Customer Reviews

Woman of the Inner Sea

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

 

 

I read this book several years ago and can vividly recall how lyrical the prose and story are. I knew nothing of it, and so hate to reveal anything - even the Kirkus review is too detailed. Kate, our heroine, is full of sorrow - as her uncle refers to her. After her beloved children are killed in a fire, she walks away from life into the Australian outback. More startling to me even than her children's death is the event that leads to her return to Sydney. One of my friends thought the end was unsatisfying, but I found it perfect. Keneally is just an incredible author - read this, then The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, then Schindler's List. Why he isn't better-known in the U.S. is beyond me.

For many years, English explorers in Australia were convinced the centre of the island continent hid a vast ocean. The dream of an easy, controlled passage from the settled south- east coast to Asian markets remained a fixation. Charles Sturt is renowned in Australia for lugging a huge whaleboat into the arid Centre without ever finding a place to float it. John Eyre glimpsed the elusive lake that bears his name - a body of water which can extended for hundreds of kilometres or nearly disappear depending on far distant and erratic rainfall. Australia can have an Inner Sea, but it's an ephemeral phenomenon, appearing with devastating suddeness, then dribbling away into the desert sands. When human communities exist where that sea wants to form, extensive damage to crops and homes may result.

Thomas Keneally places the story of Kate Gaffney-Kosinski in this environment. Her children lost in a house fire, she flees Sydney for the land of the Inner Sea. Her emotional swag is laden with her Irish heritage and the vagaries of her faithless husband. Heavier than these, however, is the sense guilt borne of thinking herself responsible for the lost of little Bernard and Siobhan. She's not certain what the Centre will provide in the way of healing power, but it's away from the scenes of so much grief.

Arriving at an Outback village, Kate resides in a pub, trying to bury her past. But this town is known as the Venice of Wrangle Shire. Rains from the North brings water gathering in the fields around the town. Kate, who has taken up with Jelly, an explosives expert, is swept into events nearly as helpless as those surrounding the loss of her children. Her losses haven't ended, however, and her strengths will continue to be tested even in this remote place.

Keneally uses two of Australia's most prominent animals, a kangaroo and an emu in the keeping of Gus Schulberger. This aspect of the book seems contrived at first. Gus illustrates a character scattered through Australian literature - the battler, a man [invariably] "striving against banks and weather" in his efforts to gain security. Accompanied by creatures of almost divine status in Australia, Gus typifies the European insertion into that harsh, extensive world.

It's for women to tell us how well Keneally has done in portraying their feelings and responses in the circumstances Kate endures. From a man's point of view, he's succeeded. Kate's being subjected to various disturbing pressures are portrayed admirably. He is a master story teller and this book is no departure from his other successes. What would the world have lost if he had succeeded in pursuing his original ambition to enter the Catholic priesthood in Sydney? Fortunately, three dozen books later, he remains a major figure in the literature of historical fiction. Without peer in this realm, each of his books deserves space on your shelves. Many of them are eligible for repeat reading. Woman of the Inner Sea is one of those.

The central idea of this book, it seemed to me, has to do with abandoning one life for another. If one thinks of this as essentially the American idea of reinventing oneself, Thomas Kenneally informs us that it is also very Australian, and rightly so, for Australia is a land that is full of hiding places for those who wish not to be found. The protagonist is a woman who can no longer bear the agony of her existence after the death of her children--and so attempts to do away with her identity and her history by traveling to the Outback under an assumed name. Simple enough, one might think--but here is where Kenneally's genius takes root, for we are taken on a wild and wooly ride as Kate becomes deeply embedded in the lives of a diverse set of characters, unschooled and totally remote from the sophistition and nuance that formed her own upbringing. A wild bunch indeed, they are incredibly touching in their sense of loyalty and courage. There is a surreal quality to this adventure that is heightened even more by the introduction of two pets, a kangaroo and an emu, native species which are somehow incorporated into this world of carnival and misadventure--an Australian "Don Quixote." A brilliant and stirring enactment--let them try to make a film of it!!

I began reading this book for an English project. I had no idea what it was about, but I quickly became involoved in Kate's life. This story was very interesting and kept me reading on. Keneally does a good job developing Kate's character and keeping the reader in suspense.

I suffered through three-quarters of this book then took it back to the libary without bothering to finish it. i simply DID NOT CARE about the story or characters. I told myself if the author wrote, "dear bookbuyer" one more time within the book, I'd throw the book into a river (which I couldn't do since it wasn't my book, but would have loved to!) I was really surprised at how horrible this book was since i figured the author of Schindler's List (which I haven't yet read) would know how to write!

First of all, this book goes so many times out of the main story that is difficult to remember it, the main story could be written in 50 pages or less, you won't take anything of this book, maybe two or three things about the animals Down Under but that is all. The story doesn't have any sense since the first page till the last one.

I have a fancy idea to visit Australia some day. And if I do, I hope to capture at least some of the lyrical feelings and tensions and wonders that Keneally throws around with such ease. The word that comes to mind is "evolution". All the characters (and I use this word with full meaning) are in a constant state of development, as is the continent itself. No static figures here. Dispair, mental instability, and even survival are treated with a tentative gentleness that I have not encountered before.

My hat is off to Mr. Keneally. I hope there are many more stories in the wings.

Thomas Keneally isn't a writer I would quickly revisit after reading "Woman Of The Inner Sea". Not that it hasn't its moments, only that they occur too rarely and mostly at the beginning and end of the novel, framing what must seem an overly long and terribly slow moving middle section. This is all the more disappointing given that Kate's adventures in the Australian outbacks form the emotional core of the novel. Her escape from her natural family and her dreadful husband and in-laws following the tragic death of her children is to redeem as well as to expunge herself of all the loathsome and corrupt elements of her life with her philandering businessman husband. It is only her Uncle Frank, a fallen priest and the novel's most colourful character, who forever lives in her heart. Quite apart from the immense difficulty I had with Keneally's awkward prose, I couldn't quite nail down the story's setting long after the plot unfolded. Each time I imagined Kate in Victorian garb (ie, hooped skirts) would I be reminded that she attended Kiss concerts. Strangely, the mental picture I conjured of the storyline kept shifting between period and contemporary. Could this be just me ? Perhaps but even so, the author must take some responsibility for this curious lack of contextual definition. There is an interesting story (and a movie even) in there somewhere, but Keneally has buried it so hopelessly in layers of inaccessible prose it's hard for the reader to work up any enthusiasm for the book. No, I shan't be tackling "The Schindler's List" in the near future if "Woman of the Inner Sea" is typical of Keneally's work.

I kept thinking it would make sense or get better or have some substance. It was remarkably bad! I threw it away after reading 200 pages or so and it only has 277. What a waste of time and money!!!!!!!...

I kept thinking it would make sense or get better or have some substance. It was remarkably bad! I threw it away after reading 200 pages or so and it only has 277. What a waste of time and money!!