Let me start with an excerpt.Here he could look at her closely. He began wandering among the many different birthmarks and beauty spots. As for Ellen, her questions seemed to direct him towards her state of dress. For a moment, without looking down, Ellen wasn't sure whether she was being buttoned or unbottoned.Came his voice, 'When the breeder of canaries knocked on Miss Kirschner's door he had dandruff on his shoulders. She had a squint in one eye---something like that. And she had the excruciating taste in furnishings usually found with musicians. It's a mystery how an attraction can spring up in one person for another. Who can say why? It would be amazing, except it happens all the time. A person's voice, say a man's voice, heard in the dark or behind a door is sometimes enough. But it must be a combination of things. What do you think?''Just voice isn't enough, I don't believe.''There must be cases where the attraction is not deliberate. It just sort of happens,' he proposed. 'it can't be explained---a real mystery. There's no logic to it,' he added. It was enough for him to shake his head.'Logic?' She almost wanted to laugh.'I mean the person is not given a choice in the matter.'In and out went the conversation, and the light and shade slanted between the trees. Normally he would have gone long a ago. Clearly he wanted to stay. Frowning again, he was looking away from her.'And you don't know whether your stories are true or not?' She waited, not thinking of anything else.So it was left in that intimate, unresolved state, which too can be seen as something of a mystery.Would that more often, we were left in an intimate, unresolved state. Eucalyptus is truly kaleidoscopic, yet soothing and intimate rather than harsh and disorienting. Here is playful writing at its best, still full beauty and life. Murray Bail's writing carries us lightly through both the scientific world of eucalypts and the emotional world of longing and fulfillment. "The scientific naming of trees doesn't follow a pattern," he tells us. "In some respects it has an attractive, amateur randomness just like the distribution of the trees themselves." Which somehow makes it a perfect source of inspiration for the telling of stories, stories meant to win the affection of our dear daughter, Ellen.Remaining motionless Ellen tried to decipher a shape to the stories; she even followed the contours of the plantation, somehow taking an aerial view of the stories, as if that would reveal a hidden pattern....These were women who followed the idea of hope. It seemed to be their greatest obedience. Ellen couldn't help respecting them. These women, one by one, moved about with a form of lightness, and obeyed their ideas of truth to feelings. Ellen usually liked the women he happened to talk about. Under the Spinning Gum he had his hands in his pockets as he turned to face her. 'Off the coast of Victoria,' he shielded his eyes, 'was a wife of a lighthouse keeper who became addicted to kite-flying. She was young and had no children...'And so another story fragment unfolds.There is a merging, an interplay, of order and disorder throughout the novel. And isn't that how we feel about ourselves? The parts we understand and the parts we don't? The parts we want to control and the parts we want to discover? Sometimes we try to remain motionless in ourseves, take our own aerial view, find our own hidden pattern. But we know, too, that we just sort of happens, and we can't be completely explained.As you can tell, I loved this book, and can't wait to read a few more of Bail's other novels.link
Nothing else, I guess Eucalyptus lives up to its title. It’s about a man whose wife dies while giving birth to their daughter. The man collects the life insurance, moves to a small town in western New South Wales, and plants eucalypts… lots of them. Apparently there are over 200 specie of this plant. Once his daughter is of a marriageable age he makes an Atalantan (as in the golden apple/race myth) deal to marry her off to the first suitor who can name all the various eucalypts on his land. That process is basically Act II of the book, and it’s about as exciting as it sounds. Oh, and each chapter is named for a specie of Eucalypt.This was ultimately a very frustrating book. I mean I love eucalyptus trees about as much as a kola bear does. But, we’re talking a predictable plodding plot. And, sexist?—oh honey, it’s all that—in a way that defies direct implication (beautiful inactive frequently naked daughters, grotesque obsessive delinquently powerful men, arranged marriages, little snipes here and there like in speaking of the outback “…let’s not forget the isolation, the exhausted shapeless women…” which as a hiccup might almost appear benign but consolidated turns into this constant goat-getting action, etc). What’s truly maddening is that Murray Bail is a capable writer. He has a great ear for tone and a masterful ability with sentences. Sentences. This is the tragedy of the sentence. In other words, I feel like I’m circling a beef with, like, sentences critically, and I suppose it is this… when all else fails—theme, conscience, geometry, plot—as readers, we fall back on the sentence. If the writer can lay down an inviting sentence… we tend toward trust. The problem is great sentences have been called on to propound dreadful stuff. There’s a tangle that results between sentence as sign and sentence as signifier—or something along those lines. See, the Noun Verb Object trick can actually wind up implicating writer and reader both in as far as they become complicit with said sentence’s nefarious values. I don’t know. I suppose I’m only saying this: a series of great sentences cannot be an end in itself… somewhere along the line ethics slips in, and in the absence of their careful weight even the best grammatical clauses fall to pieces. If ya need an example, check these Bail-isms out: “It may not be exaggerated to say that the formidable instinct in men to measure, which is often mistaken for pessimism, is counterbalanced by the unfolding optimism of women, which is nothing less than life itself; their endless trump card. It is shown in miniature by the reverence women have for flowers, at its most concentrated when they look up and in recognition of their natural affinity accept flowers.” Lovely sentences, rotten meaningless ideas.
What do You think about Eucalyptus (1999)?
There's a very fairy-tale-like quality about this book that I liked a lot, and the very Australian flavor of the narration made it a highly unusual read for me as well. I have some issues with the passivity of the heroine (which isn't a terribly surprising thing given the heavy fairy-tale flavor of the story), but found it a worthwhile read anyway.This novel's all about how a man named Holland in Australia has planted hundreds of species of eucalyptus trees on his ranch, and how he proclaims tha
—Angela
I spent most of this book wishing I had someone there to explain it to me. As it was, I think I got about a fourth of what the author was trying to say. Bail doesn't ever just say something, first he tells a story or gives a detailed description of a specific eucalyptus tree, and expects you to extrapolate. When he was telling stories they were odd; a man who spends his life planting every kind of eucalyptus, a girl who is beautiful because she is covered in moles... And like all of the stories within this stories it ends right when it is getting good. Each story has it's purpose, and as soon as it is conveyed the story is over leaving no time for explanations or neat wrapped up endings. This book is not about seeing the plot through to the end, but rather understanding the meaning of things. Sometimes I got it and it was enchanting, sometimes my head just hurt.
—Shannon
Possessing an ethereal, fairytale quality, this novel is simply amazing. Reflections on Australia, love, identity, classification, art and literature are balanced with such nuance as to make this a fascinating piece of work. Intensely, and intelligently, structured novel working from a place of playful irony, but maintaining a hefty emotional punch. Even the accusations of a patriarchal framework (the novel's central plot element is a father giving his daughter away to a man who can meet his extremely specific requirements) are presented in a parodic fashion, with the ending of the novel acting as a complete counterargument. I honestly can't recommend this highly enough.
—Ben Eldridge
