NUMBER: 98

Genre: Fiction; Origin: Australia; Pages: 100

Satisfaction rating: 9.5

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:

After reading The Aunt’s Story I wasn’t prepared to give up on Patrick White. A couple of years ago I had read Voss and could see that there was much to love about his writing, so when I tackled The Aunt’s Story it was with some disappointment that I came away less than impressed. I thought it best to get back on the horse straightaway.

I found this little collection of short stories called Three Uneasy Pieces at a market for a couple of dollars while I was reading The Aunt’s Story. The collection pulled two shorts of only a couple of pages (The Screaming Potato and Dancing with Both Feet on the Ground) plus one longer effort of around fifty pages (The Age of a Wart). Together they make up a slightly unbalanced meditation on the nature of aging, as written by a 75 year old Patrick White.

As a collection I’m not sure it worked, despite the underlying theme, but when you’re 75 I think that is of little importance. What is of real beauty here is the longer piece The Age of a Wart in which White tells of his estranged relationship with a boy he met at school. The reader can only assume that this is autobiographical tale, or maybe the boy in question is a fictionalised character embodying an aspect of White’s psyche. I’m not sure I want to dig for the truth.

It starts with White contracting a wart from a less privileged schoolmate Tancred, we follow White’s intermittent search for Tancred from the hands of a boy to those of an old man, through the scars of battle, through all the novels, through all the accolades, through the aging of skin and bones. This is a short and touching rite of passage from isolation and loneliness to an impassioned plea for companionship. All this in fifty pages, there is hope.

FURTHER REFERENCES:

Read more on Google Books

Read more on a Patrick White website

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