Mixing the superficial with the profound
A novel that is a riot of linguistic fun, with vivid and exuberant characters,
That clinical dissector of Australia, Peter Carey, returns in triumphant form with this brilliant tour d’horizon. Under his knife, the brutalities and cultural genocide of his country’s origins are laid bare under the blazing sun. Everything emerges red.
Ostensibly a tale of the 1950s road race, the Redex Trial, A Long Way From Home follows the Bobs family as they drive right round Australia with their navigator, Willie Bachhuber. On the surface, it is the story of the titanic struggle between Ford and Holden for supremacy.
But there is, or was, another struggle for supremacy. The novel probes the conquest and colonisation of aboriginal Australia by the white man. Signs of that war abound, in the bones of the massacred, the abandoned skeletons littering the landscape, the deprivation of the Aborigines, the arrogance, bigotry and ignorance of the new masters. Blood has soaked into the land itself, washing the country red.
The first 150 pages carefully lay the groundwork.
Titch Bobs, a ‘‘tiny, shiney’’ wannabee car dealer, is desperate for the Ford franchise. His wife, Irene, ‘‘his little mouse, his petite sized mademoiselle’’, will do all she can to help him. The trouble is they are thwarted at every step by Titch’s feckless, mendacious father. They team up with their neighbour, Willie, a disgraced teacher, who will read maps and prepare them for every turn – or those he knows about.
The setting is Bacchus Marsh, Carey’s own childhood home. That is significant. This journey will be inwards, to the essence of the Australian, as it also proceeds around the periphery of the landmass itself.
It is in the race itself that the novel soars. There are ominous signs of a bloody struggle by the roadside and in the names of places and people – Garret Hanger, ‘‘the killer country, our murderous continent’’.
As they charge up the country, so they drive into ‘‘blackfellah country’’, or at least those parts where Aboriginal Australians are still allowed to live. In a long section, Willie stops to learn the language and ways of those who have been ‘‘dispossessed... systematically humiliated’’.
All the trademark Carey features are here. The novel is a riot of linguistic fun. Characters are vivid and exuberant. Setting is swiftly and evocatively created, as in Illywhacker and The Tax Inspector. Two narrators, Irene and Willie, tell the story. As in Oscar and Lucinda, the narrative thrust is strong.
The strongest feature is Carey’s exploration of the fakeness of what we perceive as Australian.
This familiar Carey trope is here given full rein. Willie realises that he will ‘‘always be from nowhere’’. The white man stole the land and will always be the usurper. It is the blend of the superficial and the profound that makes this novel Carey’s deepest. At 74, there is clearly still much mileage in his road.