- Paperback
- Publisher: Vintage; 8th edition (1994)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0679749519
- ISBN-13: 978-0679749516
- Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 1.5 x 20.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Caught Between Worlds,
By
This review is from: Remembering Babylon (Paperback)
Gemmy Fairley had been working as a ship hand when he became ill and feverish. His shipmates put him adrift on a raft rather than risk the health of the whole crew. Fortunately for Gemmy, the raft washed ashore on a desolate area of Australia. He was found by aborigines who he lived with for the next sixteen years.One day while wondering with them, he spied some white men, whom he later sought out. A family in the new community took him in and tried to help him re-integrate into English style daily life. He had lost much of his earlier language skills and found it difficult to communicate. What was happening with Gemmy was similar to what was happening with the English colonists. Both were out of their element and trying to fit their old lives into their current location. Gemmy had never had a 'good' nor 'safe' life and he didn't have the skills of how to live in a proper family. The colonists were trying to recreate an English pastoral life in a totally foreign environment that was often hostile to their attempts. I most enjoyed reading of Gemmy's life and his attempts to fit in anywhere. He didn't find a safe place in England, not on the ship and even with the aborigines he was always an outsider. He wasn't either a white fellow or a black fellow, he was something else. I think perhaps that he was a lot of what was needed to for the transplanted English to survive in Australia, but that the whites refused to even consider the possibility.
4.0 out of 5 stars
The repressive power of fear and conformity...,
By
This review is from: Remembering Babylon: A Novel (Paperback)
Gemmy Fairley doesn't belong anywhere. Tossed from the sea upon a wild Australian beach, the boy is a curiosity to the indigenous natives who discover and allow him to tag along, learning their language and customs. A strange yearning assails his dreams, images, memories of a beginning, brutal people and things barely glimpsed.From a truly ignominious beginning, Gemmy schools himself to adapt to circumstances, intuiting acceptable behavior as necessary for survival. Throughout his wanderings with the Aborigines, he assumes the coloring of his surroundings, much as they do. But another voice, a distant curiosity calls Gemmy ever closer to the poverty-riddled settlers who view him as a threat. There is a life-defining moment for two young people, Lachlan and Janet, when they first see Gemmy, perched precariously atop a fence, held for a moment in time that marks their consciousness indelibly. Drawing Gemmy into their world, Lachlan is his mentor, Janet his friend, both protective of his innocence, forever fascinated with that first seminal glimpse. In such an intimate and hardscrabble community, where human connections insure survival, Gemmy is a freak, too strange to be perceived as non-threatening, white, but with the outward visage of a black. Fearful and superstitious, they draw away, repulsed. Eventually, Gemmy finds himself moving back into the bush, unable to manage the demands of such a borderline civilization. Years later, as adults, Lachlan and Janet deeply reconnect over their youthful remembrance, that slender thread that attached them to Gemmy for that short time in their young lives. The writing is powerful and beautifully rendered, with a sense of awareness that pulses with life. Immersed in nature's stark reality, words become feelings, thoughts merge with the heartbeat of humanity at its most vulnerable.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sparse, but still rewarding,
By Megami (Darwin, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Remembering Babylon: A Novel (Paperback)
Remembering Babylon is the story of Gemmy - washed up on the Australian coast as a boy after a life of harshness that is hard to imagine, he is taken in by group of Aborigines. Sixteen years later, he makes himself known to the white community of northern Queensland, where he causes the community to examine not only it's attitude towards what is 'civilised', but also causes them to look inwards upon themselves.This is a story about frontiers - the physical frontier of the small community that Gemmy joins; the frontier of the new state of Queensland; and the frontier between civilised and primitive. There is some beautiful work in this book, especially in its examination of small community dynamics, and coming of age. But I feel that Malouf starts threads that he doesn't bother to finish - the ambiguous characters of Mrs. Hutchence and Leona are introduced with promises of an exotic past, yet we never get to know them. George the school teacher is developed, only to be left out of the second half of the story. While Malouf manages to pack a lot of punch into a short tale, I feel that perhaps just a little be of expansion would have made this an even better book. But I will admit that I got a kick out of reading a story set in my home state of Queensland - it is nice to see that there is some Australian historical fiction set somewhere other than the Southern States!
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