Frank Moorhouse (1)

4.5. An odd story, but glittering insights into life are scattered throughout, and as always with Moorhouse wonderful writing. He captures the struggle of an intelligent, but perhaps not brilliant, mind to find its place and deal with the longings and weaknesses that come along in, well, 40 years. Despite the title, and most descriptions of the novel, the focus is only peripherally on the relationship between our narrator and a young girl, and she is only 17 in old memories. It is more on show more Sean's striving to be something that he cannot quite work out, and dealing with the failures that accumulate along the way. For those that loved "Grand Days" (as I did) there are a few connections you'll enjoy. show less

This is a really wonderful book. There's a clarity and precision to the prose which I haven't seen in any other Australian novel. Too often Australian writers aim for the vernacular and use a style that tries to imitate speech. Moorhouse, on the other hand, seems to acknowledge that written fiction has its own discourse and trusts that an Australian style will emerge without having to reach for it. Consequently we get a lucid description of events and a wonderful insight into the mind of the show more protagonist, Edith Campbell Berry.

Edith starts a job with the League of Nations and the story follows her adventures from there. This setting provides a great opportunity for reflection on big questions such as idealism vs. pragmatism, war vs. peace and other less grandiose questions which it's hard to discuss without spoiling the story. The greatest spoiler of all, of course, is that history tells us that the League of Nations was a failure and that World War II broke out not long after the events in the novel. A quick read of the wikipedia entry on the League of Nations will provide helpful background if you didn't study modern history at high school, as many of the events and characters in the story are based on real life. This history also lends a tragic poignancy to the attempts of Edith and her colleagues to put an end to war.

I really enjoyed this novel and would recommend it to anyone, especially book groups, who will find a multitude of material to discuss. show less

I had a little buying spree after the death of Frank Moorhouse earlier this year, and found copies of Forty-seventeen (1988) and this one, The Electrical Experience: a Discontinuous Narrative from 1974. It's wrongly entered at Wikipedia as a short story, but at 188 pages it's not. It's a modernist novella. and I reckon that makes it his first novel and a remarkable debut...

The book is prefaced by two Tables of Contents, one listing the more-or-less chronological and coherent narratives about show more T. George McDowell (TGM) and the mystery of a man who thinks that business is all that matters, and the other listing fragments which purport to be authoritative miscellanea that support George's preoccupations, plus some B&W photos from the early 20th century. It's a clever structure which he termed a discontinuous narrative which was innovative for its time.

Born just after Federation, TGM is a businessman who makes soft drinks on the NSW south coast. He's a man of strong opinions, though he keeps many of them to himself. He is anti-government and anti-union, and he broke a local strike by hassling the weakest individuals until they gave in under pressure. He thinks that reason, progress and stability are defence against a changing world that he doesn't like, represented by his wayward third daughter Terri. (He was, of course, hoping for a son.) He has a pragmatic marriage and a stalwart wife, and he's obsessed by electrification, refrigeration and the wireless. He likes the positive American approach in the Readers' Digest.

While on the one hand the narratives reveal TGM's enthusiasm for Rotary, hard work, and Getting Things Done, they also reveal the hollowness of his philosophy.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/11/20/the-electrical-experience-by-frank-moorhouse... show less

Over the pre-Christmas weeks, there was the usual flurry of lists of best reads of 2011. One title appearing highly recommended on several reliable lists was a new Frank Moorhouse – the third in his series on the League of Nations. I bought the the first one (Grand Days) about fifteen years ago; and the second one (Dark Palace) when it was released in 2000. ‘Dark Palace’ won the Miles Franklin that year. There was a huge fuss because, while it is about an Australian, it is not actually show more set in Australia and that was really pushing the boundaries of the award criteria – and you know how the luvvies work themselves into a state about things like that!

They are HUGE (both over 700 pages) and very earnest seeming from the blurbs - you know, the sort of thing one thinks one should read - eventually. They've both been sitting on Mt TBR awaiting an appropriate moment.

The recommendations - and a sense that I should read at least one ‘worthy’ thing over the break instead of all escapist fantasy and mindless crime thrillers - prompted me to bite the bullet. I selected a larger handbag on Thursday, hefted ‘Grand Days’ into it; and headed off into town for a round of personal wellbeing appointments - the hairdresser, the optometrist etc.

Well, despite its weight, I couldn’t put the bloody thing down. I was so enthralled I didn’t even get grumpy at being kept waiting long past scheduled appointment times.

It is the mid 1920s and a young Australian diplomat, Edith Campbell Berry, arrives in Geneva to take up a role with the newly established League of Nations. Berry leaves home as an impractical idealist and ends up as a somewhat jaded, but still idealistic, international bureaucrat. She has to be one of the most interesting characters I've come across in years - and the world she lives in feels as real as the one I inhabit.

I finished it at 3am on New Years Eve; and promptly searched out the second on Mt TBR. It took sheer willpower not to start it there and then and turn the light off. show less