Monday, May 09, 2005

Fly Away Peter (David Malouf)

It’s one o’clock in the morning in Auckland and I just finished reading David Malouf’s short novel (134 pages) FLY AWAY PETER (1982). It’s a work of tremendous accuracy. The style is so precise it takes your breath away. And its theme is so heavy; how we are distant from birds, how much of us are brave enough to be birds. The story begins on the Queensland Coast of Australia. It’s 1914, and we have three characters of which two are essential. Jim, a 20-year old youth with solid knowledge of birds, and Imogen, a middle-aged woman nature photographer from England. In a sense, it’s a very platonic love story between Jim and Imogen that transcends human history. They both belong to the tribe who sees through time—into the sense of existence, of simply existing, that fills the vibrant natural world.

A sample paragraph from the book’s near-end .

October here was spring. Sunlight and no wind.
The sea cut channels in the beach, great Vs that were delicately ridged at the edges and ribbed within, and the sunlit rippled in them, an inch, an inch and a half of shimmering gold. Further on, the surf. High walls of water were suspended a moment, held glassily aloft, then hurled themselves forward under a shower of spindrift, a white rush that ran hissing to her boots. There were gulls, dense clouds of them hanging low over the white-caps, feeding, oystercatchers darting after crabs, crested terns. A still scene that was full of intense activity and endless change. (129)

C’est la plenitude de la vie qui s’impose, and tinged with immense sadness. This is the first book by Malouf that I read… I will surely read more of him. But where does the “Peter” in the title come from? I’m afraid I didn’t catch that.