The Thumbnail Book Reviews

by John Q McDonald --- 31 August 1998

Voss

by Patrick White

In 1845, an explorer sets out across the untracked expanse of the Australian continent, on an expedition of discovery. This man is Johann Voss, a German with a dreamy faraway quality that makes him an oddity in polite circles. Before departing on this doomed journey, he makes the acquaintance of a beautiful young woman, also an oddity in her society, being learned and poetic of character. The two strike up an immediate and intense bond that traverses time and space. Their seperate experiences mirror eachother, their fatal love intensifies. The expedition encounters great hardship, and the young woman is effectively ostracised after adopting the orphaned child of her maid. This book is beautifully written, with subtle humor, a faint undercurrent of eroticism, and an intense poetic quality evoking the vast unknown landscapes of Australia and human emotions. Some of the dialogue is disturbingly oblique, only vague notions of what is going on underneath the surface. White leaves this to the reader to decipher. An epic tale of love and desolation.

(Patrick White was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize for literature.)

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