NUMBER: 97

Genre: Fiction; Origin: Australia; Pages: 300

Satisfaction rating: 4.0

OVERVIEW:

The Aunt’s Story traces the uncompromisingly independent career of Theodora Goodman from the dusty reality of Australia to to the whirling madhouse of Europe before World War II, and ends calmly, although across the boarders of sanity, in that most practical of countries, the United States of America.

MATTHEW’S COMMENTS:

This book has so many passages of beautiful prose I found it hard to believe at times that Patrick White was going to be able to maintain its quality throughout this three hundred page, densely crafted novel. But White can not be underestimated, I should never have questioned his ability to deliver on this front. Nevertheless, while his sentences carried a poetic beat they couldn’t compensate for what I thought was an unengaging portrait of the independent ’spinster’ Theodora.

I have often voiced my love of authors who play with structure in their narrative. What draws me to this experimentation of the linear form is the way in which disjointed segments are used to build an understanding of character and place from varied perspectives of time. White adopts this approach in The Aunt’s Story, taking us from early childhood in Australia via fragments of nostalgic recollection, to a barrage of conversation similar to free-form jazz while in self imposed European exile to Theodora’s ultimate homecoming (of sorts) which questions her perception of reality, clouded by old age. The themes are strong, but for my mind the glue is missing. Broken into three sections each stood alone as a vignette rather than a cohesive tapestry.

In many ways the novel reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, both in style, structure and my satisfaction. I can see why many would consider both The Aunt’s Story and Jacob’s Room to be rewarding pieces that linger long after the event, but I have to admit to reading some passages in auto-pilot, purely for the beauty of sentence craft rather than the beauty of story. This may be viewed by some as not a bad outcome, but I would argue that it isn’t ideal either.

FURTHER REFERENCES:

Read more on Google Books

Read more on a Patrick White website

Last Modified :October 14th, 2008 Filed under : The Log: novels Navigate : Previous post / Next post