Elysium [Hardcover]

In Greek mythology, Elysium was the westernmost side of paradise where heroes were made immortal. The irony of that image is they underlying theme of this exquisite historial novel. Tasmania is hardly "westernmost" to anywhere. It is the southernmost State in Australia and the ranks of heroes are depressingly thin. Edric has reached back in time to examine the realities of this "paradise." He accomplishes this brief history with consummate depth of feeling. His portrayal is a vivid account of real events, imbued with attitudes unshed even in our "modern" world. All of this is accomplished through the eyes of one man, a member of a lost society.

William Lanné was the last full-blooded male Tasmanian Aborigine. Living on edge of Hobart, he is known by all, from the Governor to the common soldier. He dresses in military finery or simple rags. He is the subject of one of England's many amateur anthropologists that pervaded England's colonies during the 19th century. Specially selected by James Fairfax as a "representative" of the Aborigine race, Lanné is to be measured against a diagram Fairfax has prepared for him. This indignity was imposed on many "natives" within the British Empire's colonies. They were frequently subjected to various metrological assessments in order to justify the occupation of their homeland by the white invaders. If their physiognomy could be demonstrated as "inferior" to the European ideal, then colonization could successfully be excused as "uplifting savages."

Edric does a fine job of portraying both the colonizer's outlook and the Aborigines' reaction to it. Fairfax is prompt in assuring "King Billy" that his person is safe - the measuring process will be painless. He won't lose any limbs or be cut into. Edric, amazingly, omits the irony that after Lanné's death, that was precisely the fate his corpse was subjected to. Edric makes up for this historical appendix by giving Lanne a dream foretelling the fate his remains would suffer. This technique suggests Edric targeted this book for an audience with some familiarity with Australian colonial events.

Edric captures the enduring conflict between the colonizers and those they exterminated. Lanné is subject to open racial insults from locals and more subtle ones from Fairfax, who strips him for measurement, something he could never ask of Stalker, a white soldier. Edric portrays Lanné as highly articulate and thoughtful - in stark contrast to the soldiers. Fairfax queries Lanné about the Black Line which was designed to sweep up the Aborigine population and exile them from Tasmania. Not all were taken, of course, and others had already been "domesticated" leaving a population of half-breeds among the island's population. Lanné is confronted by a band of these who roam the bush. Although they enjoy greater freedom than Lanné does, like all peoples colonized by Europeans, the sins of one bring vengence on the many - often just the nearest. "Bang! Bang! Bang! Justice served!," is the white community's watchword. Edric portrays Bonaparte, a long time mate of Lanne's as an elusive, but dedicated figure. He challenges Lanne to return to his roots. Lanne's moral captivity by the white world is strong and the desire to readapt to his origins is threaded with doubt. His response to Fairfax's illness is symptomatic of the dual existence he endures.

Edric's story is told with compelling language and deep insight into Aborigine thinking. This work will stand for some time as a high quality example of the roots of racial ideas in white society. It portrays beautifully the mental conflicts colonial peoples must carry as part of their baggage in today's world. We of that world need to gain the understanding Edric's fine work offers us. The issues are not limited to a remote island in the South Pacific. They are among us today.

So powerful that it will take your breath away, this finely crafted novel deserves to be resurrected from the oblivion in which it now resides. Carefully choosing a form which perfectly suits his message, Edric presents a shocking and graphic account of the genocide of the aborigines in Tasmania by British imperialists in the 1860's.

The novel consists of a series of voices and vignettes--local Tasmanian newspaper reporters claiming William Lanne, the last full-blooded aborigine male, to be a fraud; rough, illiterate soldiers "interviewing" the better educated Lanne; acculturated mixed-blood aborigines rejecting their own culture and bowing low to the British, while advising their peers to cooperate; others still living in the bush and practicing their old ways (and an occasional murder); British administrators mockingly calling Lanne "King Billy" and subjecting him to scientific experiments and bodily "mapping." One of Edric's strengths here is the ironic detachment with which he presents these voices, not always telling the reader who they are, requiring the reader to figure it out from the treatment which is accorded to each speaker over the course of the novel.

Gradually, a story emerges, and the reader comes to sympathize with Lanne, who walks the fine line between his love of his own people and culture and his desire to prevent additional bloodshed. He is being interviewed, photographed, and measured by James Fairfax, a pretentious scientist who treats him as an exhibit, the last of his people--all others forced to live, subjugated and degraded, as mixed breeds under the rule of the colonial administrator or dead from government-sanctioned operations, such as the Black Line, which twice swept up and killed every native in the way of a line of marching soldiers. Vacillating between the city, the hut where he lives with three old aborigine women, and the bush, where some of his friends are hiding in caves and rescuing bones from the graveyard, Lanne is truly a man between cultures.

Though the contrasts between the ways of the aborigines and the ways of the British are very dramatic, Edric is not a sentimentalist. Aborigines who, in frustration, resort to murder are presented with the same detachment as are brutal soldiers, who sadistically torment the innocent. And it is this detachment which is the novel's strength--it is the reader who draws the conclusions and fills in the blanks, the reader who recognizes symbols and is struck by their power, and the reader who eventually draws all the conclusions. Edric's novel is a marvel--concise, dramatic, and unequivocal in its message, well worth searching out--and available at amazon.co.uk. Mary Whipple

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