Customer Reviews

Fly Away Peter

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Malouf deals with big themes here: the continuities of nature; the horror of human conflict; our desire to hold onto the past, and the necessity of relinquishing it. But he handles them in such a personal, beautiful and profoundly moving way that he manages to say it all in under 150 pages. Some readers might prefer more languorous pacing, but Malouf has no reason to stall. Unlike many writers, he knows precisely what he's doing. His precision is utterly astounding. He can say more, move you more, in a dozen pages than lesser writers seem to manage in whole careers. Chapter 14, scarcely more than 2000 words, is the most powerful account of the Great War - what it meant, what it can be made to mean - that I have ever read.

David Malouf's prize winning novel, 'Fly Away Peter' is a beautifully written story that both beautifies and simplifies the life of humans and animals. Malouf has to be considered as one of Australia's leading writers and poets. This novel is not a story to be read if one is after light entertainment. It is truly the work of a poet, a fine piece of literature. His descriptive text beckons the reader to find a deeper meaning. The simple messages of love, friendship and the beauty of life are both refreshing and moving. Do not attempt to read it if you are after cheap thrills. This book needs to be savoured. It follows the lives of three main characters, Ashley, Jim and Imogen. Together they appreciate the joyous beauty of nature by studying and photographing a sanctuary owned by Ashley. However the terror of war rips the paradise apart and leaves the three friends seperated and questioning the meaning of life. Through different experiences, each character comes to a similar conclusion, that life is simple, beautiful and a gift to be enjoyed. It will go on over any hurdles. There are always survivors. An interesting read if you are having difficulties facing each day.

I have read most of Mr. Malouf's novels and he is an Author of remarkable talent and consistency. It has generally not been whether a given work is good, just how very good it is. He almost competes with himself alone when he pens another work. This work, "Fly Away Peter", is closer to a novella in length, but felt a bit crowded when read. It would seem examining an issue in depth, or a general theme in breadth can be accomplished without a regard for length, rather just skill. This time out I felt there was room for two or three times the length of the actual work.

This book promises to deal with the issue of men from different classes of life, how they place the strata of society aside and become partners. And then to narrate how the First World War draws the two different men into its maw. These men are not the only characters, and it is not just their histories the Author must communicate. When all of these aspects are brought together in barely 134 pages, it became incomplete for me, almost claustrophobic. Mr. Malouf is a remarkable writer and poet. To read any of his work is to read great literature from this admired Australian Author.

The four stars may seem to contradict what I have said, however I cannot go back and change all of the previous books of his I have commented upon. This is excellent reading when placed next to much of what is available; it only comes up short when compared to the balance of his work. It certainly is worth the time to read and enjoy, it should probably be placed at the beginning of reading his body of work, rather than near its end.

"The interesting part of Fly Away Peter is the depiction of war. The novel moves too slowly until we get to that part."

The statement may be true if Fly Away Peter is read simply for the depiction of war. There is however, more of interest to the novel than just war. Fly away Peter moves at a very reasonable rate. When Jim is introduced, then Ashley too, at first the reader is told little about them. Their characters are developed gradually so that it is not until halfway through the novel that the reader starts to know them. At this stage he goes to war. Malouf depicts the atrocities of war well, the trenches, the duckboards and the way the English officers had no idea, but he also shows the other side of the coin at the start, like paradise, a Garden of Eden. The sanctuary where Jim worked for Ashley, the swamp in it - this was Jim's Eden. Then he went to war and he found his Hell.

In the novel Malouf shows attention to detail, but doesn't overdo it. You can feel the passion he writes with, when describing the birds, the swamp and Queensland. Jim's paradise, the swamp, and the land in the sanctuary are described, but a little bit is left to your imagination. This is so that it can take on a little of your own idea of paradise. Jim's father has taken a negative attitude towards life, as a result of his life experiences. He resents Jim and his association with the upper class lot. Jim doesn't have his father's sense of class distinction and is not self-conscious of differences between the classes. Ashley, Jim and Imogen Harcourt (a photographer) all have the common bond of the swamp and the sanctuary. This is where they go to see the different birds.

Jim goes to war. The book speeds up here a little, but this I think is due to the change of pace that Jim undergoes. Back in Queensland, the pace is one that is easygoing, and slow, when he gets to war, there is the quick on the spot decisions that you need to make, and can't spend much time thinking it over or you will be dead. Malouf understands this and picks up on it whilst writing. "Jim saw that he had been living, till he came here, in a state of dangerous innocence. The world when you looked from both sides was quite other than a placid, slow-moving dream, without change of climate or colour and with time and place for all. He had been blind." (Chapter 14, pp. 103.) "Time, even in the dimension of his own life, had lost all meaning for him." (Chapter 13, pp. 104) But this part isn't just about the horrors of war, Malouf shows us that in some ways the war can make people admit what it is like to actually be human. As all Jim's friends, and companions die in the war, he understands what is happening and seems to be defeated. As he watches an old man plant his crops, he realises that even though people, plants, animals and birds are confronted by the most horrific situations they still continue and refuse to be defeated. Jim gets some courage from this and goes on.

Some people may think that the book moves too slowly until the war. I disagree with them. I think that the pace of the book is just right, as it helps develop the scene and contrast. At the start it is slow but not too slow, and shows how Jim really is, what his life has been like till that point - very laid back. The novel gently speeds up as Jim needs to make snap decisions, to think quickly and act whilst he is doing all of this. The depiction of war is not all this book's about. It provides a comparison between Jim's Eden and his Hell. The pace at the start is necessary to reflect the peace of Jim's early life.

I highly recommend "Fly Away Peter" to anyone who either enjoys reading David Malouf's work or to anyone who may be discovering him for the first time. In this book, Malouf's images of the absolute horrors of war are nothing short of amazing. I could almost smell the stench of dead and dying bodies while I read. Battle after battle you find yourself praying for our hero to make it through once more. I have read several of Malouf's works and found this one to be particularly haunting. The characters of Jim Saddler and Ashley Crowther became so well know to me, that in the final pages of the book I found myself in tears. It was so moving I couldn't help myself. Read "Fly Away Peter" and I guarantee you too will be hooked on Malouf. He is not only one of the finest writers in Australia but without a doubt one of the finest writers of our time.

..Malouf's writing shines with nothing but a beautiful magic in his telling of human existence. Personally I prefered the first half of the book, with his slow but thoroughly engaging depictions of 3 people's shared happy laziness in the corner of an Australian lake. The war was also wonderfully drawn, but it carries all of its power in the contrast, and its emotional affect on the otherwise unaffected 'other side of the world'. No question it's Malouf's best.

I read this as a part of my year 12 English studies. Malouf has expressed his thought throughout this book, that despite everything and anything that goes on around us, nature continues. He looks at the war in a very different way to any other authors have before. His work is very philosophical and consists of very very lengthy sentences-- his chosen style! This novel is quite a heart felt book and Malouf's use of imagery is effective.

This is an exquisite little novella that begins in beauty on the coast of Queensland and ends (almost) in the mud of Flanders on the other side of the world. Birds, of course, make similar migrations; this is one of the things that fascinates 20-year-old Jim Saddler as he studies birds with borrowed binoculars, noting their species, their habits, their comings and goings. He strikes up a friendship with Ashley Crowther, the young owner of this stretch of Australian farmland, and also with Imogen Harcourt, a middle-aged photographer with a similar passion. But then the 1914 War breaks out, and Jim and Ashley sign up, in different regiments and at different ranks.

There are many books about the Western Front. The ingredients are all much the same: boredom, companionship, carnage. What makes one stand out from another is the quality of the writing, the particular point of view, and whatever aspects of normal life the author chooses to set against the obscenity of war. The last book I read about the trenches, for example, Sebastian Barry's A LONG LONG WAY, was written with a rich Irish poetry, kept its point of view very much at ground level, and set the War against the very different Irish fight for independence back home. Malouf's writing is also poetic, but simpler, and he excels particularly at describing the air above and the land behind the war, as in the following:

"Often, as Jim later discovered, you entered the war through an ordinary looking gap in a hedge. One minute you were in a ploughed field, with snowy troughs between ridges that marked old furrows and peasants off at the edge of it digging turnips or winter greens, and the next you were through the hedge and on duckboards, and although you could look back and still see the farmers at work, or sullenly watching as the soldiers passed over their land and went slowly below ground, there was all the difference in the world between your state and theirs. They were in a field and very nearly at home. You were in the trench system that led to the war."

But it is Malouf's juxtaposition of the battlefield to the Australian nature reserve that is so daring. For there is no possibility of a literal resolution that connects them. Indeed, Malouf seems to avoid following narrative links; Ashley and Jim barely meet again, and the biplane so prominently featured on the cover ultimately serves only to offer Jim a metaphor for his own bird's eye view on life. Yet it is an important metaphor. The two halves of the book portray beauty and destruction with memorable power. But the coherence of the novel as a whole depends upon the final chapter, which returns to Imogen Harcourt watching the birds among the sand dunes. I had to sleep on this and re-read it for it to fully work, but now I see the beauty in her simple understanding of the life that connects both birds and man.

Having studied this text for my year 12 studies, I thought that no novel could ever be better than this one. Having the advantage of being able to relate to the novel from past experience, it was like reliving those days with Jim and Ashley. An obsolutely outsanding book and it deserved every right to hold the title of the book of the year. Congratulations once again on a successful book. It'll be a long time till another book will come close to topping this one. David will always be a legend.

A novel about the horrors of running around on the battlefield during world war one, in the main. Unforunately, it is also a very dull example of the same.

The good thing then in that respect, is that it is also quite short so you don't have to put up with it for every long.