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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Born on a poor dairy farm in Queensland, Frank Harland's life is centred on his great artistic gift, his passionate love for his father and four brothers and his need to repossess, through a patch of land, his family's past. The story spans Frank's life; from before the First World War, through years as a swaggie in the Great Depression and Brisbane in the forties, to his retirement to a patch of Australian scrub where he at last takes possession of his dream. Solitude and society, possession and dispossession, the obsessive and often violent claims of family life and love, illuminate the imagination of the artist and the larger world of events. This is an ambitious novel, presented simply and poetically; the narrative is absorbing, full of incident, and peopled with characters of formidable humour and power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage reprint).
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille, sound recording.
Works about this Work
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A Unique and Necessary Form
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 63 no. 2 2018; (p. 10-15)'Story-telling, the pleasure of sitting in close company and listening to a story, allowing oneself to float free in the moment and enter, both in the senses and in imagination, into the story's events so that the story becomes our own, must be one of the oldest and earliest of our pleasures - a function of that uniquely human faculty in us, the capacity to step beyond the actual into the possible.' (Introduction)
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Camera, Colony, Künstlerroman : Photography in Three Australian Novels
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , vol. 42 no. 1 2018; (p. 116-130) -
"Reclaiming the Rubbish" : Outcasts, Transformation and the Topos of the Painter/Seer in the Work of Patrick White and David Malouf
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Le Simplegadi , no. 16 2016; (p. 27-36)Settled by white convicts and often by people with few prospects in the Old World, Australia was sometimes thought of negatively as a dumping ground of miscreants and ne’er-do-wells. This paper traces how, post-war, this perception was challenged in the fiction of Patrick White and David Malouf, which depicts local versions of the outcast artist in actual rubbish dumps and the creative, regenerative transformations that can occur there.
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History As ‘Precarious Gift’ : Harland’s Half-Acre and The Great World As Malouf’s Not-So-Historical Novels
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 2 2014; 'Harland’s Half-Acre (1985) and The Great World (1991) were composed at a time of increasing worldwide interest in the historical novel, and both works do have potentially historical settings, yet Malouf is more interested in a lyrical treatment of history, which will underscore the risks, the precariousness, of the past rather than just honoring or revering it. These novels, in their affirmation of lived provisionality, are finally not-so-historical.' (Publication abstract) -
Closure, Completion and Memory in Harland's Half Acre : Phil's Story
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 2 2014; 'Most of the excellent critical work on this novel deals with the topic that Malouf has identified as its central issue. Frank Harland’s original plan is to buy back his family’s land, lost through gambling and general carelessness, using the proceeds of the sale of his paintings. His thinking has to be radically altered after the death of his nephew and heir. Possession, he comes to realise, is an imaginative thing rather than a physical thing. This essay does not repeat or summarise previous critical contributions, which trace conceptions of non-Indigenous ownership all the way from terra nullius to the ethical ambitions of whiteness studies. Instead, focusing solely on Phil’s story, it deals with the construction and function of memory in the work and on the building of an emotional climax close to its end. It includes discussion of characters’ particular memories, the creation of verbal memories for the reader, and the use of memory to intensify emotion at strategic points of the novel, especially the climax.' (Publication abstract)
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[Review] Harland's Half Acre
1985
single work
review
— Appears in: Fremantle Arts Centre Broadsheet , September - October vol. 4 no. 5 1985; (p. 2-3)
— Review of Harland's Half Acre 1984 single work novel -
Revisiting Malouf's Michelangelo Moment
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16-17 February 2013; (p. 18-19)
— Review of Harland's Half Acre 1984 single work novel -
[Review] The Bodysurfers
1985
single work
review
— Appears in: Landfall , June vol. 39 no. 2 1985; (p. 213-223)
— Review of Fly Away Peter 1982 single work novella ; The Bodysurfers 1983 selected work short story ; An Item from the Late News 1982 single work novel ; The Cure 1983 single work novel ; White Stag of Exile 1984 single work novel ; The State of the Art : The Mood of Contemporary Australia in Short Stories 1983 anthology short story ; Kewpie Doll 1984 single work novel ; The Bellarmine Jug : A Novel 1984 single work novel ; Harland's Half Acre 1984 single work novel ; Woman in a Lampshade 1983 selected work short story ; Miss Peabody's Inheritance 1983 single work novel -
[Review] Harland's Half Acre
1984
single work
review
— Appears in: Atlantic , October no. 254 1984; (p. 126)
— Review of Harland's Half Acre 1984 single work novel -
[Review] Harland's Half Acre
1984
single work
review
— Appears in: London Review of Books , vol. 6 no. 12 1984; (p. 18-19)
— Review of Harland's Half Acre 1984 single work novel -
Ahasverus on the Walkabout : The Motif of the Wandering Jew in Contemporary Australian Fiction
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 16 no. 1 2002; (p. 11-16) -
My Life as a Book
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Crackpots, Ratbags and Rebels : A Swag of Aussie Eccentrics 2005; (p. 195-209) Holden looks at a selection of Australian eccentrics who have inspired literary characterisation. -
y
The Transformation of Political Identity from Commonwealth through Postcolonial Literature : The Cases of Nadine Gordimer, David Malouf and Michael Ondaatje
Lewiston
:
Edwin Mellen Press
,
2006
Z1411707
2006
single work
criticism
-
An Imaginative Life : David Malouf Interviewed by Lee Spinks
Lee Spinks
(interviewer),
2009
single work
interview
— Appears in: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature , vol. 44 no. 2 2009; (p. 5-14) 'An Imaginative Life: An Interview with David Malouf' presents a wide-ranging discussion of a number of Malouf's major works. Commencing with a consideration of Malouf's personal and artistic beginnings, the interview explores his own sense of his position as an Australian (and a regional Australian) writer, the thematic and stylistic development of his craft as a writer of prose, the development of his distinctive novelistic voice, the place of mythology and historical memory in his fiction, his sense of the relationship between landscape and language and the complex constitution of the character of the Australian settler located as it is between a residual fidelity to the Old World and its presence in a new and other place. -
Homoeroticism in David Malouf's Fiction
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Messengers of Eros : Representations of Sex in Australian Writing 2009; (p. 271-292)'David Malouf is hardly a gay icon. Although he has never kept his homosexuality a secret, neither has he flaunted it, either in his life or in his writings. Where the latter are concerned, there is no doubt that Malouf doesn't want to be pigeonholed, that he rejects restrictive levels that would do an injustice to his wide-ranging preoccupations and his considerable appeal to all manner of readers.' (p. 271)
- Queensland,
- Bribie Island, Caboolture area, Brisbane Outer North, Brisbane, Queensland,
- Southport area, Gold Coast, Queensland,
