Remembering Babylon by David Malouf
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel approaches its subject, the return of a white man raised by indigenous Australians to his community of origin, with a succinctness that almost renders the story slight. But the beauty of the prose and the deftness of the Malouf’s choices make the book a surprise. There is a hint of Omensetter’s Luck in the shape of the tale though Malouf is very much clearer in his prose than Gass. For me clarity is a plus. There is a story that emerges, and it has Gemmy at its center, but it ranges afield into the vivid others who surround him, question him, presume to know him, who once shared kinship with him, but who find him strange and dangerous in his return. The story is important, the depiction of the original peoples of Australia, though scant, is pure, though it has elements of the magical other. As if wiser, nearly invisible elves moved amongst the white settlers. There are moments of the fantastical in the effect of these people on Gemmy, in the way their culture has aligned him to different ideas of the world. This part of the book is unerring and really wonderful. For the first half of the novel I felt as thought I had stumbled on a treasure, though Malouf is, of course, well known. But the latter part of the book whimpers and fades. There is an odd choice to have Gemmy simply dissolve out of the book and the passage of time to take the place of the culmination one expects. I admired this as a choice but am sorry that the book did not end in some stronger way.