Eucalyptus.
Ross, Robert
Murray Bail. Eucalyptus. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
1998. 255 pages. $23. isbn 0-374-14857-0.
For Eucalyptus, Murray Bail received Australia's most
prestigious literary prize, the 1999 Miles Franklin Award for Australian
Literature. This recognition is well deserved, because throughout
Bail's career he has written about his native country and its
inhabitants in a strikingly original way, first in his book of short
fiction The Drover's Wife and Other Stories (originally published
as Contemporary Portraits in 1975), then in his two novels Homesickness
(1980) and Holden's Performance (1988). In Eucalyptus he remains
true to form: altogether Australian but always more - that is,
provincial and universal at the same time. Obviously, Bail is not a
prolific writer.
Taking the classic Australian tree, the eucalyptus, as a central
symbol, Bail borrows the folktale for structuring his narrative. The
central characters, Holland and his beautiful daughter Ellen, live on an
outback property covered with all varieties of eucalypt, which are
Holland's lifelong passion. When Ellen reaches age nineteen, her
father announces that she will marry the man who can identify each
species of his eucalypt grove. Being a dutiful daughter, she agrees to
this unusual arrangement, which sets the action - or perhaps nonaction -
into movement, or into a static state; it is difficult to tell in this
novel that lacks traditional motivation, characters, and dialogue.
Numerous suitors arrive, attracted both by Ellen's legendary beauty
and by the valuable property she will inherit. As in any such tale, the
prospective husband, who in this case fulfills the charge by knowing his
eucalypt, is not the one Ellen prefers, and a timeless love story
unfolds.
Interspersed are scientific descriptions of various trees, which at
times take on human characteristics. Also, the diverse suitors tell
stories, so that stories within stories abound, and finally the art of
storytelling itself comes under scrutiny - a recurring preoccupation in
Bail's work. Another concern that arises is the practice of naming
and classifying and defining, a practice, it is suggested, that
Australians of European descent relish in their effort to come to terms
with the empty land that they do not fully inhabit. Bail carries out all
of this meandering, circling, questioning, and retracing in his usual
quirky style that constantly surprises and intrigues. It has been said
of Bail that, for him, realism in fiction fails to record the subtleties
of reality.
Robert Ross
University of Texas, Austin
