Group Read, April 2018: Remembering Babylon

Our group read for April is David Malouf's Remembering Babylon. Please join in the read and post any comments on this thread.

I've made a start on this now. Intriguing beginning. There have been any number of Australian books written about the early interaction of European settlers and native Aborigines, but this one is centered on a character who falls between these two camps and, despite being English by birth is unable to communicate effectively with the settlers. "He did not want to be taken back. What he wanted was to be recognised". Will be interesting to see how this develops.

A quick read but I enjoyed it. I particularly liked how you get inside the heads of so many characters, all of which you could empathise with, even if you didn’t always agree with their point of view. Strangely though Gemmy, the main character, remains elusive. I thought Malouf captured the Australian bush nicely also.

Would be interested to get others views on the closing chapter. To me (without giving spoilers) it seemed unnecessary, introducing a completely new set of circumstances. I found it jarring and would have quite happily closed with the closing lines of the penultimate chapter.

It was an ok read for me but I wasn't blown away.

Two main issues: I thought the writing was a bit off-putting in the first third of the book. There are some really striking images in the opening parts (Gemmy on the beach and Gemmy on the fence) but it was difficult for me to get into the story. Secondly, it was just too short and too many themes were underdeveloped. As >3 puckers: mentions, the motivation and story of many characters are laid out, which was nice, but it was rarely used for anything in later chapters and some characters like ms Hutchenson and Leona never seemed to fit the overall arch the story. I couldn't shake the feeling that Malouf had read a newspaper article about such a couple and just had to work it into his novel.

The closing chapter didn't do much for me, either. I thought the setting and the development of the chosen characters were a bit of a cheap trick - I saw nothing in the first part of the novel which suggested that path for them.

>4 Henrik_Madsen: I know what you mean about the underdeveloped characters. I thought Malouf did a good job of bringing them out in such a short novel, but then you are left wondering what subsequently happened to characters like the young teacher. I just accepted that this was a “point in time” story (with a bit of back story for each character), which is why the last chapter didn’t work for me at all.

I'm about 1/3 through. When I realized the basic premise I expected something more like The Witness to develop, a real one-culture-looks-at-another kind of thing. But it's really more about the community of Europeans in Australia, which is interesting enough and more like The Commandant in conveying this sense of terrifying isolation of the colonizers, and the deep mistrust of the Other. I'm enjoying it, but not sure it's as good as either of those.

I'm at 37%, and I like it more now than in the very first chapters. Did the writing change? There were some strangely structured sentences early on, but now it reads fluently, or maybe I got used to it. I'm noticing I don't want the plot to progress. I fear it's not going into a good direction, and then I quite enjoy being in those people's heads. For me, so far, they're written very well, and agree with >6 annamorphic: that the instinctive mistrust of the Other, is believable. I didn't read the other 2 titles though, can't compare.

>7 Deern: I thought there were some really complicated sentences in the beginning as well, where you really had to focus to figure out what the interposed sentences were pointing at. It ruined the rythm for me a bit.

I enjoyed the book, it is the first I have read by the writer. It wasn't what I expected from the blurb on the back of the book, but I did get pulled into the drama. I agree that the last section was abrupt.

This was a confusing book that seemed to want to do too many things. Ultimately I guess it was about how colonialism breeds a form of mistrust that actually goes beyond racism. But there were many other themes here as well. Others here did not like the final chapter and I agree that it was kind of unnecessary and yet I appreciated it. It sort of calmed down the tension and drew things to as much of a close as they could be drawn.

my review from back in 2011: http://arukiyomi.com/?p=2920

I scored it at 62%

I found this to be enjoyable read overall, though it felt a little rough around the edges -- I felt like the story could have been flushed out into something more -- but I really liked what was there already. The characters were really interesting and I liked the way Malouf told their individual stories.

I found the transition to the final chapter a bit jarring but I didn't mind it overall -- I liked finding out where some of the characters ended up.

For those who’d like to read more Malouf, his other popular novel is An Imaginary Life which coincidentally revolves around Ovids exile in Tomis, the subject of our October 2017 Group Read The Last World.