As is always the case with Malouf’s writing, the sentences are beautifully crafted, as taut and rich as poetry, teasing the reader with the complexity and multiplicity of meaning, without being too obvious in metaphor or imagery. The main action, the epiphany point in each story, takes place deep within the main characters, while the external events are mere triggers. A clear example of this is in At Schindler’s, when Jack walks in on his mother and the boyfriend GI who has come on holiday with them, making love: “Something snapped then. He heard it. A sound louder than the crack of thunder or the rising climax of their cries, or his own smaller one, which they were too far off now in the far place to which their bodies had carried them to hear” (21). The sudden understanding of death and loss, and love, and time passing are all united in this snapping, as Jack begins to comprehend the loss of his father, and his own life before him. Malouf’s world is uniquely Australian, a landscape which is simultaneously young and old, creating an overall metaphor of the new, the child, the first time visitor, and the old, the aboriginal, the family clan, the Jungian dream world, as his characters take us again through their natural world outside and their perceived world inside, teaching us who we are, and always pushing towards the bigger picture. In some stories, like Closer, Sally’s Story, or Jacko’s Reach, nothing really happens in terms of the plot. Sally does her job and then takes a break. Jacko’s Reach is going to be built upon. Amy wants to reach out to her uncle. Most of the action is past tense. They are relatively common tales. A homosexual is banned from his family’s Easter celebrations. A prostitute finds the possible chance of love. A patch of land will disappear under a shopping mall. These are stories which are happening everywhere. The meaning, the beauty of them is in the narrative voice. The assimilation of the event and the way in which the words preserve the moment into something larger. Amy says: “Open your heart now. Let it happen. Come closer, closer. See? Now reach out your hand”, and the gap is bridged. It is a moment of love. Of permanent union, even if the moment never actually happens, except in Amy’s dreams. There are other stories however, where something does happen, and in that moment the natural world is disturbed, turned into something surreal, the reality turning into nightmare, as in Lone Pine, where a couple stops for a night on their first real trip, only to become the victims of a terrible and random crime. Or Dream Stuff, where a case of mistaken identity turns into a story “too extravagant for components of a plot” (of course that is exactly what they are). These pivotal moments too are merely the outside landscape for the main story, which occurs internally. In the mind of Harry Picton, with May’s “name…still in his mouth. Warm, dark, filling it, flowing out.” (115) or the inner world of Colin, a child again as he holds his dying dog under the house. The places and things, which “in one part of himself still moved in”, long gone, are yet permanently alive inside of us, in our dream landscape.
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