers you encounter, but there was also the camaraderie between the swagmen and the generosity of some of the strangers that proved this world is like any other, both good and bad, both cruel and kind.

Buster is such a resilient little bugger, and Macauley, who does not begin this journey in a very good light, grows on the reader as he realizes what it is to be a father, to accept a responsibility and to truly love. Niland lays out a beautiful case for why self-interest should not always win.

I confess that I sought this book out because I have always remembered seeing a production based on it back in the 1980s. Hallmark? PBS? Just a mini-series? Don’t recall, just remembered that I had loved it, that it starred Bryan Brown, a favorite actor, and that I now retained only a very vague hint of what it was actually about. I’m glad that movie left its impression, because the book was a total joy to read. Now, I want to go find that production if I can and watch it again.

During a time when we are all limited to such a narrow world, it was a delight to read about someone who had the freedom of the road, who could make his own decisions , who could face adversity head-on and win. A trip to Australia was just what I needed.
… (altro)

Segnalato

mattorsara | 6 altre recensioni | Aug 11, 2022 |

Dead Men Running di D'Arcy Niland

I began reading this book in an attempt to make room for some new books on my 'Australia' shelf, but I knew from the first few pages that I wouldn't be parting with it afterwards. Dead Men Running by D'Arcy Niland (1917-1967) had me captivated from the first words, narrated by Joey:

Tuesday Evening, 1916

I heard the front door slam, the feet clattering up the stairs like the rataplan of drums. The door flew back and rebounded as he charged in, wet as a shag, full of the excitement and urgency of action. I would have asked him who was chasing him only the violence and grimness I sensed shut my mouth on the words. He said nothing. He swiftly crossed the room, a slish of oilskins drippling water, and dragged the tin trunk from under his bed.

"What is it?" I said. "What's up?"

He had two guns in there, the one he settled Amos Frost with and the unlicensed one the police knew nothing about. He checked and pocketed that and pushed the trunk back. (p.11)

... wet as a shag ... a slish of oilskins... can't you just see him standing there, in his Driza-Bone?

Finished only two days before D'Arcy Niland's death at the untimely age of only 49, Dead Men Running was published posthumously by his widow Ruth Park. This is the blurb from the first edition dustjacket:

In this poignant and eventful novel D'Arcy Niland presents the question: What really happens when the ordinary world of evasion and pretence meets a man who is completely honest?
Starkey Moore is this man, an island unto himself, impartial to mores or morals, traditional thinking or his fellows' opinion. Yet he is no figure from a morality play; he is vital, humorous, courageous and completely shocking, as unadorned truth and candour always must be. Across his path comes the young, lonely Joey, his very opposite, tender, vacillatory, carnal and priggish by turns, needing a hero and insisting upon finding one.
This story of friendship and archaic disaster is played out against a remote landscape during a flare-up of nationalistic rage and hysteria.
The mellow meditative style conceals a steely framework of tense and suspenseful story. With a Kazantzakis-like simplicity and inevitability D'Arcy Niland leads the reader towards the crashing last chapter.
This is D'Arcy Niland's last novel, finished only a short time before he died, and this book contains the full story as it was written.

It's a remarkable story, and the blurb does the character of Joey a bit of a disservice. This is a coming-of-age story in which hero-worship confronts the reality of human nature. Though the story is set in 1916, the reader learns through flashbacks that Joey was orphaned in Ireland, came to Australia as a teenager to escape poverty and make a new life for himself, and soon found himself work with the Larrissey family who treated him like a son. But things went awry when Joey witnessed the indiscretion of his employer's wife, and he had the maturity to recognise that her fear of exposure had soured their relationship irrevocably.

So he left, and soon found himself alone in a strange town, friendless and sick. Shivering with fever on the teeming streets of Hope, he was ignored by passers-by until Starkey rescued him, took him home and nursed him back to health.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/07/31/dead-men-running-by-darcy-niland/… (altro)

Segnalato

anzlitlovers | Jul 31, 2019 |

The Shiralee di D'Arcy Niland

A book first published in July 1955, the month after I was born! Buster, a four year old girl snatched from a negligent mother by her father, starts life on the road with her dad, Macauley, a man she barely knows. Taking Buster to get even with his wife backfires a little and Macauley finds his feelings change as he gets to know his daughter who is now a little burden, his responsibility, his shiralee. Life on the road is not much suited for a little girl, and as a man with a quick temper he finds more than his fair share of trouble along the way. He's a big honest Aussie bloke who's prepared to work hard and long for a day's pay, but work is hard to find. He and Buster have to walk long miles, living on billy tea and meals cooked on an open fire down by the creek on the outskirts of small country towns. D'arcy Niland has given them some true blue characters to meet along the way, and although the language is a bit dated I imagine it's true to the year in which it was written. The final chapter holds an unexpected twist for both Buster and Macauley and for Macualey and his estranged wife, a twist that sets all their futures on a new path.… (altro)

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Fliss88 | 6 altre recensioni | Dec 17, 2017 |

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