Mural by Stephen Downes

On opening this pretty, beautifully produced book the reader is confronted by endpapers showing an engraving of the sinister standing stones at Carnac followed by an unsettling quote from Thomas Bernhard’s story Reunion about parents destroying their children; so, when the story starts with an account of Harry Ellis arriving in Australia in 1875 we are already off balance. “I want to tell you about the things that leap into my bedlam of a mind” says “D” who has been asked by psychiatrist Dr Reynolds to write down his thoughts after being incarcerated again for unspecified crimes, “my movements are as predictably reciprocal as a piston”, hinting at the sexual and repetitive nature of his crimes. D wants to talk about obsession, in his case malice, but through two examples of obsessives who have found a benign compulsion to save them from becoming like him. The first of these is Harry (Havelock) Ellis whose life story, is summed up as a lonely, bush loving boy, who “read more than he lived” and “made sex his life’s work” p. 23 (he became an expert in the psychology of sex)). The second is Napier Waller, the famous Australian artist whose murals adorn many buildings in Melbourne. Along the way D reflects on the Pre-Raphaelites, the mosaics in the Basilica di San Vitale, the influence of the standing stones of Carnac and a patricide in Tasmania, always through the lens of his own preoccupations about parents and children, repressed sexuality and the idea that small things build up until the last straw results in action. The tone is arch, detached and egocentric as D reveals more of himself though what interests him. Peppered throughout the book are unremarkable supporting photos which seem to illustrate D’s assertion of the past as “fuzzy, conflated slides…compressed for easier viewing” p. 171. I was disappointed in the ending, but this is a fascinating little book, and while there is an undercurrent of sex there is never anything explicit or offensive. Given the interest in true crime, mental health and unusual perspectives on Australian history I could see this as a senior school winner, worthy of closer reading.

Themes: Mental health, Obsession, Sexuality, Art, Psychology.

Sue Speck