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Romulus, My Father Pb

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"Romulus, my Father" is a brilliant story!
This book has encouraged me to read and enjoy books.

Through this book we learn the of the hard time Romulus has gone through in his life, these are real life situations and is a clear perspective on a world that shuns imagrants.

A top read, i highly encourage you to read it!

Review by ~Mad Max~
Aged 15

Romulus, My Father is about how a kindhearted and truthful man taught his son the meaning of life and its values, what to expect and what to feel. He gave he's son a chance to witness first hand through his life about friendship and the joy of life. The self-respect and self-gratification of being able to work. Romulus teaches his son of passion, infidelity and in the end how to cope with mental illness as a man. Setting a true example by being able to survive the true hardship of living and working in a foreign country.

Raimond Gaita tells his father's story with such love for him and the people in their lives. He shows how a child can love the people in his life and find the good in these people in spite of the circumstances and trials that often surrounded them. He showed the strength and kindness of his father as well as that of Hora, his father's friend, and many others in their community. He also shows, without evident bitterness, the illness and weakness with which some were afflicted. This author drew me in so well, in the end, I was moved to tears.

Raimond Gaita's fine book is a swansong for a much loved father, an ordinary, struggling immigrant faced with the harsh reality of living in an invironment of deep myopic mistrust. This book is hugely revelatory for a son, a daughter, or loved one of any number of immigrants to Australia, and a must read for those who are looking for the real Australia, a land made by the legacy of 200 years of immigrantion, a land of harsh conditions, a rugged country and a population as much intollerant and racist as it is wonderous and diverse. The rural image of the dry scorched earth sits in the psyche of the reader as does a sons love for the father who although named Romulus was a Remus in many ways, a battler and underdog to the end.

So is a book about a well known person who is evil and hurts countless people a good read because he was famous and rich?

Life isn't a tabloid. Success isn't about wealth, power, and fame.

The book is a stunning gem on par with Marcel Pagnol's "My Father's Glory" or perhaps rather tindged with a speckling of Le Clezio's "Mondo".

Sometimes the most powerful stories are also about the most simple ordinary people.

"Romulus, My Father" is to literature what Ray Davies songs are to popular music; a crafted story about real people dealing with real issues, believeable and true; little bits and pieces of moody rainy afternoons and sunny summer holidays at the seaside that are woven together just perfectly.

Now go escape to your world of fantasy books and leave the real literature to people who are trying to learn about life, love, and reality, rather then escape it.

A lawyer . . . figures.

THANK YOU.

THE VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY

This book is a memoir and a tribute to Romulus Gaita (1922-1996) by his son Raimond. Raimond's eulogy for his father was published in Quadrant magazine in 1996, and was then developed into this book. Who was Romulus Gaita, and why read this memoir? Romulus Gaita was born in Markovac, a village in a Romanian-speaking part of Yugoslavia in 1922. At the age of 13, Romulus fled his home in Yugoslavia. The memoir briefly describes Romulus Gaita's early life in Europe, and his arrival in Australia in April 1950 as an assisted migrant, together with his wife Christine and their four year old son Raimond.

`Ersatz coffee became a symbol of that time in Germany, but ersatz liver sausage, made of pulped wood, is a symbol closer to the reality.'

Once Romulus and his family arrived in Australia, they were transferred to Bonegilla, a migrant camp in north-eastern Victoria. Romulus Gaita was sent to Baringhup, in central Victoria to work on the construction of a dam on the Loddon River. This is Romulus's story, and while a number of others feature in it (especially Christine, Raimond and the Hora brothers) it is Romulus who remains in the centre. The stories of the others are really only told as they relate to Romulus.

In some ways, Romulus's story has much in common with many other Europeans who immigrated to Australia after the turmoil of World War II. Assisted migrants were required to work for two years at jobs chosen by the Australian government, jobs that did not always take into account their previous training and skills. But what makes this memoir so moving is Raimond`s depiction of a flawed and vulnerable man, a man who did his best to care for his son when his wife was incapable of doing so. Romulus Gaita was a man full of contradictions: a compassionate man who was calm, patient, stoical in the face of disaster, capable of unconditional love and great kindness, judgemental at times, and sometimes suicidal and despairing. But despite these contradictions (or perhaps because of them) the picture of Romulus Gaita we see is of a man true to his own values, a man intolerant of lies and a man who believed that if you started something you should finish it.

`Never believe that I don't love you.'

Raimond Gaita's account of his father's life is analytical, eloquent and beautifully written. He does not shy away from the difficulties his parents encountered - their tragedies, their episodes of illness, their battles with ignorance as a consequence of difference. Life for `new Australians' of a non-English speaking background, in the 1950s, could be difficult. The labour provided was necessary and generally welcomed; the educational, cultural and language differences generally were not.

I enjoyed reading this memoir of, tribute to Romulus Gaita. For all its sadness and tragedy, there is also hope and humour. I have an image of Romulus Gaita, both as an individual and as one of many people who left Europe to build a new life in Australia. Romulus Gaita lived a difficult but fulfilling life. Romulus Gaita was a good man.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Who cares about this totally undistinguished and uniteresting life. Not me. Waste of money.