Product Description
At the turn of the century Stan Parker takes a wife and makes a home as a small farmer in the wilderness of Australia. Amy bears his children and time brings him a procession of ordinary events - achievements, disappointments, sorrows and dreams. The author won the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

a truly great novel
I've read that Patrick White's work was criticized as being un-Australian. I don't think this had much to do with ideology for I could detect no leaning toward any particular political system in thisnovel about pioneer settlers in the bush. Maybe it was so labeled because we find no intrepid characters who might generate patriotic pride in their conquest of the wilderness. What we do find is very imperfect, commonplace people; for the most part absorbed in living commonplace lives. But even the label, commonplace, does not mean a poorness of thought, feeling, and action. The complexity of these characters with their quirks, talents, dreams, obsessions and confusion are poetically depicted as they go about their humble lives. There is no conventional glamour to the main characters, but there is an intangible, mysterious beauty revealed by the author as he explores the different facets of their being. The people of the novel grapple with the meanings of themselves, others, God, and existence itself. All are motivated in varying degrees by a desire for some kind of revelation or transcendence, though inarticulately conceived. Fortunately the author has supplied the articulateness which lets us glimpse the workings of their minds. We see in the stream-of-consciousness presentation the interplay between outward appearance and inner,subjective,barely conscious intent and desire. Given this impressionistic method of storytelling, you can see it is probably not the kind of book to incite patriotic fervor. It did incite(in me, at any rate) a sense of the depth and mystery of simple lives when they are viewed psychologically and artistically. Even though very imaginative stylistic devices are used in this novel it struck me as also very realistic; the picture of the characters' lives, inner and outer, has a convincing feel of authenticity. The family we read about would be called dysfunctional in our stereotyping society of today. But the dramatization of their sometimes tortured, sometimes joyful lives covers such a spectrum of psychological states that labeling would seem insipid. The latter part of the book enters a time of transition to modern ways. The spirit of the old times is being opposed by the trend toward convenience and conformity. It is evident that the flavor of those old times will not be reproduced once the change is complete. I found the book quite moving, not in a sentimental way; but in the same way feelings are evoked by great art or music. It is satisfying to add my praise for this outstanding book.

Spiritual Aimlessness
Patrick White is one of those rare writers - Well, the only other one that comes to mind is Halldor Laxness -who is able to create great literature out of the seemingly mundane.How he accomplishes this feat is not a simple matter to explain in a review, but it has, in part, to do with what White describes here as the "mysticism of objects, of which some people are initiates."I could say that this is primarily a book about an uneducated fellow in the Australian Outback who clears some land, raises a family and then dies. I would be quite correct, just as correct as I would be in reviewing Laxness' book, Independent People, as a story about sheep.But I would be leaving out, well, thunderbolts like this:

"Iron lace hung from dark pubs, and the heavy smells of spilled beer.Dreams broke from windows.And cats lifted the lid off all politeness." P.22 (in my edition).


But, more importantly, I would be omitting what perhaps can't be included, the deep sense of wonder imbued in the sinews of the work.It makes all modern novels with blurbs such as "ends by exposing the dark forces at play within the heart of man" and such like ring hollow and trite. All forces of the heart, dark and light, are at play throughout the book, from first page to last, but the reader has to let these forces slowly seep into his or her own heart and mind.They aren't emblazoned on a marquee.They aren't easily accessed.But, for that, they are the more dearly prized once they begin to stir one.

It's no great surprise that there are so few reviews here of this quiet, deep work of art.To the average reader, it must come across as ineffably boring, but, for lovers of literature and art, it is moving beyond my ability to convey, moving "with all the appearance of aimlessness, which is the impression that spiritual activity frequently gives." P.397

The Full Power of Patrick White
This is one of the greatest novels ever written. Whites style is always powerful;each word, each paragraph builds vividly in your mind, and within a simple story framework he explores how human ambitions, hopes and dreams are eroded by nature and the eras we live in.
All that occurs is that Stan Parker builds his farm,takes a wife,has two children,lives through flood and drought and sees the area in which he lives expand,grow and change. No one but a supreme master craftsman can illuminate such a plot with such powerful and biblical imagry (man in Eden,the brief hopes,the failings and disallussions of human existence,the reuniting with God)
So powerful was the writing that, when White refered to a sewing machine on a hill late in the book,the image created in my mind some 400 pages earlier of that scene during the great flood instantly came back. White has that unique capability.
And the story rings true for all of us. Stan had his dreams of how things would grow,yet it is things outside our control that thwart these ambitions. Was it his fault Thelma grew up ashamed of her parents and as a prissy shrew? Or that Ray turned out to be a petty hoodlum and ended up being murdered? Something in human nature makes us blame ourselves for other peoples free will.
An extraordinary book.Not for those who like something quick and easy,but definately for anyone who loves literature and wants to be wholly absorbed for the duration of a classic book.

Better Than White's Voss
I have read two of White's novels: the present work and Voss. The present novel, The Tree of Man, is more complex than Voss, and unlike Voss here the author manages to breath some life into the characters.

Patrick White gained fame as the Australian Nobel prize winner in literature, and as a person with a prickly or difficult personality. He was educated at Cambridge but settled and wrote in Australia after World War II. He wrote about a dozen novels and a biography.

This is a good novel and it deserves 5 stars. After a dozen pages or so it becomes clear to the reader why White is famous: he has an unusual style and he is a gifted writer. There is no question about his writing ability. We see great writing ability in Voss and that skill is present in The Tree of Man.

The story is set in rural farm country in Australia and it follows the life of a young couple through to their deaths at old age. The male protagonist is a bit like the Voss character. In any case, we follow their lives, and the births and lives of their two children, and the lives of a few of their neighbours. The story describes the day to day life of a typical farming couple, along with the problems and challenges of raising children on a small rural farm. The story of the two children are followed into the marriage of the daughter and we follow the troubles of the adult son with the law.

I liked the way White handled the four family members. The lives of the four are realistic and interesting; they are human and one can relate to their actions. The discouraging feature of some of White's writing is that the characters seem stiff or cardboard like. His Voss character was not a man to show much emotion or talk. There are any passages that simply describe Voss's activities in that slightly dry book. The present book is much more complicated and White does a much better job with his characters. They are human and give way to temptations. Each character shows a wide range of human emotions.

Overall, I thought it was a good book and an interesting read and an interesting book to read if you are interested in the works of Patrick White.

an important novel
This is a truly extraordinary novel.It demands a certain amount of quiet to be read well.I found myself reading it more like poetry.Because of White's compelling storytelling and writing style, it held my attention despite the fact that very litte happens.Perfect to take on trains, airplanes, or to the beach. ... Read more

Product Description
Join J. M. Coetzee and Thomas Keneally in rediscovering Nobel Laureate Patrick White

In 1973, Australian writer Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature." Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is White's best-known book, a sweeping novel about a secret passion between the explorer Voss and the young orphan Laura. As Voss is tested by hardship, mutiny, and betrayal during his crossing of the brutal Australian desert, Laura awaits his return in Sydney, where she endures their months of separation as if her life were a dream and Voss the only reality. Marrying a sensitive rendering of hidden love with a stark adventure narrative, Voss is a novel of extraordinary power and virtuosity from a twentieth-century master. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Captures the Australian Spirit
This was my first PW novel - and my first Australian novel.PW plays marvelously with a handful of characters who each represent an authentic aspect of the Australian spirit.From the aborigine to the aristocracy, you have all the elements of the tug-of-war of cultural identity at work: the outback, the outsider, the pagan/saint adventurer, the romantic, the refined, the restrained, the wild man.The exposition was engaging from the beginning and haunting at the end.A wonderful introduction to Australian literature.

A bit more insight
I found the reviews here to be very interesting as they are so different to my own interpretation of the novel.I write this as an Australian who is familiar with the outback, and with some experience of contemporary aboriginal culture.Where I diverge from other reviewers is that, while I agree with many of the comments on characterisation, plot and so forth, I feel that this is all quite secondary.
What struck me most about the story was White's empathy with, and extraordinarily sensititve portrayal of the aboriginal characters.I have never read anything like it.I think Thomas Keneally has tried to reach these lofty heights but hasn't quite managed the poetic majesty of Voss.It seems extraordinary to me that the reviewers here have ignored this aspect of the novel, as it is this that excludes it from being a great tale of love and misadventure, as opposed to a genuine literary work of subtle complexity.
I am guessing that some reviewers have assumed White associated the aboriginal characters with a sort of spiritual surrealism.Not so.While this may have been a secondary effect, the aboriginal narrative is actually a remarkably honest and insightful portrayal of the aboriginal dreaming, or their worldview, particularly during the early days of European settlement in Australia.
To my mind it was for this reason that White wrote the novel - not so much to tell a tale of European hardship and naivety within the Australian deserts but to delve into the unique mindset of aboriginal Australia.This is no more evident than in its brutal clash with the logical, causal mindset of the Judeo-Christian West, as portrayed so wonderfully in the stiff and formal character of Voss.Read from this perspective, I believe the novel will offer readers an even more rewarding experience.

A little disappointed
Given the universal plaudits for this novel by critics, I was ready for some delectable reading when I ordered this book.Truly, some of it was delectable.There are passages of brilliant, peerless writing.

But the book as a whole left me a little disappointed.I suppose it's because I just didn't find any characters to like.That should not be seen as a weakness of any work.These characters were penetratingly believable.Flawed, but very well drawn.

I guess it was the foreknowledge that the hero was doomed to fail, coupled with my not finding anyone to really admire, left me feeling sad for all of them.There was no happy ending.

Maybe the utter "real life" spirit of it is part of its greatness.

Messianic failure
This is the story of an explorer who is obsessed with making his own map of Australia. There was an historic role model for Voss, who disappeared without trace in the Outback, in the mid 19th century. The appearance of Halley's comet dates the time of the adventure to 1830 and before. Voss is a stranger in Australia, but then almost everyone was at the time. He is a German with unclear scientific credentials, no Humboldt. Other than his insistence and willpower, we see no real reason why he is entrusted with the expedition.

He is a loner and something of a mystic: he needs to find `knowledge', in a not really scientific sense. He finds a wealthy sponsor in Sydney, and he finds a soul mate in the sponsor's orphan niece Laura, an outsider due to her emancipated mind. She is the useless, futureless extra in the wealthy family. She is rather like a Jane Austin heroine. Her mental loneliness mirrors Voss's, but their relationship is a misunderstanding, of the kind that relations are often made of since time began.

Voss assembles a team and off they go, towards the huge white spot in the map of the time. He is a lousy leader and a worse team player. He is insane insofar as he plainly rejects tapping information sources that would have been available. He is in a way a trickster, because he has no real intention to provide his sponsors with the useful information that they look for. He is looking for his personal spiritual victory, not somebody else's wealth or fame. Self-destruction seems unavoidable.

His spirituality is based on a self-centered deism. In his god he worships himself. He despises Laura's self-found atheism and calls it self-murder. He is a sort of negative Messiah, attracting followers, that he leads not to redemption, but to neglect and annihilation. He is not a positive hero, he is more like a monster that we watch with amazement. Initial sympathy is gradually eaten up by surprise. On the other hand, says White, his arrogance resolves, sometimes, into simplicity and sincerity, but it is hard to distinguish.
Confrontations between aboriginals and the white invaders of a continent play a major part in the plot, as do the myths of the 'blackfellows'. Voss's and his expedition's appearance happen to co-incide with the comet's show in the night sky. At this stage of the expedition, Voss is already in a mental delirium and halucinates about his 'fiancee'.

This is my second encounter with Voss. The first one, in the 70s, shortly after White was en-Nobel-ed, was with a German edition, and it failed. Since the book may not have changed since then, it must be changes in me, or the simple fact that the German translator slaughtered White's magnificent language. Because now I am often enchanted by his sentences which shy away from simple word combinations and keep surprising me with challenges to normal perception.

One of White's language devices is the fact that Voss struggles with the English language. He is often baffled by others' meaning and never sure if his own meaning is properly expressed. As he says to his sponsor: if we compare meanings, we would perhaps arrive at different conclusions.
White was apparently not much appreciated in his home land, possibly because he lacked conventionality, also in his chosen lifestyle. His success came from the US and England. Well, and Sweden.

My assessment of the novel: a masterpiece with a highly ambiguous message. Or no message.

... but I can't really recommend it ...
This novel Voss, by Australian Patrick White, is not what I expected. Whether it's something much greater, or merely something much different, isn't such an easy question for me. Here's what the editorial blurb on amazon announces:
""In 1973, Australian writer Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature." Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is White's best-known book, a sweeping novel about a secret passion between the explorer Voss and the young orphan Laura. As Voss is tested by hardship, mutiny, and betrayal during his crossing of the brutal Australian desert, Laura awaits his return in Sydney, where she endures their months of separation as if her life were a dream and Voss the only reality. Marrying a sensitive rendering of hidden love with a stark adventure narrative, Voss is a novel of extraordinary power and virtuosity from a twentieth-century master.""
That is as irrelevant a blurb as I've ever read, but it seemed entirely plausible, given the penchant the Nobel committees have shown for favoring wind-swept grandeur, novels of the soil, foundational and generational epics.Thus I expected a book like Moberg's "Unto a Good Land" or McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove", a narrative as broad as the River Platte, and just as shallow. Voss is anything but shallow. It's as much a hate story as a love story, and its most obvious shortcoming is the author's disinterest in making adventure thrilling.

Patrick White was a stylist. A vividly original stylist, whose phrases glitter like the scales of an emerald boa or the jewels of a ceremonial dagger. A poetic stylist, who scatters his sable pearls on black cinders without the slightest concern for the reader's ability to gather them into a necklace of meaning. (Yes, I am trying to imitate him.) Here's a real sample:
""On the edge of the ridge, the mare paused for a while, and was swaying and raising her head. Then she plunged downwards toward what she knew was certainty. But in that interval of rest upon the summit, Voss and the rider had touched hands, the same glint of decomposition and moonlight had started from the sockets of their eyes and from their teeth, and their two souls were united in the face of inferior realities. ... Riding down the other side, the young man conceived a poem, in which the silky seed that fell in milky rain from the Moon was raised up by the Sun's laying his hands upon it. His flat hands, with their conspicuously swollen knuckles, were creative, it was proved, if one dared to accept their blessing. One did dare, and at once it was seen that the world of fire and the world of ice were the same world of light; whereupon, for the first time in history, the third and dark planet was illuminated."" That's Patrick White at his most defiantly profound, I admit, but portentous prose is his meat-and-potatoes. At times I was awe-stricken by his intimidating brilliance... and at times I was surfeited, cloyed, bored.

White doesn't admire his characters or, by implication, us his readers. His obsidian scalpel cuts through the prideful exterior of every personage in Voss to expose mediocrity. No one escapes his supercilious insights; no one is worthy even of his or her own apologetics. This is a novel about Redemption - Salvation - in which the only salvageable 'virtue' is abject humility, humiliation, penitential excoriation of human selfhood. I've never encountered a writer who treated his invented beings so harshly. As harshly as God treats souls, according to White, with eternal agony. In the metaphysics of White's Christianity, God is Hate.

Or at least so it seems to this reader. It's been my "fortune" to find myself confronting three literary geniuses of hateful religiosity in close sequence: Flannery O'Connor in "Wise Blood", Camilo José Cela in "Christ versus Arizona", and now Patrick White in "Voss". All three depict humans as despicable, lost wretches. I'm ready for an antidote, a humanist, a Creator who loves His creations. Any suggestions? ... Read more

Product Description
To hesitate on the edge of life or to plunge in and risk change - this is the dilemma explored in this novel, which is set in 1930s London and portrays the complex ebb and flow of relationships within the Standish family. The author was the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

What was this author thinking!?!
Quite possibly the worst book I have ever read.The characters are annoying and bland and the writing itself is superfluous and confusing. I felt that I had to force myself to finish it and then was angry that Ididnt put it down halfway through.This book has nothing to say and isannoyingly terrible. ... Read more

Product Description
Hurtle Duffield, a painter, coldly dissects the weaknesses of any and all who enter his circle. His sister's deformity, a grocer's moonlight indiscretion, the passionate illusions of the women who love him-all are used as fodder for his art. It is only when Hurtle meets an egocentric adolescent whom he sees as his spiritual child does he experience a deeper, more treacherous emotion in this tour de force of sexual and psychological menace that sheds brutally honest light on the creative experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The God Paintings
This book comes with great peripherals. On the cover of the Penguin Classics edition is a superb painting by Jason Freeman, showing an operation on a human eye; as brilliant as it is horrifying, the image perfectly captures the mind of the protagonist, Australian painter Hurtle Duffield, whose laser gaze sears into the souls of his subjects, even if he must destroy them in the process. You open the cover to find an excellent introduction by fellow-Nobelist J. M. Coetzee, and four pithy epigraphs that suggest the goals of this huge novel, beginning with the painter Ben Nicholson ("As I see it, painting and religious experience are the same thing..."), and ending with Rimbaud: "He becomes beyond all others the great Invalid, the great Criminal, the great Accursed One -- and the Supreme Knower. For he reaches the unknown."

No Australian author can match the scope and moral intensity of Patrick White at his best (although Richard Flanagan comes close with GOULD'S BOOK OF FISH), and it takes a Dostoevsky to turn the heat up much higher. His VOSS (1957) is a masterpiece, beautiful both in its containment and its quest to explode conventional boundaries. RIDERS IN THE CHARIOT (1961), by contrast, is a brilliantly unruly study of four very different characters on the fringes of society, linked only by the intensity of their half-crazed visions of God. One of these four is a self-taught, virtually autistic, half-caste painter called Alf Dubbo; although drunken and dissolute in his private life, he has a particular fascination for religious subjects, and White has an uncanny ability to convey the intensity of his vision and the texture and warp of his paint. Now in 1970, he makes such a painter the subject of an entire book.

Although growing up in poor circumstances similar to Dubbo's, Hurtle Duffield is adopted as a child by a rich family and has the benefit of a first-class education. Later, he throws off these bourgeois ties to live in squalor on a patch of waste land, visited occasionally by his mistress, a Sydney prostitute, and a gay gallery owner who becomes his first dealer. Later still, he moves back to Sydney, and though living in a ramshackle house in a poor quarter, begins to find success in selling his paintings and attracting the attention of a number of rich female patrons. The book proceeds in a number of long chapters, jumping from decade to decade in the twentieth century, marked not so much by changes in Hurtle's outer life as by a succession of different lovers and the changing preoccupations of his artistic vision. Towards the end, he meets a young girl who is on the way to becoming an artist in her own right, a concert pianist, and a new tenderness enters the book. But this also brings on a spiritual crisis resulting in the last pictures of all, almost mural-sized daubs of dark tortured paint (one thinks of the "black paintings" of Goya) referred to by rumor as "The God Paintings." Does Duffield find God at the end, come face-to-face with the being he refers to as "The Great Vivisector"? Perhaps. But by this time, White has begun to fracture his language almost abstractly to echo Hurtle's mind, devastated by a series of strokes, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions.

Unfortunately, the novel does not quite live up to its promise. The seventy-year story of a life is too loose a form to achieve the jangling juxtaposition of the other books, thrusting flint against steel. As Coetzee says, too much is prelude to what most matters, and too little is written at white heat (his pun, but an apt one). I also find that the double strands of sexual history and artistic exploration detract from one another. There are striking moments of fusion, as when Duffield's accidental sight of his hunchbacked sister naked by a bidet becomes the subject for a series of paintings that one is not only told but believes to be great. But towards the end, in the episodes with the young pianist, I found the various strands pulling against one another just when one might want them to interweave. All the same, one does get some feeling for the work of this artist (a little Sidney Nolan, but mostly Francis Bacon), and an even stronger sense of what it is to be the victim-possessor of an unrelenting, searing vision. And that is no small achievement.

"You can only do. Or be, sort of."
(4.5 stars) In his longest novel, written in 1970, Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick White examines the question of an artist's creativity, where it comes from, whether it can be controlled, and what obligations, if any, accompany it. As he traces the life of Hurtle Duffield from the age of four until his death as an elderly (and successful) avant-garde artist, we see Duffield always as somehow different from his peers.

The son of a laundress and a bottle collector, Hurtle is from birth inspired, painting large images on walls as a toddler, but he recognizes at an early age that "people look down at their plates if you said something was 'beautiful.'" To provide him with opportunities which will allow his genius to flourish, his parents sell him, when he is four years old, to the wealthy family for which his mother works.

As a member of the Courtney family, Hurtle travels and becomes educated, though he continues to see rather than think. For him, the usual emotional traumas of adolescence are accompanied by unique questions of his identity, both because of his two families and also because of his view of the world. Not religious, he sees God as the Great Vivisector, and men treating each other as animals, slaughtering each other in war.

When he himself goes off to war and returns to find that the family has gone in separate directions, he devotes himself, once again, to his art, using women who love him as vehicles for his own self-expression and behaving as a vivisector himself. About his painting of one model, White says "[Hurtle] disemboweled her while she was still alive." As time passes, Hurtle continues to search for love, inspiration, self-expression, and some sort of balance in his life between his immense need to paint, his desire for personal connection, and his simultaneous need to be alone.

White's prose style is direct and concise, elegantly simple, and easy to understand. He uses colloquial speech-words like "smoodge," "sook," "slommacky," and "mumped," which must be understood from context--and reveals character and action through dialogue. The novel is old-fashioned, using a straight chronological narrative with no complex flashbacks, and it is quite romantic in its plot elements, despite its serious theme development. The biggest problem for the reader is that the main character is not very likable, nor does he inspire a great deal of empathy--a difficult character to live with for approximately six hundred pages--and I'm not sure how typical he is of the artists he is supposed to represent.Mary Whipple

Riders in the Chariot (New York Review Books Classics)
Voss (Penguin Classics)
The Tree of Man

it's brutal
Makes Brothers Karamazov look like child's play. It's brutal. It's hard. It's wearisome. It's depressing. An incredibly dense slog through mountains of accreted detail that builds toward possibly the most depressive overwhelming novel I have ever read. You'll start by sipping Sherry and quickly reach for the cognac. White was merciless, both toward himself and his readers. The main character is a human insect, devoid of compassion or sympathy except for his own cruel and selfish desires. Have fun! ... Read more

Product Description
Eudoxia is the consort of an elderly Greek who fancies himself a Byzantine emporer, Eddie is a hired hand in the Australian outback and Eadith is the madam of a London brothel. The central character in this book appears to all three, in France in 1914 and in Australia and London 25 years later. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Another Classic
Fantastic exploration of a transvestites self discovery between Rural Australia and Europe.Set in a period between ww1 & 2.A writer of genius.If you read and like his booksyou will eventually return to read them all.Incomparable.

Radiant
In his autobiography, Patrick White calls this one of his three best books.

(The other two: The Aunt's Story and The Solid Mandala.)

I agree.

It shimmers with his usual lustrous prose.And the journey of his main character through various incarnations--drag queen in Greece, WWI soldier in France, jackaroo (ranch hand) in Australia, and finally expatriate again in England--is little short of amazing.

It is also eye-opening about White himself, and his parents.

Brilliant stuff.

As always with White, while reading it you have the sense that you are not reading but listening to your own mind.Or listening to God's mind.

Wonderful. ... Read more

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After her mother's death, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed of the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. The Australian author won the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Patrick White's "Aunt Story" is a literary triumph
Theodore was not like other women.She had no time for all the niceties that many take for granted. Afterall, she was stuck at home caring for her bitter,and senile Mother.On the eve of the Mother's death, Theodore begins an odyssey to discover the meaning of life and existence itself. A haunting tale that grips the reader with all the intensity and anguish that a book can muster.A quality book suitable for the thinking reader ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A superbly crafted biography of Patrick White
The Learning Process: Some Creative Impressions
In his own memoir, 'Flaws in the Glass', Patrick White described himself thus: "I am not an intellectual. There is nothing cerebral about me; if I have something to give it is through the senses and my intuition." The great steadying and stimulating influence in his life was Manoly Lascaris, whom he met in July 1941 at a party in Alexandria, while he was serving in the Air Force and Manoly was a member of the Greek armed forces. Manoly was the great love of his life, and despite terrific rows, and Patrick's tantrums, their relationship lasted a lifetime. Each had a clearly defined role, but they both 'worked like peasants' at Dogwoods; ploughing, milking, washing, ironing, weeding and cooking - and they had the everpresent dogs to care for. Later, when they moved to 20 Martin Road, Manoly gardened while Patrick wrote, looked after domestic side of things and handled the finances. Patrick's relationship with his mother was complex. She was a dominating personality, as he was also - and they clashed. He resented her attempts to control his life, and never forgave her for exiling him to Cheltenham College. It was there he discovered his homosexuality. 'He had no doubt:' "I never went through the agonies of choosing this or that sexual way of life. I was chosen." 'He responded to the discovery with fear and self-disgust.' His easy going father, on the other hand, was an acceptable parent.

But above all, Patrick White was a writer from the start - his adolescence - but a perverse one. Although prepared to accept accolades as his due, he refused the honours others wished to bestow upon him, even returning the Order of Australia, he received from the detested Sir John Kerr. Although something of a showman, with a love of the theatre and the performers, and a prolific playwright, he was shy and reclusive much of his life. He became involved in various campaigns, notably the plan to build an Olympic stadium, which would involve bulldozing not only his Martin Road house, but many others as well. He unwillingly made the first of his public speeches by supporting Jack Mundey's green ban - and the battle for the parks - which was eventually won. He marched in opposition to the war in Vietnam and "had stood with poets and trade union officials on the platform of the Assembly Hall in Melbourne late in 1981 to launch People for Nuclear Disarmament" 'and on Palm Sunday 1982 he led a march through Sydney and addressed a crowd of 30,000 for half an hour in the rain, calling for a ban on the mining of uranium and the destruction of both nuclear and conventional weapons.' "So our work will not be done until we have eradicated the habit of war." It seems strange, therefore, that there is no indication in the book of White's attitude to the invasion and brutal occupation of East Timor by Indonesia, something his hero, Whitlam wasn't concerned about either - but White's attitude to both politics and religion are sometimes at odds with his rigid and censorious personality. Originally a conservative, he turned abruptly to the left - like Donald Horne - when Governor General Sir John Kerr sacked the Whitlam government. White was outraged and used his ability as a writer to pour scorn on Kerr, as he did on almost anyone who crossed him, even former staunch friends such as Geoffrey Dutton and Sidney Nolan.

For such a practical and iconoclastic personality, White's religious beliefs seem strange, almost medieval. He believed, for instance, in astrology, and the miracles of Mary MacKillop.

This is a huge and spellbinding book by the brilliant essayist and biographer, David Marr, about a paradoxical, complex, acerbic human being who made and destroyed friendships with just about everyone, yet maintained a wonderful and unique relationship with his partner for life, Manoly Lascaris. From his first successful novel, 'Happy Valley' to his late 'self-portrait', 'Flaws in the Glass', Patrick White was an Australian literary icon with his many highly esteemed novels, plays, and stories, winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1973 for his novel, 'The Eye of the Storm'.

Fabulous biography about a not very likeable person
I found the biog hard to put down, unlike White's fiction which I find easy to put down! Marr has written a scholarly yet entertaining biography, and you really feel you come to know something about an Australian icon -our only Nobel laureate in literature.

In everything i have read(including White's own portrait of himself, Flaws In The Glass) he comesacross as a horrible man - a misogynist, but with some political principleswith which I might agree.

Nevertheless, that is not the point ofliterature, or art, to be loved by one and all. White's voice certainlyadded immensely to the cultural life of this country, and it is worthgetting to know something about his life and works. Marr's book is anexcellent place to start. ... Read more

Product Description
Miss Hare lives alone in the ruins of her family estate in the 1960s suburbs of Sydney, attended only by her housekeeper Mrs. Jolley. In her wanderings Miss Hare meets Alf Dubbo, an aboriginal artist; Mordecai Himmelfarb, a Holocaust survivor; and Mrs. Godbold, a local washerwoman. Tender and lacerating, subtle and sweeping, Patrick White’s boldest novel traces the personal and spiritual histories of these four lost souls toward the moment they meet and recognize their shared vision. Riders in the Chariot was the winner of the 1961 Miles Franklin Prize for Best Australian Novel and the 1965 Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society. Author Patrick White (1912-1990) was Australia's Nobel laureate in literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

The Visionaries
What makes a great novel? Many things, but among them I would certainly list Scale, Characters, and Moral Vision. All three of these qualities are to be found in this towering novel by Patrick White. It is the first book by the Nobel laureate that I have encountered; it will certainly not be the last.

This is a long book (640 pages), but a very easy one to read. In any case, when speaking of scale, physical length is less important than breadth of implication. White concentrates on a small group of people living on the outskirts of Sydney after WW2, but makes them seem emblematic of the entire continent. There is also a wide range of origin and social class; the characters include the last survivor of a once-rich aristocratic family, a German Jewish professor fleeing the Holocaust, a poor washerwoman who emigrated from England as a child, and a half-aboriginal painter. Since each character is given almost 100 pages of back-story, the novel is by no means confined in place or period either; the section set in Germany between the wars can hold its own with the best Holocaust writing anywhere, with particular insights into Jewish social, intellectual, and spiritual life. But the most important aspect of the book's scale is the feeling held by each of the four major characters that the universe is an immensely greater place than anything they may see around them.

White has the great gift of loving his characters. Each of the four is something of an outcast. Miss Hare, the faded aristocrat, is clearly mad; Himmelfarb, the professor, now chooses to work in a menial job, without possessions or other signs of status; Mrs. Godbold, the washerwoman, lives with her many daughters in a tumble-down shack; Alf Dubbo, the half-caste painter, works by day as a janitor and is given to fits of drunkenness. And yet White writes so convincingly through the eyes of each that we do more than feel sympathy for them; we begin to see the others around them as impoverished of spirit, living only partial lives. White is brilliant in creating a gallery of semi-comic secondary characters -- some bad, some well-meaning, some merely lacking in imagination -- to set off the qualities of his principal quartet, but even these have dimension and are far from caricatures.

One of the curious aspects of the book is that the four characters hardly ever meet, although they recognize an immediate kinship when they do. For all four are religious visionaries. Their visions may occur only once or twice in their lives, but the image is the same for each: the approach of Ezekiel's fiery chariot, both wonderful and terrible. I can think of few books that are so successful at portraying the mystical dimension while being so firmly rooted in the mundane. This is clearly a religious book, but not at all a sectarian one. It is White's strength that he endows his visionarieswith everyday failings, and gives each a very different religious background. Miss Hare's religion, if she has one, is a pantheism rooted in the plants and animals on her moldering estate. Himmelfarb has returned to Judaism only after years of secular life, and considers himself morally unworthy. Mrs. Godbold is a staunch evangelical, but her religion shows more in her practical kindnesses to others than in any doctrinal fundamentalism. And Alf Dubbo, though raised by a preacher and especially inspired by religious subjects, is dissolute and virtually autistic in his day to day life.

A fourth quality that I might have mentioned is Style. White's writing, as I say, is easy to read, but very varied and always appropriate to the tone of the moment. While he can neatly skewer the social pretensions of the Rosetrees (the employers of Himmelfarb and Alf), he can also shift to the kind of description that portrays everyday things as symbolic of eternal conflicts or reflections of the infinite. His descriptions of Alf Dubbo's paintings, for example, are equaled by no author I can think of except perhaps Chaim Potok in MY NAME IS ASHER LEV, in their ability to convey a truly incandescent artistic vision. Such mastery of style is essential because, as loners, his characters cannot interact much together in terms of everyday plot, and in narrative terms the concluding section of the book is less compelling than the long set-up. But where the characters do meet is in their common vision, their unspoken sense of rightness, and it is precisely in White's evocative language that this sounds, resonates, and resounds.

Down And Out Down Under
This is not a particularly cheery book.It deals with the lives of outcasts and what we today would, callously, call freaks.The book, while it does go into meticulous detail of the biographical material of the main characters' respective lives, is not primarily concerned with these elements. The book is centred around the visionary, otherworldly qualities of each, particularly a shared vision each of the four main characters has of a chariot mentioned in the book of Ezekiel.-This quality separates them from the world and people around them, which are clearly meant to be disparaged.-As Miss Hare cogitates in regard to the danger one of these normal people, Mrs Jolley: "But she did sense some danger to the incorporeal, the more significant part of her."-That significant part in all the four characters is the essential matter of the book.

Other people in the book are given to insubstantial matters, cruelty, and obliviousness, frequently rendered comically by White:

The other ladies glanced at her skin, which was white and almost unprotected, whereas they themselves had shaded their faces, with orange, with mauve, even with green, not so much to impress one another, as to give them the courage to confront themselves (p.323)

All very well. But it is this Manichean dualism between the saintly four characters and, well, everybody else which leads me to refrain from giving it five stars. Anyone who has encountered the world in its chaos of identities, acts of kindness, visionary aspects, thuggish and sadistic aspects knows that we all carry in us both the visionary, sensitive private individualism of the main characters, on the one hand, and the thuggish herd instinct of----everyone else in this book.

Still, it's well worth the read. White is a remarkable writer, and the work, despite my misgivings, is one every thoughtful person should not merely have on his or her bookshelf, but have read, from beginning to end.Its insights into prelinguistics subconscious perception are not to be surpassed---anywhere.

perserverance is key.
I must admit that I didn't' choose to read this book myself, it was placed on our reading list for Literature so it was with slight apprehension and curiousity that I approached White's nobel prize winning novel. Reading the first few chapters made me realize why it was a nobel prize worthy, White's style was so different and at times confusing - it had never been done, it was strange, so it won. Of course as i slowly ploughed my way through the eccentric shadows of Xanadu which was Ms. Hare's home I gradually grew to appreciate the novel.
The novel centres around four main protaganists in post WWII Australia: Ms. Hare, Alf Dubbo, Himmelfarb and Mrs. Godbold. All of whom in some way are seeking redemption as outsiders. His novel is strongly critical of our society and it's one of those novels that makes you ask rather than answer questions that it poses. It highlights the cruel abuse of Aborigines and Jews within our world, showing the perhaps inevitable traits of humanity, that any country at any time must inexplicably have a scapegoat to fall back on.
It's a powerful novel and although slightly relieved when I was finished I was glad that I had read it. Raising many questions about human nature, White is a skilled writer that doesn't reach the finish line in the biggest, most obvious path but takes his time, weaving subtly and skillfully through metaphors and symbols to take you by surprise, emotionally and mentally to the finish line.
However it is not for those without patience, but give it a go and I can guarantee you will be hooked after the first 70 pages.

The richest novel in the world
Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White's international superseller at the time, was born from an incident in the late 40s, when a taxi driver, demanding the full fare of the journey from Sydney's Central Station to Petty's Hotel, was refused by White and began screaming "Go back to Germany!" White later confessed: "I think it was this more than anything which persuaded me to write the novel Riders". Fortunately, such germ was the foundation of one, perhaps the greatest, of the 20th century literary monuments, dense as the greatest novels are, but fleshy in the end, too much indeed. It is a plotless novel-as are most works by White, and if there's a plot, its one of living and surviving. The novel traces the lives of the 4 characters from their origin to their ends (something White is an undoubtful master doing, and White puts his hand on marvellous devices of narration as stream of conscioussness, epiphanies and of course, the wonderful and hillarious use of adjectives, though sometimes the image, nearer to incongruency but finally well put, is difficult to convey.
The chariot, itself, was familiar to Blake, Ovid, the apocalyptic writers of the Bible and to Redon. In White's chariot, as David Marr reported, "the riders are those who have known illumination as he had experienced it in mystical ecsatsy, in creation, music", etc. White wrote, according to his letters (to his Viking editor Ben Huebsch in February 1959): "What I want to emphasise through my four "Riders" - an orthodox refugee intellectual Jew, a mad Erdgeist of an Australian spinster, an evangelical laundress, and a half-caste Aboriginal painter- is that all faiths, whether religious, humanistic, instinctive, or the creative artist's act of praise, are in fact one". And for example, is a brilliant detail that in general, the novel is a study of GOOD people pitted against EVIL; nowadays... how nice!
Riders in the Chariot is not a novel easy to read, neither meant to be read to relax. As one of the 40 best Australian books ever, it's a work of pleasure for the deep and restless mind.A novel written to music, something important to the writer and the reader, and like a baroque piece exhibiting a down-to-earth accumulation of detail, this work is a must for anyone interested in the best literature of the past century and an innovative psychological narrative art that, in the hands of this Australian Nobel Prize winner, soars to the highest ranks.

The amazing richness of literature and mysticism
About a quarter of the way into this book I realized I was reading a brilliant treatise on mystical theology written in the form of a novel. This is a magnificent piece of work that brings together several realms of meaning, various settings, and divergent attitudes and dispositions about what it means to be truly human and live among other humans. There are four major protagonists of widely differing backgrounds. Each represents a peculiar moral stance that makes them capable of some unexpected actions and disables them with regard to others. Most of the action takes place in and around Sydney, Australia, but there are "lead up" sections in England and Germany. Mary Hare is ugly, less than intelligent, and stark raving mad. She lives in a crumbling mansion and experiences difficulty in trying to communicate with other people. For her, words are fragile and sometimes breakable and people use them in cruel ways. Yet she is an attractive personality whom we come to like because she is described from the inside. That is, we know what she feels, suffers and, most of all, remembers. Himmelfarb is a German Jew, a brilliant professor of philosophy whose father inexplicably converts to Christianity, thereby causing his mother to fade slowly away from sadness and a sense of being betrayed and victimized. He escapes the "final solution" by immigrating to Australia and taking a meaningless job in a factory owned by another German Jew who has also "converted." Ruth Godbold, a saintly laundress who lives in a shed with four daughters and an abusive husband, communicates mainly through acts of kindness.She nurses Mary Hare during a long illness and takes care of Himmelfarb in his last agony when some redneck thugs at the factory try to crucify him. Alf Dubbo, a native Australian brought up by religious people whose religiosity is questionable, develops his talent at painting and communicates through art. His ability to make moral decisions is confounded by his early experience with the preacher who kept sticking his hand into Alf's trousers.

These four have little contact and less communication with each other. None of them understands what the others are saying, except in a pre-linguistic sense. At a certain level, they already know what the others are saying, but they know it on a non-conscious level, like the prophets of the Hebrew Bible (whence the book's title is derived).

These four major personages suffer physically and morally and profoundly. This book zeroes in on the reality of human suffering and shows that we suffer or cause others to suffer because of some flaw in our own characters, in the sense of Sophocles. This is not, of course, the "message" of the novel (novels don't have messages; we all know that). More importantly, we see throughout the book the collective and communitarian dimension of suffering and its intellectual connections to some prophetic books of the Old Testament that emphasize the unitary nature of humankind and the need for a "suffering servant" to atone and expiate for the sins of others.

As a prose stylist, Patrick White is impressive, maybe supreme. This is the most well written book I have read in many years. His sentences are beautifully fragmented and fractured. His language (use of adjectives, etc.) is extraordinarily rich. In fact, it is gorgeous. Words and ideas have colors and smells. He omits unnecessary direct-object pronouns and even definite articles. Even the sound of his prose is amazingly satisfying: he makes liberal use of alliteration, especially in initial consonants, but in other contexts as well. Figures and tropes abound, even zeugma. And finally, if anyone wants an example of a memorable sentence, let me offer this one from page 26:

Mrs. Hare had soon taken refuge from Mary in a rational kindness, with which she continued to deal her a series of savage blows during what passed for childhood. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Mothers... Everyone's Got One
My first Patrick White novel was Voss, which I found engaging from the beginning and haunting at the end.It took me longer to get into EOTS because there were so many players introduced, and there are flashbacks, and you don't know who the key players are half the time because PW is so descriptive... I had to re-read the beginning just to catch where the plot actually started to unfold.Once the story started to get moving towards the middle it was an enjoyable read to the end.I went back to re-read the beginning of the book and enjoyed it better the second time around.

I understand Fred Schepisi is making this into a movie for 2011 and IMDB describes it as a 'Drama' - but I noticed quite a few elements of black humor throughout that really have me wondering if this isn't meant to be a comedy.We shall see.

His master work
Luck would have it that he got the noble prize for this book that holds all of his styles.If anyone wants to read White start here.In this book you get it all.You wont finish this book the way you started life.I am surprised there are only two reviews to this book.I have read a lot and this is at the very top; if anyone out there aspires to write , read this.He has a depth of language and metaphore and craftmanship (a perfectionism that comes out in his biography) that is with the worlds very very best.Its a fabulous read ,and superb.One or two pages of this bookconsume the books most other writers.Perhaps thats why there are few reviews.Frankly, they won't hold a candle to him.And the descriptions in the stories are superb , 20 later you will hold the vision like a movie.The 'Eye of the storm' has hundreds of threads but I still remember Whites description of cyclone coming onto Fraser Is and of the Dolls head being pulled off and of and of and of etc etc etc .This book is the best of Worlds best.

Tempest In A Teapot
Let's put our cards on the table, shall we?This is NOT one of Patrick White's, Australia's only Nobel Prize winner, better works.What White specialises in and does as no other writer can do, is hone in with a laser-like focus on the life of the ordinary man with such intensity that what it means to be an "ordinary" human being becomes a quiet, deep mystery which gradually seeps through the pages into one, a Revelation (capital intended), no less, by the time the reader turns the final pages in rapt admiration.The Tree of Man, I think, is his best work in this regard, in any regard, with Riders in the Chariot a not so close second.

Here, to put it simply, White spreads himself too thin, very much too thin.Instead of one individual, or a very few individuals, we have an entire cast of rather unlikely, nay, unbelievable characters.

Elizabeth Hunter-The dying (once stunning, still wealthy) woman who serves as the eponymous "eye of the storm," though calm she is certainly not.

Sir Basil- Her son, who somehow (It is never disclosed.) has fled Australia, and won himself a knighthood in England for his acting.One simply assumes that it's his acting.What else could it be?

Dorothy-Her daughter, who has likewise fled Australia and become, rather than an English knight, a French Princess.

Various nurses, attendants and hangers-on in general also populate this book, and receive the full, patented, in-depth psychological portrait by White..

And instead of the rural Aussie dialect of his other books, we have a salmagundi of various languages and English dialects:City Australian, Rural Australian, Pommy English, French (from Her Highness) and German, from a Jewish housekeeper who has escaped the Holocaust. - I could manage them all except the German, where I was completely lost (Non-German speakers, Ach-Tung!)

What this general mélange leads to, inevitably, is a complete lack of focus.There is no real centre or eye, in other words, in this sprawling psychodramatic storm.

There are a couple scenes which save the work from complete ruin:Basil's and Dorothy's return to their old home of "Kudjeri" is well done and quietly intense, like the best of White, and the afternoon which Mary de Santis, one of the nurses, possibly the character with which White most identified, spends with Sir Basil is so rich in imagery and minute psychological detail that, as a short story or novella, it would be overwhelming.But, herein, it's allowed to sink into the general drudgery.

So, I'm giving it a few stars for passages like these.But, taken as a whole, the book is what I would call a remarkable failure for such a gifted writer.

A dark voyage
Patrick, the greatest novelist to have come out of Australia, had already produced a number of classic novels by the time he released "The Eye of the Storm" in 1973- the year that also saw him win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
It is to his credit as a writer that rather than merely repeating the formula of these past successes he explored new territory in terms of style, characterisation and theme with this book.
He had made his reputation by writing about the inner journeys of individuals struggling to find spiritual enlightment in the relentlessly materialistic world of Australia. His heroes had included a ragtag bunch of fascinating outsiders- the mad old nature mystic Miss Hare, neglected Aboriginal artist Alf Dubbo and a visionary explorer in "Voss". In these earlier books White seemed to be suggesting that the mindless fascination with wealth, property and normalcy that pervaded Australian society only left room for individuals to explore deeper issues of spiritual meaning and significance out on the fringes.
It comes as a surprise then that in "The Eye of the Storm", White's heroine is wealthy society woman, Elizabeth Hunter, who seems to embody everything that he most abhored about Australia. The novel explores the life of Elizabeth Hunter through the relationships she has had over many years with a variety of characters, including her lovers, children and servants. The heroine may have been based on Patrick White's own mother and she is presented as essentially destructive in her insistence on dominating others.
The novel is much less religious in its outlook than White's early books. One reviewer described "Riders in the Chariot" as more of a "mystical essay" than a novel but such a description could not be applied to "The Eye of the Storm". Like its heroine, the novel is less mystical and more worldly than what White had given us before. "The Eye of the Storm" is centred more in the painful, toxic relationships that exist between members of a dysfunctional family than in issues of spiritual transcendence. Eventually, during a tropical storm in Queensland, Elizabeth Hunter does experience a moment of spiritual epiphany but this time the heroine is out of her element. She is a stranger to this world and hardly knows what to make of it.
The Nobel Committe had been put off awarding the Prize for Literature to White in 1970 because of the bleak, cynical presentation he had given of the way artists use other people to create art. After all, The Nobel Prize, is supposed to be given to literature of an 'idealistic' nature. It seems fanciful however to think that "The Eye of the Storm" offers a rosier view of human nature than its predecessor. In exploring the emotional wreckage that comes out families and such dark themes as incest, both emotional and physical, "The Eye of the Storm" is unlikely to leave readers with a warm, inner glow. But it may appeal to an audience who like literary fiction which take big chances with language, style and theme. Whilst not one of his best three or four books, it is still rich and rewarding. ... Read more

Product Description
These six novels and stories probe beneath the confused surface to expose the true nature of things. This book includes "A Woman's Hand", "The Full Belly", "The Night, the Prowler", "Five-Twenty", "Sicilian Vespers" and "The Cockatoos". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Brilliant Very Funny Satires
Human social hierarchy in juxtapose .White is the eye in the sky .Funny and very cleaver .

Good but not the best from a Nobel Prize winner...
This is a collection of short novels and stories by the 1973 Australian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Most of the stories analyse in thorough detailthe same themes, studying with ruthless detachment the behaviour and thoughts of ageing coupleswho have drifted apart as incomprehensibly as they originally came together or irrational eruptions of violence or senseless rebellion against the superficial orderliness of mediocre lives.

Three of the stories stand out from the collection: "A Woman's Hand", "The Night the Prowler" and the story which gives the collection its name ""The Cockatoos".

In "A Woman's Hand" an elderly couple meet an old bachelor friend of the husband. Even though she is appalled at the shabby life the friend, a retired sailor lives, and even though she does not particularly care for him or for her husband's friendship for him (and in fact rather dislikes the ex-sailor), she decides to intervene in his life by throwing him together with a spinster friend of hers, who used to be an uncomplaining lady's companion. Rather unexpectedly, the bachelor and the spinster, decide to marry, for companionship in their old age, only to drive each other to madness. Two stories are brilliantly intertwined by the author.The first couples' life unfolds in White'scharacteristic detailed fashion in front of our eyes and constitutes an elegantly written winding down of a rather uneventful life. The second story unfolds in fits and starts, from snippets of news, conversations or observations and is the slow unravelling of the the second couple, which leads to the spinster's commitment to a mental institution and in the bachelor's probable suicide. The title is grimly ironic, since the wife's excuse for meddling in the bachelor's life is that she feels his life and homelacks a woman's hand.

"The Night the Prowler" particularly remind me of some of Graham Greene's short stories from the 1930s and 1940s but also pre shadow some of White's better known novels like "Riders in the Chariot". A sexual molester breaks into a solid, middle class home and apparently rapes a young woman. Her life falls apart, her parents are bewildered by the changes she carries out in her own life and in the end never ever really try to understand or reach out to her. However, as the story unfolds, we learn that though a man did break into her bedroom, she reversed their position, terrified the rather pathetic would-be molester and starts a double life in which she prowls her middle class neighbourhood at nights, breaks into other homes and vandalizes them in cold rage.

"The Cockatoos" again explores the relationship between an ageing couple in a small, drab, nondescript outback town, who have given up speaking to each other. As with many small towns in the literature, the story of the couple cannot be told without involving some of their neighbours: the woman with whom he has a rather long-standing and passionless affair, the woman's irritable neighbour, a gossipy would be do-gooder, his wife and their outsider son. A mob of white cockatoos inexplicably descends on the town and we are carried along with them as they visitate the characters of the story, touching and changing their lives. The mob is a brilliant literary device and Patrick White makes it work to perfection, carefully blending observation, points of view and staying away from heavy handed symbolism
which would have ruined the whole delicate effect. The couple starts reaching out, and there is a hint of locked doors being slowly unlocked, of light dawning and hearts blossoming, or perhaps more accurately budding, recovering a measured sense of wonder, a creaking, halting reconciliatory motion, a growing sense of potential for sharing and of falling away from everyday mediocrity. At this point, the whole delicate structure which has been painstaking built up is, it most be said, brilliantly smashed, as the irritable neighbour slides into madness and starts shooting atsome of the cockatoos to stop them from eating his magnolia blossoms, only to end up shooting the husband who has rushed out of his lover's house. The rest of the story is anticlimactic, and though it hints that some fragile common bond has somewhat diffidentlytouched the widow and the lover, it also shows that the senseless violence which erupted from the irritable neighbour has also taken seed in the outsider son and will continue its destructive path.

White is a brilliant craftsman and his prose carries you along effortlessly. I have always considered that Patrick's White most fatal flaw in his writing is his lack of closure: his endings do not end, they simply peter out. Even in his short stories, White is a novelist, his stories are rarely surprising in their development, let alone their dénouement, and in this sense bear little resemblance to such master storytellers such as Graham Greene or the undeservedly lesser known V.S. Pritchett. White simply and slowly overwhelms you with a sense of inevitability for which there is no neat ending; perhaps it can be said that White does not bother to end his stories: he simply decides when the reader can continue the story on his own. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Love! Hate! Survival!
What riper themes for a 'historical' novel?Patrick White's "A Fringe of Leaves" is exactly that, a historical romance set in Australia in the 1830s, when much of the country was as yet unconquered by its English and Irish settlers, a good number of whom were convicts. Fringe was first published in 1976, but in many ways it reads as a late-Victorian novel. There's a tremendous amount of Thomas Hardy about it, in subject matter, in narrative structure, and in its bitter-to-bittersweet outlook on humankind. The central tale of romance, between a strong-bodied young woman and a bookish older man, has echoes of George Eliot's Middlemarch -- intentional, I think -- and the survival tale that emerges as the second half of the novel, after a shipwreck, reminds me inexorably of Joseph Conrad. Then, when the heroine is 'adopted' unwillingly into non-European culture, I can't help thinking of E. M. Forster's "Passage to India". Forster's and White's uneasy attitudes toward erotic encounters are of a kind.

But Patrick White was his own man as a writer, and had his own very recognizable narrative voice. He mixed crisply evocative scenic descriptions with almost parenthetical wit and irony. His persistent tone of surly superciliousness toward his own characters,his creatures of imagination, may require a breaking-in period for many readers. I was strongly 'put off' by it when I read "Voss", my first encounter with White. However, in "Fringe of Leaves" the author created a compelling female character, Ellen Roxburgh, of more persuasive reality than almost any other heroine in fiction portrayed by authors of any gender persuasion. Mrs. Roxburgh is the survivor, and the horrors she survives would seem impossible except that they are utterly true to history, very similar to the accounts of the sufferings of the real-life American Captain James Riley, a shipwreck castaway enslaved by Bedouins in the Sahara in the early 1800s.

As I've already suggested, this is a novel with two halves -- the first a story of love and guilt among the Anglophone settlers, and the second a grueling narrative of captivity and escape -- but the two halves are jointed together masterfully by a shipwreck scene worthy of Conrad or Melville. And then there's an ending... the most unexpected, puzzling, ironic ending/non-ending one could ask for, the kind of ending that first makes you want to heave the book into the surf but then compels you to acknowledge it as the only thing plausible.

This is a "page-turner", whatever other impression of difficult earnestness I may have suggested. It would be possible, for a less compulsively analytic reader, to 'go with the flow' of passions and pangs, and to read "A Fringe of Leaves" as a flaming romance. Whatever sort of reader you are, give it a shot! It's perhaps the best 19th Century novel written in our lifetimes.

The Genius that is Patrick White

Mrs Roxburgh and her husband set sail for England from Austrailia. The Bristol Maid is shipwrecked and she is taken prisoner by cannibilistic aborigines...
On one level this is a first rate adventure story of love, betrayal, capture and escape. But such is the power of Patrick White-and as with his other great works-this is also a brilliant exploration of man-the beast-and the nature he is bound by. White appals the reader with the manner in which the aboriginals enslave and treat Ellen Roxburgh,but deftly illustrates that no matter what cultural angle we take or live by,they are all just a veneer over our true savage selves. If the aboriginal customs and rites that guide their lives shock civilized sensibilities,what so about civilization that has enslaved men and women in a brutal penal colony,stringing up the bodies of captured bolters 'as a warning to the rest'?. Yes its covered up with aesthetics and manners,but it is still as savage as any 'primitive' culture. This is a truly great piece of work.
White writes in meticulous detail, so vivid that it conjures pictures in the mind that forever will remind you of the story.
It is impossible to say what serves as Whites masterpiece as his great novels-'Voss' 'Tree of Man' 'Riders in the Chariot' 'Solid Mandala' and 'A Fringe of Leaves' are all so superbly of a high standard that maybe only his collected works in one volume could be considered as such. A true nobel writer.

Do Not Read About The Plot Until Later: One of White's Better Novels
There is a touch of the chaos in Fringe of Leaves. It is not boring and it is one of White's better novels. It has a good story and I will not reveal the plot beyond what the publisher reveals on the book jacket.

I have read three of White's novels: the present work, the Tree of Man, and Voss. The present novel, is more complex than Voss, and unlike Voss here the author manages to breath some life into the characters. It has a good plot that reminds one a bit of Jane Eyre, but with quite a different setting. It is set in England in the middle of the 19th century. It is about a young woman from Cornwall who marries a wealthy gentleman. They go to Australia and are caught in a ship wreck off the coast of Queensland after visiting the husband's brother in Tasmania.

White uses stream of consciousness in a mild form which seems a bit novel after reading Voss. But the thing that grabs your attention is his use of structure. He introduces the protagonist, Ellen, by having two ladies describe her for about 20 pages. The two women ride in a horse drawn carriage chatting about Ellen. You, as the reader, realize that White will be creative in what will follow in the story.

After that we move the present scene in the story. But Ellen has these flashbacks to fill in the story of her life over most of the first half.

Patrick White gained fame as the Australian Nobel prize winner in literature and as a person with a prickly or difficult personality. He was educated at Cambridge but settled and wrote in Australia after World War II. He wrote about a dozen novels and a biography.

This is a good novel and it deserves 5 stars. After a dozen pages or so it becomes clear to the reader why White is famous: he has an unusual style and he is a gifted writer. There is no question about his writing ability. We see great writing ability in Voss and that skill is present in The Tree of Man and in the present novel.

Overall, I thought it was a good book and an interesting read and an interesting book to read if you are interested in the works of Patrick White.

Timeless Portrait of Humanity and Cross-Culturalism
Read any review of Patrick White�s A Fringe of Leaves and you will expect it to be an exciting tale.One that includes adventures on the sea, a frightening shipwreck, and deaths of important characters; a tale of enslavement by the wild and savage Australian aborigines, sex, and cannibalism; a tale of the heroic rescue of a damsel in distress by an escaped convict.But if you are expecting this adventurous and daring plot, you may turn away disappointed.You may read halfway through the book and not encounter more than one or two of the events mentioned in the reviews.
What is it, then, that makes A Fringe a five-star read?Why do many readers across the globe claim it to be one of Patrick White�s most brilliant works?
This is not, in fact, merely a story of adventure and excitement.It�s a mission of humanity.Ellen Roxburgh is the image of any individual with conflicting views of life within herself.This is not a story of rescue, but one of survival.It reminds us all of our own personal inner struggles and how much we have been able to overcome.It is a reminder that the loss of innocence in every child is the first step in that child�s becoming an adult.
A Fringe is also an anthem of cross-culturalism that sings true today in America, though it was set in 19th century Australia.Living here, we have all acquired or developed a certain social standard unfamiliar to our infant natures.From living among many legions of immigrants, or even from traveling abroad, we know what it is to subscribe to other social standards.A Fringe explores the effects of such an initiation in Ellen Roxburgh�s character.This initiation is exhibited as the cause of her internal conflict of social behaviors.She began as a Cornish farmer�s daughter, and then developed a façade of proper civilized mannerisms when she married her aristocratic husband.She initiated another set of social standards when she was forced to live among the aborigines.White�s moving depiction of this struggle will inspire and comfort the patient reader.
Patrick White�s A Fringe of Leaves may not satisfy an impatient adventurer.But it surpasses its acclaim of literary merit in its brilliant demonstration of timeless humanity and cross-cultural issues.

Upon unknown shores cast
Patrick White writes like a castaway from the Victorian era. His novels are long and full of real characters and the society and civilization of which they are a part and from which they come is equally real. Each character possesses a fully developed history, and the story as a whole progress from one point to another. And in the process people are changed by the experience. If that sounds old fashioned to you, well, it is old fashioned but those are values that some readers miss and for those readers these novels. I don't want to make White sound too antiquated though for his themes are very contemporary ,or timeless, as his themes are those that don't go out of style. This is my favorite of his novels. In A Fringe of Leaves(c.1973) White tells a shipwreck story upon the shores of an as yet uncolonised Australia. The characters who survive the shipwreck are then captured by Aborigines and must adapt to a lifestyle quite unlike the one left behind in fair old England. White uses this tale to examine civilization first by showing his characters in it and then by showing his characters as they appear stripped of it.....in only a fringe of leaves. The examination is quite a thorough and engaging one. The novel feels Victorian partly because it is set in that time (or before) but it only retains the best of that periods use of the form. White himself is Australian(and one who has won many awards, Nobel included, and to many he is the best they have so far produced) and so his study of England is tinged with an insight reserved for the ousider or in his case the postcolonial. The shipwreck portion of the book is only about 150 pages or so near the end of a 500 page plus novel. It takes patience to get to the exciting part of the story but once you are there you will want to read that section more than once. In those blindingly intense pages the characters cling to but a few delicate and sacred strands of belief to keep the savage world from totally adopting them. The aftermath portion of the book is equally interesting. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Patrick White writes about his life and motivation
This self portrait, written late in life, provides great insight into the mind of the complex and brilliant Patrick White, an emotional and often intolerant iconoclast; tempestuous yet shy, a good hater and devoted lover, fully aware of his faults yet unwilling or unable to change. Such characteristics were forged through adversity during an unhappy childhood. He spent his formative years at a tough, traditional English Public boarding School, Cheltenham. "Ruth said while we were driving down to Cheltenham, 'This is the proudest day of my life.' When the gates of my expensive prison closed I lost all confidence in my mother, and the Uncle James in me never forgave. What my father thought I can't be sure. An amiable, accomodating husband, he went along with what she wanted . . . I started serving my four-year prison sentence." It was there that his resentment and unforgiving nature was nurtured, and it was there his future stoicism and determination to succeed was born. It was also the time he decided to become a writer. During a turbulent adolescence he discovered, somewhat to his chagrin and disgust, he was homosexual - yet learned to accept his fate with the unavoidable stigma and get on with his life. "In my case, I never went through the agonies of choosing between this or that sexual way of life. I was chosen as it were, and soon accepted the fact of my homosexuality." He was also born asthmatic, which plagued him all his life, and between the years of 1932 and '33 'I spent the greater part of every vacation in Germany."

Returning to Australia he went jackerooing, for a year at Monaro and a second with the Wythycombes (his mother's family) at Walgett and began writing. Back in England, after Cambridge, he took a bedsitter in Ebury Street, London where, incidentally, the notorious Sir Oswald Mosley also had a love nest. He deveoped a love for the theatre which expressed itself in his many successful plays. While in London he began a lifelong friendship with the Australian expatriate painter, Roy de Maistre. White's first novel, 'Happy Valley', reflected his longstanding contempt for the 'ugly' Australian, and for that reason received critical reviews in Australia, although it was well received elsewhere.

He was accepted by the RAF as an Intelligence Officer at the outbreak of war and served in Egypt and Greece, eventually meeting his lifelong partner and lover, Manoly Lascaris, who was serving in the Greek army. They lived and farmed together in Australia at Dogwoods, Castle Hill, until moving to Martin Road Sydney, where Patrick cooked, wrote novels, plays and stories. Manoly looked after the garden. He began playing a part in public life as a staunch supporter of Jack Mundey's green bans, succeeding eventually in their campaign to stop the demolition of houses and the building of an Olympic stadium. He also campaigned against the Vietnam war and vocally supported the ant-nuclear movement. He was outraged when Sir John Kerr dismissed the Whitlam government and supported the political left.

Throughout his life, in which instinct and intuition played a great part, he made many friends, but due to his stubborn and intolerant nature, lost most of them. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature but refused to go to Stockholm for the presentation, allowing Sidney Nolan to accept the award on his behalf.

The final section of Flaws in the Glass, entitled, Episodes and Epitaphs, is a delight to read, including 'Luncheon on the Yacht', 'Sir and Lady', 'The Nolans', 'Jimmy Sharman and his Acting Troupe' and 'The Nobel Prize' - all written with wit and great insight by a mastercraftsman.The Learning Process: Some Creative Impressions
... Read more

Product Description

Once upon a time a dog traveled the globe in search of the perfect home.

He visited many countries, learned interesting facts, and made new friends. And he did find that perfect home...at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to be precise. A very special address with a very special family.

And now at Christmastime, Dog learns that his new home hosts a very special holiday party. With a lot of important visitors on the guest list, it’s going to take a lot of preparation to get this “house” ready for the holidays. It’s all paws on deck to make sure everything is in order, from the sparkling tree in the Blue Room to the delicious gingerbread house in the State Dining Room.

But Dog is curious about how the rest of the world celebrates and he asks his international guests to share their favorite holiday traditions. And when the festivities start there’s no stopping these tail-wagging partygoers!

Product Description
In this remarkable self-portrait, Patrick White explains how on the very rare occasions when he re-reads a passage from one of his books, he recognises very little of the self he knows. This 'unknown' is the man interviewers and visiting students expect to find, but 'unable to produce him', he prefers to remain private, or as private as anyone who has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature can ever be. In this book, it is the self Patrick White does recognise, the one he sees reflected in the glass. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

White on White
If you like Patrick White's novels, you will like this autobiographical sketch.

His writing here has the same jewel-like clarity and stunning depth.

He is by turns sardonic, austere, self-deprecating to the point of self-bashing, and a wonderful raconteur.

The part about meeting Queen Elizabeth is particularly amusing.

As always, White creates a world inside your mind, with as much color and life as your own thoughts. ... Read more

Product Description
Patrick White spent his whole life writing letters. Although he wanted them all burnt by their readers, thousands survive to reveal him as one of the greatest letter-writers of his time. This is an unexpected and final volume of prose by Australia's most acclaimed novelist--the letters of a great writer, a profound critic, and a believer never free of doubt.Amazon.com Review
PatrickWhite (1912-1990), author of The Living and the Dead, 1973Nobel Laureate in Literature, officially Australian but also partlyupper-crust Englishman by education, rejected alike English stuffiness andAustralian philistinism. These letters, edited by his biographer David Marr,chronicle White's gradual reluctant engagement with the world: his interestin Jewish culture after an early ignorant anti-Semitism; his idyllic wartimeperiod in West Africa; his passionate and rancorous anti-royalism, sparked bythe 1975 Australian constitutional crisis when the British Queen'srepresentative sacked the Prime Minister; his deep held belief in thevalidity of homosexual unions, based on his own life-long relationship. Theseletters give an inner glimpse of a mostly private life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An opportunity to enter the private world of Patrick White
I read 2 negative reader reviews of this book on the day I bought it and thought I had thrown my money down the drain. Luckily we all come at books from a different perspective and I am very pleased I stumbled on this 677 page volume of letters written from 1919 to 1990. Reading this is like sitting in someones living room unseen and hearing all from the everyday to the important being discussed. It gives us a strong human connection to this hugely talented, crotchety, driven, private, argumentative man of strong opinions and unpredictably diverse views of the world. Rather than writing him off as a typical Australian as previous reviewers have, I found his letters fascinating, surprising, and a damn good read and his life and thought are very un-typical of Australians of his era in my view. The fact that my house is in walking distance of Dogwoods made their Castle Hill life doubly pertinent to me but in any event I would have enjoyed the book immensely. White's comment about wishing to spend his time on his acreage atDogwoods rather than 'watching a landscape slowly destroyed by a race whose most pronounced gift is that of creating ugliness' was prescient, a McDonalds now stands nearby opposite a shopping centre carpark. Certainly worth a read.

Boring and bitter is right!
What an awful life! As an Australian this dreadful, wizened old cockroach of a man makes me ashamed.Nothing but boring twisted hatred and ingratitude. Why publish such a book at all?

what a boring bitter old man!
patrick white is one of the 20th century's finest novelists - his thick tome of letters compiled by david marr was given to me by someone who knew of patrick white only as awriter from my country- I was living in TX at the time feeling acute homesickness of which, upon reading the book,was immediately cured bypage 2 when the reasons why I left australia in the first place came vividly galloping towards me with a loud yawn. The scratchy nib of discontentment mark 400 pages of this old sod's rather boring snippy life with his companion manoly. His mandarin mouthed mug scowling at u courtesy of the brush strokes of Brett on the cover really tell u the whole sad story .. dinner parties, gossip, gardening, writing, gossip, travelling, bitching, writing etc go on and on -- most telling aspect is that patrick wanted all his correspondence destroyed after being read - obviously not enough of his friends took him seriously - so why should we ... ... Read more

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Arthur and Waldo were born twins and spent their childhood, their youth, middle-age and retirement together. They shared everything, even a girl, but their view of things differed. Waldo saw everything and understood little. Arthur was the fool who didn't bother to look. He understood. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Classic
Patrick White is of course Australia's most famous novelist. He lived for some time in exile but returned to Australia and lived there for some years before dying some years ago. He was a somewhat prickly character but his winning of the Nobel Prize for literature helped solidify his reputation.

This book is unusual in is clarity and sheer joy. A number of White's books are heavy going, densely written and pretentious. This book however was simply sheer delight. It concerns two old men who live together and are brothers. One is reasonably intelligent and has worked in a library. The other is what might be described as intellectually simple. The book consists of both of these characters speaking and talking about their lives and their past.

White was a gay man who lived most of his life with a companion who he was deeply attached to. One suspects that the book is loosely based on their later life, but of course this is only speculation. The character who is most hardly done by is the librarian who clearly is White.

It is hard really to describe the delight and joy of the book, however once I picked it up I could not stop reading it. ... Read more

Product Description
During the 1930s, Bill White gave up trapping and joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, volunteering for arctic service. Arctic life was so dodgy in those days of the Mad Trapper and The Lost Patrol, the force couldn't send you against your will, so volunteering was the only way to get there. Bill started out crewing on the historic RCMP patrol ship St. Roch under the command of the legendary Captain Henry Larsen, but hungered for greater adventure and requested a posting ashore upon reaching Cambridge Bay. Adventure he found: MOUNTIE IN MUKLUKS includes hair-raising accounts of a near-death experience under the ice on a frozen river; a 1,200-mile dog-sled chase after an arctic murderer; and numerous fascinating encounters with shamans, telepathy, and an Inuit way of life that has now vanished from earth. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

THE WAY IT WAS: LIFE IN THE OLD NORTH
I have a whole passel of personal connections with this book. Not only did I once live on the arctic coast for several years, I've fished the mouth of the river that almost took Bill's life.I was still living in Toloyoak in 1974 when Bill White made his return trip to Cam. Bay after 40 years, though I didn't know it at the time. I've walked and crawled all over the St. Roch in its permanent berth at the Vancouver Maritime Museum and visited Pasley Bay on the Boothia Peninsula where it once overwintered in the ice. Thanks to James Eetoolook and Pat Lyall I've visited almost every landfall along the ice coast the St. Roch stopped into the summer of 1930.
Then, while living on the Sunshine Coast in 1975, the author's father, Howard White (they aren't related to Bill), loaned me a copy of Bill's original 175 page manuscript. I thought it a dry read, historically questionable in places and grossly over opinionated. In fact, when Bill asked me what I thought of it, I told him I figured his opinions were as valid as anybody else's'. Holy poop! "Opinions," he bellowed, and that was the end of that politically incorrect conversation.
Jim

LIFE IN THE OLD NORTH

"I never wanted to be a cop. Christ, I didn't want to spend my life handing out traffic tickets. I joined the RCMP so I could get up north. There was nothing more to it."
So opens this illuminating book about fours years in the life of Bill White, one of the most unlikely of cops ever to build an igloo.
Written entirely in the first person by Patrick White (no relation to Bill), this tale will captivate arctic buffs, RCMP enthusiasts, historians and everybody else interested in a first hand glimpse of"the best years of my life;" how it was in the central arctic in the early 1930s. Life in the old north.
"I decided to join up with an eye on getting to the Arctic as soon as possible." After basic training in Regina: "...really nothing more than a modified Boy Scouts program," Bill began his career herding naked Doukhobours and chasing bootleggers along the US border in Saskatchewan. He applied for arctic service and was transferred to Vancouver, there to await transport north.
Bill shipped out of Vancouver aboard the St. Roch under the command of the legendary Henry Larsen in June 1930, bound for the arctic.
The book dishes up a smorgasbord of written and visual delicacies (there are 80 some black and white photographs throughout); snapshots of the old police posts at Herschel Island, Baillie Island, Bernard Harbour, Coppermine and Cambridge Bay as the St. Roch flounders in frigid swells, scrapes through pack ice, bounces off reefs, dodges bergs and slams across sand bars.
Bill meets arctic veterans like trader Charlie Klengenberg and his son Patsy, Ikey Bolt who married Charlie's daughter Etna, Gjoa Haven Canalaska trader George Washington Porter, Tree River Hudson's Bay trader Otto Binder and Mrs. Pannigabluk Stefansson. He befriends Sam Carter, Mahik and L. A. Learmouth. In fact, he and Learmouth once liberated three quarts of alcohol from the compass of the good ship Maud, by then a half submerged derelict in Cambridge Bay, and the two'm ended up having a fine old time.
Learning to live in the country, Bill was taught how to build an igloo, hunt caribou and seals. He spent the better part of each summer in a fish camp at Wellington Bay. And he got to go trapping too, albeit illegally, bringing in $3,500.00 in white foxes one year; quite a boost to his $700.00 annual salary.
A census took him over 700 miles by dog team to count 750 northern folk widely scattered over a wide chunk of real estate. Another trip took him a thousand miles by dogs to retrieve a body and witnesses in an alleged murder case.
Returning south to another land and another life, Bill finally revisited Cambridge Bay in June of 1974, went fishing with Bill Lyall and had tea again with Angulalik and his old friend Mahik.
"On a windy autumn day, snow crunching underfoot, two active Mounties, a priest and two Inuit elders stood on Mount Pelly, the hill overlooking Cambridge Bay, with Bill's ashes." It was the fall of 2001. Constable Dean Larkin let the wind scatter Bill's mortal remains in the one place in the world where he had always felt he belonged. Bill White was home.
This may Patrick's White's first book but he's sure enough learned how to use his tools. Patrick has done a bang up job of rendering Bill's adventures imminently readable, historically sound and immensely enjoyable. Feet up beside the wood stove, Mountie in Mukluks was a fine trip for me.

Review by Jim Green

Mountie in Mukluks
This book is incredibly refreshing and honest.Finally, a man who is not afraid to speak the truth and who really immersed himself in the Inuk culture to be able to understand these Canadians.A book well worth buying as youw will want to read it over and over. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Australian Literary Studies, published by University of Queensland Press on October 1, 1998. The length of the article is 7445 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: Norms are a necessary and significant part of Australian cultural formation. While many writers such as Patrick White condemn conformity as restrictive, particularly in suburban narratives, conformity can provide a needed sense of social unity. Cultural cohesion is dependent on commonality and shared experiences, which can be threatened by the disaggregation White advocates.

Citation Details
Title: Decomposing Suburbia: Patrick White's Perversity.(gay author)
Author: Andrew McCann
Publication: Australian Literary Studies (Refereed)
Date: October 1, 1998
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Volume: 18Issue: 4Page: 56(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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John Ozogaone of North Americas premier deerresearchersshares his common-sense insights into thecontinents most popular, adaptive and majestic game animal. Deerhunters and deer watchers will deepen their understanding of whitetailbehavior, and learn how and where to encounter deer every time theyenter the woods.

Ozoga conducted 30 years of deer research with MichigansDepartment of Natural Resources. Since 1994 he has written theDeer Research column for Deer & Deer Hunting magazine. Thisbook compiles 35 of Ozogas most intriguing and fascinatingarticles. Part 1 examines the whitetails society; Part 2,whitetail social communication; Part 3, survival of the herd; and part4, the whitetails future.

Accompanying Ozogas in-depth text is the breath-taking work ofrenowned wildlife photographers to help illustrate the whitetailscomplex behavior.

-Increases hunting success by broadening knowledge of deer behavior.
-The culmination of 30-plus years of hands-on deer research.
-100 vivid full-color photographs of white-tailed deer.
-Close-up look at buck behavior and movements throughout the fall. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

We Need More Northern Whitetail Books
As a northern deer hunter I am delighted with this book.Most of the whitetail deer books out there (at least the managment ones) are based in the south. Ozaga's book rings home with this Michigan guy.
The book is packed with great info on northern deer behavior.The photos are good and the research is sound. I wish there were more out there like it.So far, next to Alsheimer's deer books this is my favorite. I also just found a great northern food plot and habitat book called "Grow 'Em Right" by Dougherty and Dougherty which is right on the money up here in cold country.

An Excellent Choice For Any Deer Hunter
It is not often that one encounters a book that answers long standing questions, especially those that arise from the contradictions found in the popular deer hunting press.There is nothing Gee Whiz about Mr. Ozoga, he tells it like he sees it.When he doesn't know he tells you that too.This book is based on 30 years observation and experimentation on white tails at the Cusino Wildlife Research Station and dispels many of the myths and folklore regarding deer.

Be aware, however, that this book is not easy reading, but seems to be based on the discussion and conclusion sections of his research papers.It is approachable and yields to the diligent reader.It is well worth the effort and the price.

I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Barton's review.

John Ozoga Whitetail Intrigue
I have been studying and hunting Whitetail deer for over 30 years and this book actually contains useful information. Too many times books of this sort are centered on some gimmick to kill the big one.This is not the case with Ozoga's work, you will come away with a deeper understanding of the deer's habits, social order and habitat requirements.Especially for the northern deer herd. For anyone who has an interest in Whitetails this is a must read. ... Read more