THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506010497
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY TIM WARREN
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
A RIVER TOWN
THOMAS KENEALLY
Doubleday/Nan A. Talese. 324 pp. $24.
AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST Thomas Keneally has written about a number of peoples - Africans, Europeans, Americans, Australian aborigines - but until this book, he hadn't turned his eye toward his own Irish roots. A River Town, his 21st novel, is the first volume in a planned trilogy on the Irish who settled Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
As such, A River Town has a more leisurely pace than most of his other novels; intentional or not, it's as if Keneally is setting us up for the long haul. The book at times suffers from a lack of dramatic urgency, and some characters are not particularly fleshed-out, but these problems are not major. The occasional languor is more than offset by Keneally's gifts as a storyteller and his ability to evoke Australia's rough-and-tumble frontier of a century ago.
In his early works, Keneally's ability to observe from the outside has bordered on the astonishing. Witness the audacity he showed in writing so knowledgeably, and so sympathetically, about the American Civil War (Confederates), European Jews (Schindler's List) or Eritrean freedom fighters (To Asmara). Although A River Town may be closer to his heart than previous works, Keneally remains clear-eyed and perceptive.
The frontier town of Kempsey, in New South Wales, is no paradise. It's often miserably hot and humid. Because of the ever-present mosquitoes, diseases such as dengue fever are common. And the settlers - English and Irish, mainly - may display admirable spirit and initiative, but they're frequently petty-minded and short-sighted.
Some are ex-convicts or political prisoners; others are emigres who are merely exchanging one miserable, hard-scrabble life for another. But, in a parallel to the settling of the American frontier, they have some hope or dream of something better. Tim Shea, a storekeeper in Kempsey and the novel's protagonist, explains to a neighbor that he voted to have Australia become a commonwealth, rather than remain a British colony, ``for the sake of my children.''
There's a certain irony in Tim's statement, for his children show little of their parents' Irish heritage, in attitude or speech or almost anything else. Keneally writes of Johnny, Tim's rambunctious 7-year-old son:
``He didn't sound like his parents. It was as if the sun had got inside his nose and throat and dried all the cords. His say sounded like sigh. That is what it is to be an emigrant. Your children won't speak like you. He'd never thought of it till it happened.''
Though he's constantly worried about providing for his family, and conscious of his limited stature as an Irish storekeeper, Tim is a key element of Kempsey's social fabric. He dispenses necessary goods from his general store, which also is a popular place for people to congregate and gossip. Too bad many customers don't pay on time; selling on credit makes him popular but not wealthy, as Tim's sharp-tongued wife, Kitty, reminds him.
But through circumstances and temperament, Tim is somewhat apart from the community. He doesn't understand the war fever shown by those who think New South Wales should send soldiers to help the beleaguered British fight the rebel Boers in South Africa. He's aware that his relationship - a reluctant friendship, really - with Bandy, the Muslim hawker, is deeply suspect in his xenophobic land. And he seems to be among the few people interested in the identity of a mysterious woman who, authorities say, died after being given an illegal abortion.
Although Tim is lauded for his dramatic, though unsuccessful, attempt to rescue a man in a carriage accident, he also incurs the enmity of the powers-that-be. He is set up and betrayed in a way that threatens to force him out of business.
Indeed, one strength of A River Town is Keneally's portrayal of how tenuous life was for these settlers. Economic and political power is concentrated in the hands of a few. Serious injury and diseases are common; one of the most compelling parts of the novel concerns a plague that hits New South Wales - spread, it seems, by flea-infested rats. And the toughness needed to survive in this uncertain time also makes for a hardness in the settlers that borders on cruelty.
But even in this harsh land, a person such as Tim - bumbling though good-hearted - somehow makes it through. Though Keneally does not spare the unflattering details, one senses the admiration he feels for those strong enough or lucky enough to endure. And so, in time, do we. MEMO: Tim Warren is a book critic who lives in Silver Spring, Md. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
KERRY KLAYMAN
Novelist Thomas Keneally turns his focus to his ancestors - Irish
settlers in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
by CNB