The Solid Mandala [Hardcover]

Patrick White (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 11, 1966

This is the story of two people living one life. Arthur and Waldo Brown were born twins and destined never to to grow away from each other. They spent their childhood together. Their youth together. Middle-age together. Retirement together. They even shared the same girl. They shared everything - except their view of things. Waldo, with his intelligence, saw everything and understood little. Arthur was the fool who didn't bother to look. He understood.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition. s edition (February 11, 1966)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670656321
• ISBN-13: 978-0670656325
• Product Dimensions: 20 x 20 x 20 inches
• Shipping Weight: 20 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,919,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic, July 19, 2001

By 

Tom Munro "tomfrombrunswick" (Melbourne, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Solid Mandala (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

Patrick White is of course Australia's most famous novelist. He lived for some time in exile but returned to Australia and lived there for some years before dying some years ago. He was a somewhat prickly character but his winning of the Nobel Prize for literature helped solidify his reputation.

This book is unusual in is clarity and sheer joy. A number of White's books are heavy going, densely written and pretentious. This book however was simply sheer delight. It concerns two old men who live together and are brothers. One is reasonably intelligent and has worked in a library. The other is what might be described as intellectually simple. The book consists of both of these characters speaking and talking about their lives and their past.

White was a gay man who lived most of his life with a companion who he was deeply attached to. One suspects that the book is loosely based on their later life, but of course this is only speculation. The character who is most hardly done by is the librarian who clearly is White.

It is hard really to describe the delight and joy of the book, however once I picked it up I could not stop reading it.