The Dickens Boy by Thomas Keneally

Published in Australia in 2020; published by Atria Books on March 8, 2022

The Dickens Boy is Edward “Plorn” Dickens, Charles Dickens’ youngest son. Having shown no talent for anything beyond cricket, and having failed to confess to his famous father that he never managed to read any of the great man’s novels, Plorn feels both guilt and relief when his father sends him to Australia, a country in which Plorn's brother Alfred already resides. Plorn hopes he can apply himself in a new land and become the kind of man his father might admire.

Plorn quickly discovers that Australians venerate his father just as much as the British. Some have memorized long passages from their favorite Dickens novels. Still, Plorn rejects the employment that was arranged for him on the ground that the employer asks too many dishonorable questions about his father’s dalliance with Plorn’s aunt. The employer to which Plorn next applies, Momba Station in New South Wales, becomes the “place that concentrated the forces of his soul.”

Plorn has experiences he could not have imagined in his father’s sheltering embrace. He is shocked when a man tries to kiss him, but his refusal is polite. He gets high on a substance provided by an Aboriginal friend. His first pleasurable reading experience comes when Dandy Darnell gives him a manuscript in the hope that Plorn’s father will publish it. When Dandy writes of his attraction to his aunt (who has been mistreated by her husband), his writing may be autobiographical. Plorn is coming into his own understanding of sexual desire (15-year-old Constance Desailley is often on his mind) and it is probably for that reason that Dandy’s innuendo-free writing speaks to him. Plorn cannot muster interest in the socially acceptable poetic and indirect descriptions of sexual attraction that are favored by his father’s generation. He is quite taken, however, by Dandy’s references to Blake’s argument that men and women both require “the lineaments of Gratified Desire.”

It is a matter of history and thus not a spoiler that Charles Dickens died while Plorn was still a teenage resident of Australia. The novel takes place before and in the immediate aftermath of that death. In his acknowledgements, Thomas Keneally notes that history does not reveal how Plorn learned of his father’s death. Unfettered by history, Keneally invents a brilliant scene that involves the notorious bushranger Frank Pearson, a/k/a Captain Starlight. Perhaps for good reason, Keneally imagines Plorn undergoing the standard denial stage of death. “The resurrection of Christ was easier to believe in than the death of Charles Dickens.”

Historians seem to regard Plorn, like nearly all of the Dickens children, as a failure. The novel’s sympathetic portrayal imagines Plorn as a person who, living in his father’s constant shadow but lacking his father’s gifts, does his best to live up to his father’s expectations. Keneally imagines that Plorn’s love for and devotion to his father was fierce. Regardless of his successes and failures, Plorn’s steadfast defense of his father makes him an admirable character. The novel ends while Plorn is still young, well before he enters politics and succumbs to debt. Yet it ends on a sad note, perhaps to foreshadow the life that was to follow.

The atmosphere of cricket matches and wool shearing, emus and kangaroos, is vivid. One of the novel’s themes is prejudice against the native “darks,” a prejudice not shared at Momba Station and that Plorn instantly rejects. An open-minded priest who befriends and lives among the Aboriginals plays a modest role in the story. He is indirectly responsible for the coming-of-age moment that causes Plorn to realize that he “had been fatuous trying to grow up into manhood in a measured way.”

One of the delights of reading The Dickens Boy is the discussion of Charles Dickens’ novels and stories, including some passages that characters recite from memory. Dickens’ melodramatic plots are disfavored in the post-modern world, but I still regard him as one of the best storytellers in the history of literature — and certainly one of the best creators of memorable characters. Trollope dismissed Dickens as “Mr. Popular Sentiment,” an insult that (in the novel) Alfred holds against Trollope’s son, who has been relegated to Australia like the Dickens boys.

Alfred parses his father’s work for clues about his father’s views of Australia, a topic that likely of particular interest to Keneally and to Australian readers of Dickens' work. Is Australia a land of convicts or a land where criminals have the opportunity to remake themselves? In his books, Alfred observes, Dickens sends criminals and prostitutes and stupid people to Australia. Does that mean Dickens thought Alfred and Plorn were stupid? The boys have differing opinions, but they aren’t certain of the truth. They also disagree, to an extent, about their father’s moral character. Plorn reads one of his his father’s essays to reaffirm his belief that Charles Dickens was generous in his love for the lowliest members of society (although Plorn hasn’t yet encountered Uriah Heep). One of the novel’s burning questions is whether Plorn will ever read David Copperfield, a question that had me thinking, “Just read it and ask yourself whether you recognize something of your father’s life in its pages.”

Keneally avoids Dickensian melodrama but writes with sentiment about Dickens and his influence upon Australians. Keneally is a skilled storyteller in his own right. The story loses some of its voltage after Plorn’s father dies — eulogies and memories slow the story’s pace as it limps to a conclusion — but the novel as a whole is engrossing.

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The Book of Science and Antiquities by Thomas Keneally

First published in Australia in 2018; published by Atria Books on December 10, 2019

Two stories intertwine in The Book of Science and Antiquities, each following a man to the end of his life. One is the modern story of a documentary maker. The other is the story of Learned Man, whose life in prehistory is imagined to be one of self-sacrifice. While Learned Man’s death seems meaningless from a modern perspective, it was viewed as profound by Learned Man’s clan. The mere fact that Learned Man once lived is viewed as significant by his Aboriginal ancestors.

After meeting Peter Jorgenson, the geomorphologist who discovered the remains of Learned Man near Lake Learned, Shelby Apple decided to make a documentary about the discovery. Jorgenson told Shelby that Learned Man was honored by those who buried him. Jorgenson regarded Learned Man’s death as evidence that “to be human is to have business to attend to, to be on a quest.” While we may want an easy life that includes no pilgrimage, in Jorgenson’s view “we don’t have a life worth having” if we fail to undertake “a dangerous search.” Unfortunately, “being human is a test that kills us.”

What was Learned Man’s quest? As Thomas Keneally imagines it, Learned Man is an otherwise ordinary man who gives credence to dreamt visions. He calls the teacher he sees in his dreams “the Hero,” one of many heroes (gods) who enact laws to govern the growing body of people in their various clans. Learned Man is called upon to enforce the laws that bind the clans when a clan member does an injustice to a woman from another clan. Eventually, Learned Man discovers that a curse has been laid upon the land and this it is his duty to remove the curse. His selfless action in that regard explains why a stone was found with Learned Man that originated far from the site of his burial.

Learned Man lost his Son Unnameable to one of the dangerous creatures that made human life a marginal experience. He quarrels with his wife and fears for the safety of his children. As Keneally portrays him, and as Jorgenson explains, Learned Man is all of us. “He prodded the universe the way we prod at it. He felt overwhelmed by it, but had the human urge to encompass it. He chased love with the same sacred and profane mix of motives we do.”

Keneally tells Learned Man’s story in chapters that alternate with Shelby’s story. Shelby has had a successful career but, with the discovery of tumors on his esophagus, he knows that it will come to an end. He does not fear death so much as he fears the loss of independence. Rather, he denies the immediacy of death, despairing only “the ferocious weight of time” that may run out before he finishes his quests.

Like Learned Man, Shelby cherishes his wife and children. He has taken dangerous journeys to Vietnam and Eritrea, to the Arctic and under the sea, to make his films. He has experienced loss. He has been weak with women. He has taken up the causes of modern Heroes, sages of the human tribe, using film to tell stories of wrongs that would easily be remedied in a less selfish world. He has recently championed the cause of returning Learning Man to his Aboriginal descendants. In that regard, he prevails upon Australia’s prime minister, “a captive of right-wing brutes in his party who still believe in serving the market Moloch as an almost theological duty.”

Keneally gives the reader a lot to chew upon, from the harm caused by white missionaries who provide fish without teaching the less fortunate to fish, to the collection of cells that define us only to betray us, to the ease with which men conceive and devote themselves to destructive theologies. His themes are as big as the meaning of life and of death, but he explores those themes by imagining the connection of individuals, from our earliest ancestors to the present, all surviving against the odds while searching for something in life that transcends mere survival.

As the quoted passages demonstrate, Keneally’s prose is lush and vibrant. He makes it possible to relate to characters whose lives are in many ways unlike our own, yet in fundamental ways exactly like our own. The Book of Science and Antiquities is an ambitious novel, but Keneally maintains control of his narrative, never letting ambition get in the way of telling personal stories about characters (even if from prehistory) to whom readers can relate.

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The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally

First published in Australia in 2012; published by Atria Books on August 20, 2013

The Daughters of Mars tells the story of two sisters who bond over the trauma of war, sisters who must practice "being full at ease with each other." At the same time, the novel recounts each sister's journey of self-discovery. On a larger scale, it tells of the strength of women in a world made hostile by men.

As the result of an event in which she feels morally complicit, Sally Durance carries the burden of guilt through much of The Daughters of Mars. She feels a wedge has been driven between her and her sister Naomi. Sally remains in the Valley, working as a nurse in a country hospital, while Naomi, also a nurse, returns to a more sophisticated life in Sydney. The war gives Sally a chance to escape from the bush by joining her sister in a volunteer corps of military nurses. Sally and Naomi are initially sent to Cairo, where Australian soldiers are digging trenches in anticipation of an assault by the Turks. They are soon serving on a hospital ship in the Mediterranean, and later in hospital tents on Lemnos.

The genius of Thomas Keneally's storytelling lies in the small details: the traffic jam of ambulances and trucks as the hospital ship offloads the wounded; the sounds made by a drowning horse; the differing forms of chemical warfare. Images of war and its impact on the nurses are vivid.

Book one introduces a varied cast of memorable characters, each of whom makes an impact, large or small, on one or both of the Durance sisters. Some return later in the novel; others meet their fate in war. The female characters, in particular, are strong-willed and self-sacrificing. By book two, the sisters have (unwillingly) taken separate paths. Each sister considers possibilities of romance that the war has opened up to her. To the extent that The Daughters of Mars is a story of romance, however, it reflects a larger theme: the story of a changing world, a world in which women are gaining the courage to say what they want from men.

The changing role of women, their growing role as leaders (not just in romance), is only one of several strong themes. The novel is also a contemplation of morality -- which, to those who preach it, is "really a kind of fussiness." War changes one's perception of morality; small transgressions lose their importance when compared to the vileness of battles fought with mines and mustard gas; crabbed notions of sexual morality give way to the need for physical pleasure as insulation against the daily threat of death. The Daughters of Mars is also an examination of war: its causes (young men feel "the pull of self-immolation") and, more strikingly, its casualties -- including psychological casualties, as women (and less charitable men) debate whether "shell-shocked" soldiers are ill or malingerers -- and the impact those casualties (particularly altered personalities) will have on the women who married the injured soldiers.

To a large extent, the novel is a study in contrasts: rural versus urban Australia; Australia versus Europe; colonial directness versus mannered old world reticence; fortunate health versus sudden disability; traditional roles of women versus emerging feminist thought; the love of women for men versus the love of women for each other; death by war versus death by disease. Many of the contrasts are gender-based. The Daughters of Mars also explores the different ways men and women measure themselves.

Readers who lack the patience for a story that develops at a sedate pace might have trouble staying with The Daughters of Mars. Some passages read like a travelogue as Susan sees a new world from the deck of a ship or through the windows of a train. For those who persevere, calmness gives way to intensity. The novel is, in that regard, like war: for long stretches, nothing of consequence happens, soldiers get bored, but when action erupts, it is furious. A key secondary character suffers one tragedy after another and the piling on becomes a bit much. The ending is odd (but very modern or postmodern or whatever). And while I do think The Daughters of Mars is longer than it needs to be -- again, there's just too much piling on, although tragedy is spread among many characters -- it's difficult to complain about length when a novel is written in such fine prose. In any event, this is ultimately a war story, and war stories are inauthentic if they are not about loss. The First World War was a long war, filled with losses for the countries that fought it. The Daughters of Mars accordingly tells a long sad story, but it is in many respects a compelling story.

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