The Conversations at Curlow Creek.

Ross, Robert

In David Malouf's last two novels, Remembering Babylon (1993; see WLT 68:4, p. 880) and The Conversations at Curlow Creek, he has returned to the Australian bush for subject matter. In neither book, though, does he follow the literary conventions of the bush tradition. Instead he finds a rich source of metaphor in the Australian emptiness, what one character calls "the mysterious, the nightmarish, the Gothic."

The "conversations" take place between Michael Adair, a policeman, and Daniel Carney, a bushranger. They meet in a desolate area of New South Wales, where Carney, the surviving member of a gang that had terrorized the region, awaits hanging. The two men spend the night before the execution in a hut, intermittently talking, remembering, sleeping, and dreaming.

About half of the book is devoted to actual conversations, the rest to flashbacks of the unlikely pair's lives in Ireland. The immediate exchanges are so intense and engrossing that their interruption by the extended forays into memory. could be faulted, because the two narratives do not always merge successfully. Even though knowledge of the characters' background is necessary, the text shows its greatest strength when Adair and Carney talk in the "dry country," not when they recall events from "fresh and green" Ireland.

The young Irishman on his way to the gallows sees Australia as a source of "punishment. . . . Like as if they'd taken Ireland and turned it into a place that made things as hard as they ever could be in this world." Ironically, Carney's life in the old country had been marked by poverty and deprivation. In contrast, the policeman, who grew up in privileged circumstances, wonders if the vast land where the two have met could provide for settlers "if they had the strength to tear it out of the wilderness and plough and work it." These opposing views of the continent set forth the dichotomy that has long dominated Australian thinking and has underscored the search for national identity.

Along with its indirect exploration of colonialism, the novel proposes - or perhaps only suggests - a timeless question: which takes precedence in human affairs, a man-made or a higher justice? Needless to say, no clear-cut answer emerges. As usual in Malouf's work, the reader is left to unravel the plot and ponder the themes that have not been fully realized. Whether leaving so much unsaid adds to the novel's mystery may be questionable.

Not widely known overseas as a poet, Malouf first published in that genre, and his prose style continues to border on the poetic. The Conversations at Curlow Creek is filled with such passages - musical, dense, ambiguous, sometimes cloying. In an interview Malouf said that the "discipline of language shapes what is actually said. It leads to daring and surprising discoveries." Such is the case with this novel.

Robert Ross University of Texas, Austin