He.

(Hardback)

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Description

An elusive, elliptical, often beautiful thread of recollections and observations, He. is not autobiography, or even memoir, but an almost anonymous portrait of a figure passing through time and circumstances.

It begins with boyhood, in suburban Adelaide after the war. As the narrator remembers the years the focus shifts forward to the recent past and back again, often within the same paragraph, mirroring the randomness of memory. Through these vignettes and fragments we glimpse moments and livesof parents, teachers, wives, and others; in Bombay of the 1960s, London of the 1970s, Melbourne and Sydney.

He. is by Murray Bail, the acclaimed author of such classic novels as Homesickness and Eucalyptus.

Reviews

'One of the most remarkable of the generation of Australian fiction writers that includes Peter Carey and came to first maturity 25 or so years ago.' * Age *
Few writers anywhere in the world can match [Bail] for stylistic daring. * Irish Examiner *
One of Australias most original and imaginative writers. * Canberra Times *
As a storyteller, Bail cannot put a foot wrong. -- Signature
Bail writes like an angel.' -- Bulletin
Murray Bail ranks as one of three indisputably world-class Australian novelists now practicing. -- The New York Times Book Review
He. is a record of observingObservation, rather than interaction, is His approach to the worldThe images and memories break out in a disorderly jostle. But they are the memories He keepsThere is so much that is pleasurable in He.the aperus, the aphorisms, the vignettes of time and place. * Australian Book Review *
There are certain books, the publication of which it would be an understatement to call anything less than an event. He. is oneBails writing remains nimble in a way that cannot help but inspire envyHe., for all its concision, need say nothing more. It is full of uncanny energy, gracefully panoramic. Like life, it may be short; yet, of all the books I have read this year, its perhaps the most wondrous, the most inordinately beautiful. * Declan Fry, Saturday Paper *
Murray Bail has for decades been one of the most significant writers in Australia[He.] is a meticulous collage of tiny crystalline worlds that were vanishing even as they were perceivedBehind everything in this very strange, intimately familiar book, there is what Shakespeare called a womans longing for experience and it is executed with an immense gravity and tender careIt is a frail wonder of a book with the potency of a dream. * Peter Craven, Age *
[Bail entangles] the relative coherence of his early memories with more fragmentary snapshots of adult life. The effect is startling, a Cezanne-like combination of expressive delicacy and absenceThe suave and lugubrious line of his prose in these pages, its intensely visual character, cuts all the way to sinewThe result is a memoir that fails as autobiography but succeedsmiraculously, stainlesslyas literature. * Geordie Williamson, Australian *
Murray Bails He. seems to enclose most of a life and much of the world[It] slips seamlessly across time and placeOne must soften ones heart to read it, letting it break open, at the same time as laughing or being aghastBails books will live on, as did his beloved Stendhals. * Moya Costello, Overland *
[A] beautifully crafted assembly of fragments. * InDaily *
He. is short, but highly condensedMemoriesthe very personal, the public, the poetic, or the texturalare captured in one or two paragraphs, sometimes one or two pages, sometimes one or two brief linesHe. moves with a looping stride, focusing on overlapping groups of timeearly childhood, teenage years, life overseasThe most poignant of Bails recollections are of his early life, and of his mother and fatherReflections on the gradual transformation of society, particularly in terms of language and fashion, inject lightnessIn He., Bail is able to take the ultra-personal and make it resonate with the general. * Guardian *
Couched in curiosity, astringency and a surprised tenderness...Melancholy but with muscle. * Adelaide Advertiser *

Author Bio

Murray Bail lives in Sydney. His first book, The Drovers Wife and Other Stories, was published in 1975. He has won numerous awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award for Eucalyptus. His most recent book is He.