Eucalyptus, by Murray Bail
Jun. 7th, 2006 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperI had to break in a new icon tonight for the express purpose of making this post--remarks on the third of books that I have read just because Russell Crowe has, will be, or came very close to making a movie out of them. The previous ones have been of course Master and Commander and A Good Year, and this time around it's Murray Bail's Eucalyptus. Because of the Russell connection here, hopefully this post will be amusing to the Russell fans on my Friends list; ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
boxer_ferret, cruisedirector, silme711, kohaku1977, fleurdelista, kathrynelaraine, and especially ii2none59, I'm lookin' at you. ;)
Picoreview: There's a very fairy-tale-like quality about this book that I liked a lot, and the very Australian flavor of the narration made it a highly unusual read for me as well. I have some issues with the passivity of the heroine (which isn't a terribly surprising thing given the heavy fairy-tale flavor of the story), but found it a worthwhile read anyway.
This novel's all about how a man named Holland in Australia has planted hundreds of species of eucalyptus trees on his ranch, and how he proclaims that the man who names them all will win the hand of Ellen, his beautiful daughter. Very definitely a fairy-tale sort of task, and with that laying the groundwork for the plot, we get several other things you'd expect in a fairy tale as well--the remote location, the nearby tiny village, dozens of dauntless suitors who fall by the wayside, a challenger at last who Ellen does not want and who breezes through the task as if he were born to it. And of course we have a mysterious wanderer, who captures Ellen's heart by spinning her dozens of stories, and whose disappearance sends Ellen spiraling into a decline until he finally returns at the end to prove himself victorious over her father's challenge.
All very nice, and overall I really had only two small issues with the story. One was that sometimes the narration was too self-aware, making comments about paragraphs and full stops and such. While it was generally to make a point about something going on in the story, such as comparing paragraphs to paddocks, more often than not it came across to me as too roundabout. At least twice, it made me think "for fuck's sake, get on with it!" And I'm generally a very patient reader.
Now that said, it did indeed eventually Get On With It, and I also acknowledge that there was a certain art and style to Bail's prose that I do have to appreciate. It fit in with the whole idea of Telling a Story, an art which he clearly loves, since the hero of this tale was himself a storyteller. Telling stories orally is an art in and of itself, even separate from telling them in the written word, and Bail blended them well here. It helped me a lot, I think, to start imagining the voice of the narrator with an Australian accent, and suddenly the rhythm of the words started coming together for me.
My other quibble was with Ellen, who had a passivity about her that irritated me. Sure, this is kind of classic when you're dealing with fairy tales--certainly Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and even my beloved Rapunzel don't do much to uphold the virtues of feminine spine. And sure, the setting of the story, fairly modern though it came across, had a sort of timeless quality about it that seemed to encourage the fairy tale tropes. But not once did Ellen ever actually object to her father's scheme of marrying her off to a man who could name all of his trees. Not once did she actually vocalize any objections to Cave, the challenger who systematically worked his way through the entire plantation, rattling off the names of the trees and proceeding closer and closer to the prize--her. Instead of actually telling her father, "Look, Dad, about this whole marriage thing--I actually really like this guy I've been talking to out in the trees," instead of telling anybody anything, she just lays down and pines herself sick. Very classic fairy tale princess behavior. But to me, a modern feminist-inclined reader, irritating nonetheless.
There are remarks made here and there all throughout the story about how Holland is rumored to "have his daughter locked up", but really, he's done nothing of the kind. Ellen's movements aren't constrained, and Holland in his way comes across as a father who's just anxious to make sure that if he has to hand off his daughter to anybody, it'll be to a man he can respect. I just wish that once Ellen would have asserted herself, because while I wanted to like her, I didn't respect her.
Now as to stuff I really, really liked... the Storyteller (we never get his name) was very, very cool. I loved how he wove stories to capture Ellen's fancy, and I loved the way he wandered in and out of them, sometimes leaving off just when your attention is hooked and you're anxious to know what the hell happens next. I liked his interactions with Ellen even when he wasn't actively telling a story as well, and I especially liked the scene where he comes across her naked, and very solemnly, very respectfully helps her back into her clothes. Every word in that scene was charged with tension, and the beauty of it is that at no point does Bail ever come right out and say that our boy would really rather be taking Ellen's clothes off of her. It doesn't need to be said. The words chosen to describe his actions convey that beautifully.
And I did not see it coming that he actually won the challenge before Cave did--because he was the one who brought all the nameplates for the trees to the plantation. I loved that. And I loved that the Sprunt sisters (fancifully referred to in passing as 'witches', adding to the fairy tale nature of the story) clued him in about where Ellen would be likely to wander, and that he went looking for Ellen to win her directly rather than going to her father first.
To tie all this in with the Russell connection, I do find myself disappointed that the attempt to make this into a movie failed. I can totally see what Russell would see in the story--it is chock full of tiny bits of story about dozens of people's lives, and since he does a lot of that with his music, I am certain that that is what drew him to this novel. At the same time, I can also buy the difficulty of reworking the script so that he and Nicole Kidman could play the principal roles. Kidman is way too old for Ellen, and certainly Russell at his current age (or even his age of four or five years ago) would be too old for the Storyteller as the novel is written. So the story would have to be adjusted somehow to accommodate that--which brings in the difficulty of why an older version of Ellen would put up with the same challenge set down by her father as a younger Ellen would.
And I must admit to a moment of utter fangirlishness when I got to the first appearance of the Storyteller, when Ellen finds him sleeping under a tree. C'mon, Russell fangirls, show of hands--who all thought of the "Russell sleeping half-nekked under a tree" bits of Silver Brumby? ;)
Ahem. Anyway, even aside from the Russell tie-in, and even aside from the limp dishrag of a heroine, I'm glad I read this book just to enjoy Murray Bail's prose, very full of character, and very much an example of the art of telling a Story.
boxer_ferret, cruisedirector, silme711, kohaku1977, fleurdelista, kathrynelaraine, and especially ii2none59, I'm lookin' at you. ;)Picoreview: There's a very fairy-tale-like quality about this book that I liked a lot, and the very Australian flavor of the narration made it a highly unusual read for me as well. I have some issues with the passivity of the heroine (which isn't a terribly surprising thing given the heavy fairy-tale flavor of the story), but found it a worthwhile read anyway.
This novel's all about how a man named Holland in Australia has planted hundreds of species of eucalyptus trees on his ranch, and how he proclaims that the man who names them all will win the hand of Ellen, his beautiful daughter. Very definitely a fairy-tale sort of task, and with that laying the groundwork for the plot, we get several other things you'd expect in a fairy tale as well--the remote location, the nearby tiny village, dozens of dauntless suitors who fall by the wayside, a challenger at last who Ellen does not want and who breezes through the task as if he were born to it. And of course we have a mysterious wanderer, who captures Ellen's heart by spinning her dozens of stories, and whose disappearance sends Ellen spiraling into a decline until he finally returns at the end to prove himself victorious over her father's challenge.
All very nice, and overall I really had only two small issues with the story. One was that sometimes the narration was too self-aware, making comments about paragraphs and full stops and such. While it was generally to make a point about something going on in the story, such as comparing paragraphs to paddocks, more often than not it came across to me as too roundabout. At least twice, it made me think "for fuck's sake, get on with it!" And I'm generally a very patient reader.
Now that said, it did indeed eventually Get On With It, and I also acknowledge that there was a certain art and style to Bail's prose that I do have to appreciate. It fit in with the whole idea of Telling a Story, an art which he clearly loves, since the hero of this tale was himself a storyteller. Telling stories orally is an art in and of itself, even separate from telling them in the written word, and Bail blended them well here. It helped me a lot, I think, to start imagining the voice of the narrator with an Australian accent, and suddenly the rhythm of the words started coming together for me.
My other quibble was with Ellen, who had a passivity about her that irritated me. Sure, this is kind of classic when you're dealing with fairy tales--certainly Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and even my beloved Rapunzel don't do much to uphold the virtues of feminine spine. And sure, the setting of the story, fairly modern though it came across, had a sort of timeless quality about it that seemed to encourage the fairy tale tropes. But not once did Ellen ever actually object to her father's scheme of marrying her off to a man who could name all of his trees. Not once did she actually vocalize any objections to Cave, the challenger who systematically worked his way through the entire plantation, rattling off the names of the trees and proceeding closer and closer to the prize--her. Instead of actually telling her father, "Look, Dad, about this whole marriage thing--I actually really like this guy I've been talking to out in the trees," instead of telling anybody anything, she just lays down and pines herself sick. Very classic fairy tale princess behavior. But to me, a modern feminist-inclined reader, irritating nonetheless.
There are remarks made here and there all throughout the story about how Holland is rumored to "have his daughter locked up", but really, he's done nothing of the kind. Ellen's movements aren't constrained, and Holland in his way comes across as a father who's just anxious to make sure that if he has to hand off his daughter to anybody, it'll be to a man he can respect. I just wish that once Ellen would have asserted herself, because while I wanted to like her, I didn't respect her.
Now as to stuff I really, really liked... the Storyteller (we never get his name) was very, very cool. I loved how he wove stories to capture Ellen's fancy, and I loved the way he wandered in and out of them, sometimes leaving off just when your attention is hooked and you're anxious to know what the hell happens next. I liked his interactions with Ellen even when he wasn't actively telling a story as well, and I especially liked the scene where he comes across her naked, and very solemnly, very respectfully helps her back into her clothes. Every word in that scene was charged with tension, and the beauty of it is that at no point does Bail ever come right out and say that our boy would really rather be taking Ellen's clothes off of her. It doesn't need to be said. The words chosen to describe his actions convey that beautifully.
And I did not see it coming that he actually won the challenge before Cave did--because he was the one who brought all the nameplates for the trees to the plantation. I loved that. And I loved that the Sprunt sisters (fancifully referred to in passing as 'witches', adding to the fairy tale nature of the story) clued him in about where Ellen would be likely to wander, and that he went looking for Ellen to win her directly rather than going to her father first.
To tie all this in with the Russell connection, I do find myself disappointed that the attempt to make this into a movie failed. I can totally see what Russell would see in the story--it is chock full of tiny bits of story about dozens of people's lives, and since he does a lot of that with his music, I am certain that that is what drew him to this novel. At the same time, I can also buy the difficulty of reworking the script so that he and Nicole Kidman could play the principal roles. Kidman is way too old for Ellen, and certainly Russell at his current age (or even his age of four or five years ago) would be too old for the Storyteller as the novel is written. So the story would have to be adjusted somehow to accommodate that--which brings in the difficulty of why an older version of Ellen would put up with the same challenge set down by her father as a younger Ellen would.
And I must admit to a moment of utter fangirlishness when I got to the first appearance of the Storyteller, when Ellen finds him sleeping under a tree. C'mon, Russell fangirls, show of hands--who all thought of the "Russell sleeping half-nekked under a tree" bits of Silver Brumby? ;)
Ahem. Anyway, even aside from the Russell tie-in, and even aside from the limp dishrag of a heroine, I'm glad I read this book just to enjoy Murray Bail's prose, very full of character, and very much an example of the art of telling a Story.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-08 04:23 am (UTC)It could have been a beautiful film, with Russ telling those tales and when I recently hear him saying he has all sorts of eucalyptus planted at his farm, it made me even sadder it fell apart.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-08 05:05 am (UTC)And aside from all of that, yeah, I can see the challenge of trying to get a decent script that Russell and Nicole could have worked with. My writer brain is trying to nibble at the problem--you'd clearly have to do something that still maintains the "fairy tale" flavor of the story, but if you have an older Ellen, you have to have her more in charge of what's going on.
Heh. My writer brain is trying to nibble at the problem, despite the fact that it's got a book of its own to work on. ;)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-08 06:48 am (UTC)Good review! I'll have to go buy it now. I remember trying to find it at Hastings, but I would have had to order it. Borders is probably a better chance, as the book selection is MUCHO MUCHO bigger, lol.
It's just so sad all the problems that arose with trying to get the film in pre-production. It sounds like a very nice story, and one that could be very beautifully interpreted into film.
I'm actually anxious to read it, just for the writing style. Because I have a feeling that will be the way I want to tell this other book I am writing. In a sort of Grimm-esque way, where it's almost as if the writer is telling you in person.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-08 07:24 pm (UTC)Ahem! But! Yes, do buy a copy if you can. I found mine at a local Barnes and Noble, though I had to check a couple before I finally found one that had it. (There's a two-story large B&N that I like to go to, with a ganormous fiction section, and that's where I picked it up.) And there is indeed very much a sort of "the writer is right there telling you the story face to face" feel to the prose.