What is the price of progress?
It seems the better the book, the slower I read! This is counterintuitive perhaps, but I like to slow down and really—for want of a better description—gorge on beautiful writing. I finished Just Relations a few days back but have been so flat out with other things (and other books!) I haven’t had time to write a review.
Just Relations is in many ways a product of its time. Published in 1982, and winner of the Miles Franklin that year, it is a longish book. In this regard it reminds me of books published around that time such as Midnight’s Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie, and Illywhacker by Peter Carey (a little later, 1985)—and I mean this in terms of length as well as style and quality. Great books transcend the time they are written in and are always worth going back to.
(Of course in ‘those’ days, there was no internet! What did people do with their spare time? They read, (or went to primary school in my case!). Today, we are in a very interesting time in publishing with everyone’s short attention spans and the rise of e-books. Perhaps one of the most interesting questions is what it all means for the length of the book. I’ve heard it said many a time that publishers will not consider publishing manuscripts over 120,000 words, unless the author is established. But are books such as Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel reversing this trend, or is this a mere speed-bump on the road to shorter and shorter novels? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. I could also pass comment about the changes in literary awards here, particularly with regard to books that win the Miles Franklin, but I shall desist!)
For lovers of quirky Australian tales with elements of magic realism that are beautifully written, Just Relations will not disappoint. The by-line of the book is “A tiny, remote Australian community unites to thwart progress.” It is a good summary of the town of Whitey’s Fall which is built up a strange mountain of gold that looms over the town and its old folk who gather silently in the Mountain Hotel, (the pub), to muse over their ‘religion’ of ‘Remembering’.
The opening scene will tell you much about the flavour of the story. Into the town arrives Vivien Lang, a young English woman who enters the general store run by the ancient Mrs Brinsmead and presents her with a letter of introduction. Felicity Brinsmead is old, like most Whitey Fallers and carries with her grotesque sack of hair and a terrible secret. Vivien is a relation of one of the townsfolk (now living in England), and she is here to claim her relative’s property. Mrs Brinsmead is excited by the arrival of so young a person in so old a town, and promises herself to introduce the woman to ‘Remembering’. In the meantime the shopkeeper is having a conversation with the shop itself, who is a very miserable indeed(!)
After Viven’s exit, Billy Swan walks into the shop and asks for half a dozen sticks of gelignite. This raises a few eyebrows. The town was built years ago on the gold found in the mountain, and here is someone asking for explosives. Has he found more gold? Or has he found the gold but wants to not extract it but to blow it apart so that the town can remain the quiet backwater it is and not be over-run by every Tom, Dick and Harry on the back of the next gold-rush? Mrs Brinsmead can’t find either gelignite or dynamite. (It turns out that the ‘Fido’ she constantly calls out to is not the invisible dog that everyone thinks she is (madly) calling after, but her son, who she and her brother keep imprisoned in their house—not wanting to let him be known to the other townsfolk for he represents undeniable progress. It’s Fido who has hoarded all the explosives. But for what purpose?)
Billy leaves empty-handed and angry. He soon meets Vivien and a relationship blossoms between them after they witness the death in a car crash of Mrs Ping who drives off the Mountain road. And this is just the first one hundred pages or so!
It is impossible to summarise the cast of odd characters that Hall has assembled here. They are as strange and quirky as the town. The story is full of comedy, farce, tragedy, and wonderfully unbridled imagination. There are many harrowing events; it seems Hall has a penchant for the grotesque things that people inflict upon themselves—or situations they wander into without warning. Mrs Ping’s death is one example. As is her husband “The Narcissist’s” razor-blade self-harm.
The town has steadfastly ignored the claims—and letters—of the outside world. Things come to a head when Progress—represented by the new highway being built right through the town—threatens their very way of life. (This made me think of a question asked of Peter Carey in London at a reading I attended when he was promoting True History of the Kelly Gang. When asked whether he thought it terrible that the new freeway that skirted Glenrowan meant that people passed by without knowing the town and its history, he replied that ‘no, the people who want to know will take the turn-off’. This is not quite what the townsfolk of Whitey’s Fall face, indeed quite the opposite, but they are both facets of the same ‘Progress’.)
What with the approach of the highway, what will the explosives in Whitey’s Fall be used for now? The highway roadworks uncover the gold, but only the townsolf notice. There is a lot of humour throughout the novel. In this section we see Senator Halloran attempt to rally support for the road. He says of the development that is cutting up the land: “Ecology is a web. This road will make you part of it.” How very droll!
No wonder Just Relations won the Miles Franklin Award, an award Hall has won twice, and been short-listed a further four times. That’s a total of six short-listed novels out of the eleven he has written. (He has also written numerous poetry volumes, non-fiction, and edited several poetry anthologies.)
Strangely, I haven’t read a lot of Hall’s work. I heard him talk at the Sydney Writers’ Festival (2010) where he read from his just published memoir, Popeye Never Told You. In that reading he described a German bombing raid in WWII. The prose was sparse, haunting—and perfect for the subject.
In Just Relations, the prose is both lustrous and weighty, a combination that may seem impossible, but Hall achieves it. I wonder how much the likes of Winton with all his ‘muscularity’ learnt from him? Whatever the answer, he is, on the face of this book alone, a worthy teacher.
It might not reach the great heights of the works by Rushdie and Carey noted above, and here and there is perhaps a little indulgent—reflective of the time perhaps. But its imagination is no less exciting. It exhibits an intriguing range of narrative styles and voices. It turns out the price of progress can be quite high, yet it also brings love and the promise of a new generation.
Just Relations kept me company for a while, and what good company it was!
Just Relations by Rodney Hall
Penguin
ISBN: 0 14 00.6974 7 [clearly an old ISBN format!]
502 pages
Source: The Local Municipal Library
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