By Joan London
Picador Australia, July 2001
RRP A$28.00
ISBN 0 330 36275 5
It is 1939, just prior to the outbreak of World War 2. A young Australian woman and her baby make the near impossible journey to Armenia to find the baby's father. It is a journey based on love, and romantic idealism. It is a pilgrimage; an epic story of courage, human dignity, and loss. Joan London's Gilgamesh follows the story of Edith and her son Jim, as they search for meaning, and a sense of belonging in their lives. The reference to The Epic of Gilgamesh comes from a visit by their lively English cousin and his Armenian friend to Edith and her sister's sleepy Australian farming town of Nunderup, South-west Australia. Leopold and Aram spoke of their own travels around Mesopotamia in Aram's taxi where they imagined themselves as the young king and his friend Enkidu, embarking on their heroic quests, Leopold showing off his own prized copy of the oldest known work of poetry. The impact of this visit on the life of Edith was dramatic, setting off a kind of hunger and wanderlust which would change her and those around her.
Joan London has won a number of prizes, for her previous two short story collections, including the coveted Age Book of the Year for Sister Ship. The anticipation for this, her first full length novel, was great. Gilgamesh fully lives up to the expectations surrounding its release. London's writing quality is delicate and rich, combining a strong clear, easy to read linear narrative, with descriptive introspection. The narrative voice is third person, but the point of view changes subtly from Edith's to Jim's, with an occasional foray into the point of view of Edith's immigrant mother Ada, her Australian father Frank, and her sister Frances. The tone of the novel is, as is the case with many Australian novels, quiet, relying on hints of dialogue, and description, to convey character, setting and plot. The main character Edith, is well created, and believable, despite her extraordinary courage and determination. The combination of the daily ministrations of Edith's quiet and mainly empty life in Nunderup, with the dangerous journey to Armenia works beautifully, as does the way in which those daily details once again become part of her life, even in war-torn Armenia. The recognisable strands of aspects of both her father and mother appearing in Edith's personality, make Edith seem real, and the way in which she lives out aspects of their own thwarted dreams forms a neat parallel with her son Jim's longings, and ultimate journey, and its reference to her and his missing father Aram.
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