Eucalyptus
by Murray Bail
On This Page
Description
On a country property a man named Holland lives with his daughter Ellen. Over the years, as she grows into a beautiful young woman, he plants hundreds of different gum trees on his land. When Ellen is nineteen her father announces his decision: she will marry the man who can name all the species of eucalypt, down to the last tree. Suitors emerge from all corners, including the formidable, straight-backed Mr Cave, world expert on the varieties of eucalypt. And then, walking among her show more father’s trees, Ellen chances on a strange young man who in the days that follow tells her dozens of stories set in cities, deserts, faraway countries ... Haunting and mesmerising, Eucalyptus illuminates the nature of storytelling itself. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
I suspect that this book has fallen between two stools: if you're looking for a classic love story, you're likely to be annoyed that the plot gets going by having a man offer his daughter to any man who can name all the species of gum tree on his property. If you're looking for clever reflections on anything, you're likely to be irritated by the cheesiness of the courtship and the extra, super-duper cheesiness of the conclusion. I am of the latter. Other reasons to be annoyed by Murray Bail wasting his significant talents on this book:
i) The daughter, while given some kind of interior life, is also, like, SO BEAUTIFUL. Because aren't all fictional women.
ii) Where some of Bail's opposites-in-tension books at least try to pretend that show more there are two sides to the opposition (psychology vs philosophy, for instance), this one falls into the worst kind of heart is more important than head cliche.
iii) The winning-her-heart-with-stories plot only works if the stories are good, and these stories are mostly dull love stories. Consistent, but still, Bail can do better.
I did learn, at least, some things about Eucalypts. And I learned that, just as I love Kitty more than Anna Karenina, and every other plain-but-kind sidekick of every dangerous-but-beautiful protagonist, so too I love the male version of Kitty more than the female version of Anna, a lesson I had previously learned by watching an adaptation of Middlemarch. I found Casaubon's downfall very sad. show less
i) The daughter, while given some kind of interior life, is also, like, SO BEAUTIFUL. Because aren't all fictional women.
ii) Where some of Bail's opposites-in-tension books at least try to pretend that show more there are two sides to the opposition (psychology vs philosophy, for instance), this one falls into the worst kind of heart is more important than head cliche.
iii) The winning-her-heart-with-stories plot only works if the stories are good, and these stories are mostly dull love stories. Consistent, but still, Bail can do better.
I did learn, at least, some things about Eucalypts. And I learned that, just as I love Kitty more than Anna Karenina, and every other plain-but-kind sidekick of every dangerous-but-beautiful protagonist, so too I love the male version of Kitty more than the female version of Anna, a lesson I had previously learned by watching an adaptation of Middlemarch. I found Casaubon's downfall very sad. show less
I was given this by Kirsten after she’d spent some time wandering around the suburban streets in our area. They still feature many beautiful specimens of the eucalyptus, developers and other anti-tree people not withstanding. It would help me know them, she said.
This is a botanic guide, embedded with a fairy story, which, like all fairy stories, I guess, is hard to pin down. I felt like it was ‘olden’ and yet from time to time modernity sneaks in. Did this matter? Probably not, maybe it’s the point, fairy stories can be now.
Spoiler….
I was scared this was going to be some sort of modern anti-fairy story with an unhappy ending. But that isn’t the case! All that exquisite writing by Bail comes together in an ending which will show more please any lover of fairy tales. For whom this book is highly recommended. show less
This is a botanic guide, embedded with a fairy story, which, like all fairy stories, I guess, is hard to pin down. I felt like it was ‘olden’ and yet from time to time modernity sneaks in. Did this matter? Probably not, maybe it’s the point, fairy stories can be now.
Spoiler….
I was scared this was going to be some sort of modern anti-fairy story with an unhappy ending. But that isn’t the case! All that exquisite writing by Bail comes together in an ending which will show more please any lover of fairy tales. For whom this book is highly recommended. show less
Let me start with an excerpt.
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.
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 show less
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.show more
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 show less
A widowed father moves to a large ranch in Australia where he plants hundreds of eucalyptus trees on his land (there are 700 distinct species, I had no idea!) He’s pretty much obsessed with the trees. His daughter grows up into a beautiful young woman, admired by many in town but kept secluded on the ranch. The father announces that he will give his daughter in marriage to the man who can correctly name every tree on his property. Many come with little success- they’re really just there hoping to catch a glimpse of the daughter. Then a man arrives who is a eucalyptus specialist himself; he methodically walks the land with the father, naming tree after tree, in no hurry but looks easily able to finish the task. The daughter watches show more with growing apprehension- she’d thought nobody would ever be able to name all the trees. She falls into silence and despondency. Meanwhile, another man appears on the property, just sitting under a tree. He starts to show up every day, finding the daughter where she’s walking under the eucalypts, and he casually tells her stories. Odd little stories that don’t really have endings. They catch her interest and she seeks out his company day after day, while all the while becoming more dismayed that the other man will win her hand.
This whole novel feels like a parable. It has a dreamy air of magical realism, though really there are no magical elements, maybe a few slightly surreal things happen in the stories that are told. In some parts the style definitely reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Márquez. I thought at first I wouldn’t like this book- it feels like the characters are all held at arm’s length, you never really sink into anything as a reader. The storyline flits back and forth through the multitude of smaller stories- rather like the incomplete shade cast by a eucalyptus, I suppose. I was going to ditch it after the first few chapters but kept going and became more intrigued to see how it ends. It’s one I think worth a re-read someday. There is plenty of information on the eucalyptus trees themselves in the pages, the characteristics of their leaves, what type of soil the different species like, the strength of their timber and its uses, etc. Readers not much interested in plants might find this tedious, but I kind of liked it.
from the show less
This whole novel feels like a parable. It has a dreamy air of magical realism, though really there are no magical elements, maybe a few slightly surreal things happen in the stories that are told. In some parts the style definitely reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Márquez. I thought at first I wouldn’t like this book- it feels like the characters are all held at arm’s length, you never really sink into anything as a reader. The storyline flits back and forth through the multitude of smaller stories- rather like the incomplete shade cast by a eucalyptus, I suppose. I was going to ditch it after the first few chapters but kept going and became more intrigued to see how it ends. It’s one I think worth a re-read someday. There is plenty of information on the eucalyptus trees themselves in the pages, the characteristics of their leaves, what type of soil the different species like, the strength of their timber and its uses, etc. Readers not much interested in plants might find this tedious, but I kind of liked it.
from the show less
From the synopsis it would be easy to dismiss Eucalyptus as a modern Australian fairy tale -
"On a property in New South Wales, a man named Holland lives with his daughter Ellen. As years pass and Ellen grows into a beautiful young woman, her father announces his decision: she will marry the first man who can name all the species of the eucalypt, down to the last tree."
This fairy tale aspect of the novel is merely a framework on which Bail can discuss Australia; relationships, between father and daughter, between man and woman; and most of all, storytelling.
Eventually Holland meets his match Roy Cave, a man who shares his love of eucalypts, and who is certain to win the hand of his daughter. As Cave names each tree to her father a show more stranger is using each tree as a jumping-off point to tell a story to Ellen. Holland's admiration for Cave grows as he names one after another after, while Ellen is beguiled and bewitched by the stories told to her. Are they true? What do they mean? What happens afterward? Ellen becomes the reader, we become Ellen.
The power of the imagination is central to Bail's thesis. Holland and Cave know the names of the trees, but the stranger and Ellen know there is something more, and it is here that human traits like love exist. Bail contrasts writing with photography, writing is boundless but photography is doomed to only show what is in the picture. Holland and Cave are photographers who can only see what is in front of them, Ellen and the stranger are writers of their own lives.
You can criticise Bail for his characters - Ellen is totally passive, Holland lacks any understanding , for example - but they aren't supposed to be completely realistic, they are playing roles in fairy tale. You can charge Bail with creating an artifice but isn't all writing essentially an artifice.
In the end, Eucalyptus is that genuinely rare specimen, a modern classic - ingenius, original, poetic - a book to come back to again and again. show less
"On a property in New South Wales, a man named Holland lives with his daughter Ellen. As years pass and Ellen grows into a beautiful young woman, her father announces his decision: she will marry the first man who can name all the species of the eucalypt, down to the last tree."
This fairy tale aspect of the novel is merely a framework on which Bail can discuss Australia; relationships, between father and daughter, between man and woman; and most of all, storytelling.
Eventually Holland meets his match Roy Cave, a man who shares his love of eucalypts, and who is certain to win the hand of his daughter. As Cave names each tree to her father a show more stranger is using each tree as a jumping-off point to tell a story to Ellen. Holland's admiration for Cave grows as he names one after another after, while Ellen is beguiled and bewitched by the stories told to her. Are they true? What do they mean? What happens afterward? Ellen becomes the reader, we become Ellen.
The power of the imagination is central to Bail's thesis. Holland and Cave know the names of the trees, but the stranger and Ellen know there is something more, and it is here that human traits like love exist. Bail contrasts writing with photography, writing is boundless but photography is doomed to only show what is in the picture. Holland and Cave are photographers who can only see what is in front of them, Ellen and the stranger are writers of their own lives.
You can criticise Bail for his characters - Ellen is totally passive, Holland lacks any understanding , for example - but they aren't supposed to be completely realistic, they are playing roles in fairy tale. You can charge Bail with creating an artifice but isn't all writing essentially an artifice.
In the end, Eucalyptus is that genuinely rare specimen, a modern classic - ingenius, original, poetic - a book to come back to again and again. show less
Lovely book, but it starts slowly, setting up a half-dreamlike, half clumsily unlikely premise, built on a whole series of other unlikely premises. You allow this, because it is a dreamy book and obviously it demands your credulity in return for consenting to create wonders.
I'll not discuss plot . . . the blurb for the book here does that adequately. What I do want to tell you is that about halfway through the book you begin to not want it to ever end. It becomes a kind of mill of wonders, spinning out story after story that takes the details of the most mundane kinds of lives and creates mythic and resonant tales, in a half-page's compass. You begin to see unimagined links between the full knowledge of one taxonomy's worth of details show more and the cascade of details of previously unknown taxonomy of human lives.
The framing tale tips and teeters on the edge of narrative disaster a number of times, but Bail brings it home-- a writer with more nerve than most, certainly!
You'll like this. Just stick it out through those opening chapters. . . show less
I'll not discuss plot . . . the blurb for the book here does that adequately. What I do want to tell you is that about halfway through the book you begin to not want it to ever end. It becomes a kind of mill of wonders, spinning out story after story that takes the details of the most mundane kinds of lives and creates mythic and resonant tales, in a half-page's compass. You begin to see unimagined links between the full knowledge of one taxonomy's worth of details show more and the cascade of details of previously unknown taxonomy of human lives.
The framing tale tips and teeters on the edge of narrative disaster a number of times, but Bail brings it home-- a writer with more nerve than most, certainly!
You'll like this. Just stick it out through those opening chapters. . . show less
Holland claims to have an example of every eucalypt species in his grounds and offers his daughter's hand in marriage to anyone who can recognise and name all of them.
Each of the 39 chapter headings is the name of a eucalypt species but since all I know is that koalas eat the leaves and get high and they produce an oil which is good for stuffed up noses, the headings really didn't help orientate me and for most of the book, I felt I needed all the help I could get. Some beautiful prose which didn't really convey any meaning a lot of the time. If the book hadn't been for book club I doubt I would have persevered beyond the first page or two.
Each of the 39 chapter headings is the name of a eucalypt species but since all I know is that koalas eat the leaves and get high and they produce an oil which is good for stuffed up noses, the headings really didn't help orientate me and for most of the book, I felt I needed all the help I could get. Some beautiful prose which didn't really convey any meaning a lot of the time. If the book hadn't been for book club I doubt I would have persevered beyond the first page or two.
Members
- Recently Added By
Published Reviews
ThingScore 75
Je eine Eukalyptusart ziert die 39 Kapitel, dient Bail als Überschrift. "Das Wort 'eukalyptein' kommt aus dem Griechischen und bedeutet 'wohl' und 'verhüllt'. Es beschreibt etwas für die Gattung Charakteristisches. Die Blütenknospe des Eukalyptusbaumes ist bis zu dem Moment, da sie sich zur Befruchtung öffnet, verhüllt; es liegt gewissermaßen ein Deckel auf den Fortpflanzungsorganen." show more Die Analogien liegen oft auf der Hand in diesem Buch - und doch gelingen Bail stets Nuancierungen, die den Leser überraschen, die eingeschlagenen Wege als unbrauchbar entlarven. Zwischen botanischem Wissen und märchenhaftem Geschehen hat Bail eine gehörige Portion Ironie postiert. Aber es gibt Augenblicke, da vermag er den Leser dieses ungeheuer leichten, jedoch nie leichtgewichtigen Buches zu überreden, sich auf sinnliche Schilderungen von großer Intensität einzulassen. Das blüht, riecht, schmeckt.
Überhaupt ist es letztlich ein seltsamer Geschichtenerzähler, der das Herz der schönen Tochter auf beiläufige Weise erobert. Und so gibt sich schließlich die wahre Hauptperson des Buches zu erkennen: die Sprache. Und das wiederum ist geradezu märchenhaft. show less
Überhaupt ist es letztlich ein seltsamer Geschichtenerzähler, der das Herz der schönen Tochter auf beiläufige Weise erobert. Und so gibt sich schließlich die wahre Hauptperson des Buches zu erkennen: die Sprache. Und das wiederum ist geradezu märchenhaft. show less
added by Indy133
Lists
Top Five Books of 2014
1,064 works; 398 members
Most Popular Books Tagged Australia
35 works; 5 members
Booktopia's 50 Must Read Australian Novels
50 works; 5 members
School Made Us Read It
380 works; 196 members
Clues about Australia
38 works; 1 member
Author Information
16+ Works 2,004 Members
Murray Bail has won numerous prizes for his novels -- Eucalyptus, Homesickness, and Holden's Performance -- including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Eucalyptus. He lives in Sydney
Awards and Honors
Awards
Notable Lists
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
rororo (22523)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Eucalyptus
- Original title
- Eucalyptus
- Original publication date
- 1998-09-01
- People/Characters
- Ellen; Holland; Roy Cave; The stranger; Sprunt Sisters
- Important places
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia; Australia; Bondi, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; New South Wales, Australia; Queensland, Australia (show all 8); South Australia, Australia; Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- First words
- We could begin with desertorum, common name Hooked Mallee.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)He was a man interested at a point where he felt his story beginning all over again.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 1,288
- Popularity
- 18,744
- Reviews
- 45
- Rating
- (3.50)
- Languages
- 14 — Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Croatian, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 48
- UPCs
- 1
- ASINs
- 10