Product Description
The destinies of artist Frank Harland and young Phil Vernon intertwine in a haunting, evocative portrait of the life and work of the artist, childhood, family bonds, and the dark dimensions of vision, creativity, and passion that become the roots of all art. Reprint. 10,000 first printing. Tour.Amazon.com Review
A rare novel . . . rich in descriptive detail . . . and thoroughly persuasive in its portrayal of a world and an era. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A thesaurus is required
The thesaurus is not needed to read this book, but to describe Malouf's work.There is certainly no single term that can encompass his superb writing abilities."Opulent" might cover his descriptive powers, but fails to address the strength of Malouf's chronicle of Frank Harland."Gripping" isn't appropriate to a life so realistically portrayed - with its tumultuous events mixed with the mundane.Artist Frank Harland is anything but mundane, however.Raised in a rural, hilly environment, Harland is buffeted by lasting poverty, overborne by deep loyalties to father and brothers, never losing sight of the meaning of "place."That place is the one-room house of his birth.No matter how far he strays from that locale, it haunts his life and his paintings.In the end, he confines himself to the "Half Acre" in solitary exile.What the thesaurus fails to convey for the reviewer, Malouf's own words will keep you embedded in this real life story.

This early book presages why many awards are granted Malouf for his writing.He was the first winner of the IMPAC award, the richest in publishing.The story of Frank Harland captures the reader from the first page.His father, an indolent dairy farmer, imparted a sense of story in Frank from his earliest days.He applies his learning to drawing instead of text, giving a fresh image of his home and its people throughout his life.Affected by the powers experienced in the hill country, the various intensities of light and shadow, the wonder-generating storms that beset the hills, the flora and fauna encountered, he struggles to impart his feelings to his art.Using any available medium, Frank paints on wood, cardboard panels, paper or whatever is at hand.The work gains wide circulation, almost unknown to Frank.Success and fame are not his aim, however, but getting through life remains the dominant theme throughout this work.In the background, he remains beset by "place," which is translated into spending his earnings on enlarging his father's land holdings.

Malouf's great strength is in characterization.Every person in this story is vividly depicted, Frank, father Clem, Tam the stepbrother and Phil the lawyer.Would you like these people? It's doubtful.Frank, caught up in his art, is slovenly, his various residences a chaos, his appearance ragged. Phil is hesitant, charmless and limited in scope.Little wonder he remains unmarried throughout his life.There is little to attract in any of these people.Still, Malouf manages to portray them sympathetically.His prose keeps you attentive, following their fates, no matter how distasteful their personalities might seem.It is Malouf's honed skills that keeps this book timeless.

A Family Tree
Generational Family Trees are often found at the beginning of Biographies. Mr. Malouf's, "Harland's Half Acre", is a novel so the Families are fictitious, however the complexity of the relationships are very real, so a pen a paper may help keep all in order. The Author is not a writer of clichés, and the people and how they relate are in no way contrived. There is some unusual movement of players, and they sometimes concur with the death of another key character, it may just have been me, however there seemed much to follow.

This is the fifth work of the Authors that I have read, so I have by no means even reached the halfway mark in his work. Of the works I have read this is my favorite. This book is neither as complex as, "An Imaginary Life", nor as seemingly straightforward as, "The Conversations At Curlow Creek".The works I have read that were about the settlement of Australia were placed at the beginning of the earlier settlers history while this work shows the results and failures of the descendents of those pioneers.

The artist in the book reminded me of another Author's portrayal of a painter in. "The Moon And Sixpence", by W. Somerset Maugham. The artist's personalities are very different, and the issues they struggle with differ as well. I make the reference as it may cause an association to the better-known work. Mr. Malouf's work is every bit as good a read.

All of the attributes about the Author's work I have mentioned before I will try not to repeat, however in this work the manner with which he had his characters experience death was interesting to me. His writing of death and its dismantling of life is very well done, however the way he chose to deal with the actual instant of death was new as a reader for me. It occurs more than once, so I believe the note is something the Author wanted to make a point of. Death is hardly a new area, but as he has done in his previous books, he writes about aspects of what you believe you are familiar with and he brings a fresh perspective. His work is not derivative, it is unique as he takes a detail, a moment in time, and causes it to be a noteworthy event.

A wonderful writer, I look forward to the balance of his work.

Malouf's Struggling Artist.
David Malouf's Harland's Half Acre is by every standard a great book. Malouf has elected to deal the life of Frank Harland, a fictional Australian painter based loosely on real-life painter and recluse IanFairweather. Thematically, Malouf's book is comparable to Patrick White'sThe Vivisector, although Malouf's book certainly is a less demanding andfar more beautiful read.As usual, Malouf's almost liquid prose is beyondreproach, and the central characters are more substantialthan in previousworks.Harland's Half Acre has not received as much acclaim as othernovels by David Malouf, which is a great pity. The novel is not as grandlyimagined as Malouf's masterpiece An Imaginary Life, yet it follows in thefootsteps of Johnno, 12 Edmondstone St. and The Great World by painting anintensely personal picture of Australian history/memory. ... Read more

Product Description
Here are nine haunting stories from the award-winning author of Remembering Babylon, in which history and geography, as well as the past and the present, combine and often collide, illuminating the landscape and revealing the character of Australia.

An eleven-year-old boy sees his father in his own elongated shadow only to realize that he will not return from the war. In a parting moment, a young woman hired to “marry” vacationing soldiers, grasps the weight of the word “woe.” When a failing farmer senselessly murders a wandering aborigine, he imperils his son but discovers in the spring of sympathy that follows the power to influence others. Wise and moving, startling and lyrical, Dream Stuff reverberates with the unpredictability of human experience, revealing people who are shaped by the mysterious rhythms of nature as well as the ghosts of their own pasts.
Amazon.com Review
The Australian writer David Malouf, best noted for An Imaginary Life andRemembering Babylon,is a master of restraint. In Dream Stuff, he gives us a cast of lostAntipodeans. "Sally's Story" features a kind of homey prostitute toAmerican GIs during the VietnamWar. She offers soldiers not just sex but "an illusion of domestic felicityin the form of a soft-mouthed girl and the sort of walk-upcity-style living that is represented by an intercom and a prohibitionagainst the playing of loud music after eleven o'clock."Sally does not think this arrangement "would be damaging," but, the authortells us, "she was wrong." No further commentaryis granted us, nor is this woman allowed much more interiority. Malouffalls firmly into the show-don't-tell camp. In the end, what heshows us is Sally doing just what her GIs do: she seeks refuge in a strangeman's domestic arrangements.

Another refugee is Colin, the novelist protagonist of the title story. Uponhis mother's death, this Londoner returns to his nativeBrisbane. In "half a dozen fictions," he has recalled the Brisbane of hisyouth, "the density of tropical vegetation, timber soft tothe thumb, the drumming of rain on corrugated-iron roofs." Alas, what hefinds instead, is a "new addiction to metal andglass." The home he has plundered for his writing is gone, except, ofcourse, in his writing. He is further displaced bycircumstance: he lands, improbably, in jail. Malouf writes again and againof the way adult life necessarily distances us from thedream stuff of childhood. His characters ping back and forth between pastand present, unable to rest. Maybe this is a themeespecially haunting in Australia, with its literal watery distance fromeverywhere else. At any rate, Malouf's Australians demandcareful reading. When we pay attention, we start to feel unsettled too.--Claire Dederer ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Stories are boring
Sorry, I realize this writer and this collection has been critically acclaimed, but all I did reading it was yawn and wonder - where is the wonder!The pace is so slow, and the plots - what plots.Reads more like a narrative of one of my relatives boring lives.

I just don't understand the praise - 5 stars??????

What can I say?
This is perhaps one of the most phenomenal books I've read in the past year. Malouf's prose is intricate, flowing, and beautiful, and I found myself taking more time than usual after each story to ponder meanings and significances. Malouf is one of few writers to have completely mastered both style and content; his results are breathtaking. A must read.

the poetry of prose
David Malouf has written books that I return to and return to again for the language that is wonderful and the sense of place - Australia from its settlers' beginnings to modern time - that tells more about the uniqueness of that continent than a thousand pictures. One of the stories in this collection, Jacko's Reach is one of the most beautifully written evocations of the enduring quality of memory and wild places, full of mystery, that I have ever read. These are wonderful stories.

Great Talent With Short Stories
I have read and commented upon seven of the nine novels that David Malouf has written. His novels are not lengthy but they all share the great talent this writer has. "Dream Stuff", is a collection of nine short stories that appear together for the first time. Just as he has done many times over with his novels, he presents a series of shorter works that are uniformly very good, and some that are excellent.

There are two stories that were of great interest as the Author chose children to narrate the tale. At the age of 9 in, "Closer", a young girl is the hostess for the story, and in, "Blacksoil Country", our young male guide is but twelve. The choice of youth for narrators was interesting as the stories they shared were those of adult situations, feelings and actions. The word precocious would not accurately measure the insight these children have.

All of the stories tend toward the darker spectrums of Human Nature. Even when the tale may just be deeply sad I believe it still shows the more negative aspects of people and Family. There is one story that stands out for its absolute brutality. It is particularly savage as it is unexpected, and random in its violence. Unfortunately it reflects what we too often read of in the news.

I highly recommend the work of this Author. I have never picked up one of his works and come away with anything less than great admiration for his skill.

Poetry becomes prose
David Malouf is a brilliant writer, as those readers who have digested "Remebering Babylon", "Conversations at Curlew Creek", etc. can attest.Too often Malouf is classified as an Australian writer, a limiting category for a man who spendshalf his year in Australia ad the other half in Tuscany!But as far as the content of his works is concerned he references the immense, isolated Australia, a country very much in this century and yet still a part of the Last Frontier image.In his works he describes characters who somehow reflect that isolation, that pioneer spirit, that insular view of the world.In DREAM STUFF we are treated to hugely successful small stories that deal with man's tiny speck of space in a universe full of fear and trials.Malouf is able to completely inhabit the female narrator as in "Closer", a tale of Pentecostal dealing (or rather not dealing) with things sensual."Sally's Story" is the agar plate for a larger novel - a woman who understands that the only way she will experience life outside her cramped environment is to serve as a "hostess" to GIs on leave from Vietnam.In "Lone Pine" a couple escapes the secure tenderings of the workaday life in the city only to face nature in all its evil forces: their Idyll becomes the stage for murder by seemingly "decent folk".And on it goes.Malouf's language is lush while straight forward, his plots are deceptively simple until he leaves us wondering how to finish the dialogue he has started. Another brilliant book from one of the best writers of our time. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Product Description
In a sunlit piazza on an April morning, women throw buckets of water over the cobbles and men deliver trays of pastry to trattorie. In a barren room above, a fanatic watches, engaged in the details of his life's most important project: the assassination of one of Italy's most beloved men of letters.

In this penetrating novella, David Malouf, the highly acclaimed Australian author and finalist for the Booker Prize, plumbs the darker uses of our passions. Weaving a dense tapestry of sensual observation and personal events of mythic importance, he re-creates the frighteningly fascinating mind of a madman poised at his moment of truth. Dazzling in its beauty, intensely enigmatic, Child's Play conjures the mystical rising and falling of fear and pathos, where human idiosyncrasy and the incantatory rhythms of life give way to mania. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Child's Play
The main character of Child's Play, David Malouf's novella from 1982, is an assassin. He spends the hours from 8:30am until 7:00pm in a small office in an unnamed area of an unidentified city, studying his 'mark'. The man he is supposed to kill is a famed author, known internationally for his scintillating prose, known to the killer as a man of refined habits, heightened sensibilities, and a strong work ethic.

We are not told the name of the main character, though the story is written from a first person point of view. Indeed, a large number of characters either have no name, or are referred to by their name only a few times. This creates a tight, claustrophobic feel that allows for little in the way of sympathy or understanding.

The narrator has been uprooted from his life - we assume willingly - and made to live in a new city, in a new home, so that he can work and study. The office where he spends the majority of his time is clean and sparse, there is no talking. In the room where the five assassins that make up our narrator's group is filled with desks and filing cabinets and little else. Personal items, while not forbidden (by who?), are not extant in this tiny room. Elsewhere there is a room for sleeping, inhabited by someone, though the narrator suspects the person does not exist. This belief is reinforced by the arsenal of weapons, bombs and grenades scattered throughout the room - who would sleep there?

We learn, in what is almost a catalogue of details, the particulars of the narrator's work colleagues. They are not working on the same project as he, or if they are, he doesn't know it. We have Carla, a disconcerting woman. Enzo, the alpha male who struggles to show his masculine supremacy in an office routine that is dominated by silence. There are more, but they don't matter. Nor do Carla and Enzo.

Further details don't matter, but we are given them. The narrator has a father, with whom he shares a close but silent bond. 'It disturbs me that in this period of isolation I am forbidden to write to him.' In this short novella, totaling only 147 pages, a full ten page chapter is devoted to the narrator's father, sentences and paragraphs later, bear his touch. Why do we need to know this? The narrator makes it clear that his past is as irrelevant as his future - it is the job, the now, the present, that we should concern ourselves.

It is the chapter regarding the narrator's father that first poses a question in the reader's mind. Why are we reading about his father? Why do we care? The narrator explicitly refuses to detail his personality, his dreams, his previous life, and yet we are forced to suffer through a large section on his father? It is not an excuse that the writing is so sure, so elegant, so understated.

Yes, why are we reading these unnecessary details? Why do we go into an exhaustive recreation of the author's life - the one the narrator is contracted to kill? Pages and pages are spent on items that seem to have no relevance to the plot, or the character. Why is this? What is Malouf trying to achieve?

Explicitly, the narrator has no personality. He rejects personality. 'I am invisible', he states in an early passage. Again and again, the 'who' of the narrator is declared to be irrelevant. In effect, we have a protagonist for whom we cannot care. Because of the cold nature of the text, we are waiting for a revelation, or a secret, that will explain the ever-present mystery. But there is nothing. No revelation, no closure to our reading.

Everything is anonymous. People have no names, or they are fake. We are not given a reason as to why this famous author should die, but nor does the narrator know. He is doing his duty. What duty? To whom?

The most frustrating aspect of this novel is that it has no answers, it offers nothing in the way of closure or revelation, and yet it works double time to create a massive layer of mystery. Can we care about an unknown if the knowns are completely boring and dull? Should we stretch our imagination on a topic that inspires nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders?

To be as plain as can be: we are cheated. There are arguments that suggest that the reader has as much responsibility to work as the author, but I cannot expect that this excuse for obfuscation and sheer nothingness would hold up for this text. It is not my fault that a grander meaning is not there - it is the author's, for writing a piece that is, ultimately, about nothing at all. Should I put the entire novella down to an exercise in a text eschewing the need for meaning, resolution, character, plot, or insight? No, I cannot do that. I refuse to cheat others as I myself have been cheated. Child's Play is an unfair novel. It is all string, without a carrot in sight.

Malouf is a talented writer. Throughout, there are passages of great artistry. The narrator describing the daily routine of the master author is a section of particular note. 'Lighter in touch, more daring than anything he would have attempted in his great days or even ten years ago, it is a kind of scherzo in which his deepest themes reappear in travesty, as if, behind all their grandeur, their imperious graspings after the ideal, their noble solemnities, we were invited to see a group of children dressed up in their parents' clothes, the attic finery of a vanished era.' This is interesting writing, this is compelling imagery. But what do we have to show for all of this? Nothing at all. The narrator purports to be a cipher to a grand mystery, but he isn't. Clear the smoke and smash the mirrors - there isn't anything here.

A virtuoso performance.
Like an elaborate concert piece sung by a soloist to display his full range of talents, this early tour de force by Malouf showcases his remarkable versatility with literary styles, a talent which comes to full fruition in his later award-winning novels.Taking us into the mind of a terrorist/assassin as he waits to commit a murder, this novella may have been shocking when it was written in 1982, but its impact has been lessened to the point of insignificance by contemporary events.The story's impact is further lessened because Malouf keeps us at a distance from the killer, severely restricting the killer's consciousness to his sense impressions about the world around him, his remembrances and warm feelings toward his childhood and family, his everyday life, and his philosophical musings about his predestined relationship with his chosen victim.The reader is given no clue about what has made this man a terrorist or what his ultimate purpose might be--he is like a child playing a very deadly game.

Malouf's dense images of the sights, sounds, and smells of rural Italy, of the city where a terrorist murder is planned, and of the distant piazza where the murder will take place are vibrantly alive.The main character's affection for his father, some lovely vignettes about his life in the country, and his kindness to an elderly woman in his apartment building make the killer seem not only human, but even personally admirable.His ability to transport himself into the mind of his victim, and his beliefs about death and destiny show his sensitivity and his intelligence, certainly fine traits.Ultimately, however, I didn't find the limited exploration of the killer's mind to be enough of goal in its own right--I wanted the author to provide a sense of significance and context for what otherwise appears to be a motiveless killing by an intelligent and sensitive man.Mary Whipple

Remarkable Human Study
The act of taking of another life, an act further degraded and depraved by its mechanical nature, an act bereft of any rationalization a society could remotely understand, the death of one at the hands of another, here, is reduced to a job.

Mr. David Malouf through his novella, "Child's Play", brings the mind of a killer very close to the reader, for some perhaps uncomfortably close. There is nothing in this work of the traditional hired assassin, the master of weapons, disguises, and as many passports as there are Nations. Nothing here is familiar much less cliché. The Killer does not seem to even know what he feels his action is to be. He refers to it as a crime, a work in progress, and an act of violence, plain butchery, and much more.

He seems also to grapple with what he is in this act with so many descriptions. Is he a terrorist, murderer, a break from the normal progression of life, is he against Nature, or a part of the Natural Order? The Author even explores when in fact this killing will become fact. The easy presumption is at the moment it takes place, however Mr. Malouf goes much deeper. He suggests the moment and location of the death is meaningless until it is known, until it is reported. And here again he treats us to a barrage of interpretations.

I have become attracted to the skill that certain Authors have to communicate volumes of information in very short spaces. This particular work is only 145 pages in length, but due to its density of thought, it reads and feels much longer. You may well feel more drained from this comparatively brief work, than others of much greater length.

Mr. Malouf is an Author with multiple awards, and nominations to his credit. I enjoyed this first book immensely, and look forward to many more.

Beautifully Disturbing
As always, Malouf's writing is stunning.I was drawn in unable to stopreading even when the story itself became very disturbing.Although not myfarvorite of his books, I always enjoy the feeling that his writing evokes. ... Read more

Product Description
From the image of a small boy entranced by his mother's GI escort, yet still hoping for the return of his father 'missing in action', to the portrait of an adult writer trying to piece together a defining image of his late father, these outstanding stories conjure up with dazzling intensity the memories and events that make a man. Through the unreliable layers of family archaeology, they uncover earlier, vulnerable selves, moments of innocence or shame, and unfinished business, illuminated by shocking flashes of unpredictable violence and pain, or glints of sly humour. In the brilliant cornerstone story, the stuff of dreams is both real and imagined -rumoured fields of cannabis picked in secret by migrant workers, or a nightmare encounter on a dark Brisbane street. In 'Night Training' a military recruit is scarred by his own complicity in a bizarre nightly ritual; and in 'Sally's Story', a 'comfort' girl looks for comfort of her own. Here are men and women in search of connection, or equally wary of it - whether with each other or with past selves. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Terrible
This is a book I would like to erase from my memory. It's pure mediocrity astounds me. The stories are obviously supposed to be deep and emotional and moving *tear* but they fail abysmally. They are, to a man, a flop. Pointless, boring, inane. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"A life wasn't for anything. It simply was."
Child's Play, an early tour de force, showcases Australian author David Malouf's remarkable versatility and his focus on ideas and themes. Taking us into the mind of a terrorist/assassin as he waits to commit a murder, Malouf shows him to be a "normal" person with the same thoughts and reactions to the world around him as everyone else. Malouf keeps us at a distance from the killer, however, restricting the killer's consciousness to his sense impressions about the world around him, his remembrances and warm feelings toward his childhood and family, his everyday life, and his philosophical musings about his predestined relationship with his chosen victim.

Though this novella was probably considered shocking when it was written in 1982, its impact has been lessened to the point of insignificance by recent events. The reader is given no clue about what has made this man a terrorist or what his ultimate purpose might be, and Malouf provides no sense of significance or context for what otherwise appears to be a motiveless killing by an intelligent and sensitive man. The assassin is, in many ways, like a child playing a very deadly game.

Malouf uses a similar technique in The Bread of Time to Come, also known as Fly Away Peter, though this novella is more emotionally involving than Child's Play. Here the main character, Jim Saddler, the opposite of the assassin in many ways, also seems detached from his life and also naïve. A young man whose chief pleasure is acting as a guide at a bird sanctuary in coastal Queensland, he has been protected from many of life's cruel realities by Australia's physical isolation from the wider world. This changes when he finds himself, along with his employer/friend Ashley Crowther, fighting in France during World War I.

From the opening scene, which sets up dramatic contrasts between a bird and a biplane, Malouf emphasizes the contrasts between the "civilized" and "natural" worlds and between the Garden of Eden of the bird sanctuary, and the violence and killing of war. Jim's discoveries about life and about himself are straightforward and are enhanced by the author's use of repetitions, a great deal of symbolism, and numerous contrasts: Even during war, Jim sees migrating birds.

In both books, Malouf presents dense imagery of sights, sounds, and smells; lovely vignettes about country life; and characters who seem both intelligent and sensitive. The "civilized" world of Europe is, in both cases, seen to be fraught with violence and random cruelty. The Bread of Time to Come, however, reveals a character who comes to realizations about his place in the universe. The terrorist in Child's Play has no world view. Dramatic and thought-provoking, Malouf's novels richly reward the reader looking for intelligent and vibrant prose. Mary Whipple
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

JUST BITS AND PIECES
Oh gosh I was disappointed in this book!I had to track it down because I was really inspired to read it by my interest in all things Australian recently.But..... this is not an autobiography in any sense of the word; it consists of bits and pieces of information about places where Malouf has lived over the years, and the writing seems almost flight of fancy....I guess it's based on truth?I was very disappointed because of ALL the fabulous autobiographical writing to come out of Australia.This doesn't measure up by a long shot.Sorry.I hate to give poor reviews, but I also hate being disappointed in books.... ... Read more

Product Description