Summerland [Paperback]

Malcolm Knox (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Random House (2000)
• ISBN-10: 0091841925
• ISBN-13: 978-0091841928
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 'Australia's Kundera' tackles Sydney's yuppies, August 15, 2001

By 

Mark Young (Brisbane, Queensland Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Summerland: A Novel (Hardcover)

Malcolm Knox's first novel is an emotional X-Ray of four young Sydney 'movers and shakers', Hugh, Richard, Pup and Helen. Richard is the narrator of this real-life story of passion without love, and family without connection, through the years of early adulthood around Sydney's northern beaches. So much of Knox's style reminds me of Milan Kundera, the Czech author of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", with a hint of Tim Winton's freakish ability for character-assassination. The lead actor in this tragedy, Hugh, embodies privilege, vanity, and ego in search of a larger universe. Pup ("Philippa") is the struggling artist of the group, writing novels of rejection from a viewpoint of lovelessness. Richard is the 'innocent' of the four, who loves the group more than himself or his marriage to Pup. Helen is the 'martyr', an other-worldly princess who carries Hugh's secrets as well as her own family shame. The portrayals of lifestyle and moral decision-making are shocking and vivid - the author takes us from a vision of stunted love almost to one of blossoming evil. I look forward to the ABC-TV (or will it be Channel 10?) dramatic representation of this biting tale of emotional blindness and mutation (I've already cast David Wenham, Jeremy Sims, Essie Davis and Georgie Parker in my mind). A revelation of the high-powered 'summer world' to which many, perhaps tragically, devote their life's work. A great first novel.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Work Of Art......Movie Material I'd Say, August 13, 2001

By 

Heather Marshall Negahdar "Haze" (Bridgetown, Barbados) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Summerland: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book is set in Australia and could turn out to be beautiful movie material actually.

I was captured from the word go. Meticiously narrated by Richard one of the characters, I would be delighted to see this fine piece of work on the big screen some day with these wondefully rich (in every sense of the word) characters. These were societies golden ones with the prvilleges of beauty, youth and wealth.

Richard, now suffering from insomnia plays back the details of the lives of his friends Hugh, Helen and he Richard and his wife Pup from the ages of seventeen to the present age; thirty seven.

He has lost his wife Pup and his best friend Hugh, and on his thirty seventh birthday and with a bit of help from a a ew bottles of whisky as his aid he uncovers their long ago charmed existence.

From prefects at schools they come into adulthood as partners in the firms they work with. This quartet travels to Palm Beach every year after Christmas and live their lives to the hilt as social butterflies, oblivious of the danger around each corner, and the still waters which run a touch too deep.

Mr Knox writes with such elucidation, I could see the scenes played out before me in this well crafted and fine work of art.

Thanks to the first review from England's Guardian Newspaper and thanks to my sister Jan who ordered it for me from Amazon pronto.

If you haven't read a book that touches your heart in a long while, this book Summerland is highly reccommended. See for yourself the wonderful art of this first novelist Mr. Knox, and order from Amazon today. I hope I will see Summerland on the big screen soon. I really do.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Almost great, May 27, 2002

By 

Steven Reynolds (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Summerland: A Novel (Paperback)

"Summerland" has a strong premise, four interesting characters, and an author with a lot of guts - it takes some nerve for a first-timer to deliberately court comparisons with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Madox Ford. Unfortunately, the gamble doesn't entirely pay off. For me, the enterprise is ultimately undone by the narrator's journalistic tone of detached amusement. It's as if he never really knew these people, never really had these experiences, and is only pretending to care. I sense no real pain in Richard's telling, no real regret, so as the story of a man whose life has been obliterated by treachery it just didn't ring true. The voice fights with itself, wandering into anecdotes and tangential ramblings in a tone suggesting Knox might have been happier writing an essay entitled "Reflections on the Ruling Class". I think I might have been happier reading it, too: Knox clearly has a good mind and a sharp appreciation for the cant and hypocrisy of Sydney's idle rich. He's an excellent writer, but I think his talent could have made more of this material as an extended sociological essay - much like Lewis Lapham's "Money & Class In America". No one has exposed the rotten core of Sydney High Society in quite that way, and I reckon Knox is just the man for the job. It's still an enjoyable read. But perhaps asking for comparisons with Fitzgerald sets the wrong expectations up front.