Child's Play / The Bread of Time to Come

by David Malouf

Contains two novellas--one about an Italian terrorist, and one about an Australian gamekeeper whose peaceful world is shattered by World War I

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1982

About the author

David Malouf is a celebrated Australian poet, novelist, librettist, playwright, and essayist whose work has garnered international acclaim. Known for his lyrical prose and explorations of identity, memory, and place, Malouf began his literary career in poetry before gaining recognition for his fiction. His 1990 novel The Great World won the Miles Franklin Award and several other major prizes, while Remembering Babylon (1993) earned a Booker Prize nomination and multiple international honors.
Malouf has taught at universities in Australia and the UK, delivered the prestigious Boyer Lectures, and written libretti for acclaimed operas. Born in Brisbane to a Lebanese father and a mother of Sephardi Jewish heritage, he draws on both Australian and European influences in his work. He is widely regarded as one of Australia's most important literary voices and has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.

Reviews

[Old Man JP · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poetry in David Malouf's writing is simply extraordinary. This is a book with two novellas in it, Child's Play and The Bread of Time to Come. Child's Play is about a man who is a terrorist. He belongs to a cell of terrorists who are each awaiting assignments to carry out. It is about his daily activities and his thoughts as he goes about his day. As we read about him, we find that he is really no different than any other person, with the same wants and desires. The only thing that distinguishes him is that his goals are deadlier. The second novella, The Bread of Time to Come, is a book I had already read under the title Fly Away Peter. Although I had already read it, it is so exceptional, that it was a pleasure to read it again. It is about a naturalist named Jim who goes to work for a man named Ashley to catalog the birds on his property. When WWI began both men enlisted and the story then follows the horrific experiences they had in the trenches of the war. It is a heartbreaking story but written in the most poetic prose imaginable. Another exceptional book by the great David Malouf.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting.

CHILD's PLAY

I swallowed each apple whole, with real greed, then reached for another. It was like biting into the sun.

But I should introduce myself.
I am twenty-nine years old and male. You will understand if I decline to give further particulars.
I am what the newspapers call a terrorist.

The presence of cold steel is a reminder of our vulnerability and keeps us alert. It also keeps us aware, during these quiet library days among the facts and photographs, of that had moment to which they lead, when we will stand alone at last with the weapon naked in our hand.

Once she passed boldly, but fleetingly, through one of my dreams.
That sort of knowledge is untranslatable.

The image I prefer is that of a sportsman, living day after day, in every nerve of his body, in every fibre of his will, with an event. Especially those sportsmen who train in groups but will, at the last moment, act alone.

My father comes from a family with land holdings in the south, in Calabria and Sicily. He cut all ties with that feudal world more than thirty years ago, when he was still a student, invested what money he had in a farm, and has lived ever since the life of a gentleman peasant, managing all the farmwork himself and spending his spare time reading, playing the flute, indulging a taste for obscure scientific speculations and mounting one of the country's largest collection of beetles. He is an old-fashioned radical, and believes, I think, that our great mistake was to have left the eighteenth century.

To draw me back into the seasonal routines of the farm, into the rituals of my earliest children, he reinforces for me the clear line of my movement through space and time, even if it has been a movement away.

It was a still cold night full of stars.

We were at the boundaries of that early morning silence in which we would breakfast together, finding words only for the yelping and nuzzling dogs, and part on the local platform with only the briefest and most formal embrace, an assurance that everything between us was as it had been and would be always, but with nothing said on either side of what was closest to our hearts.

I know every detail of his daily routine.

Wakes at 7:15 - coffee and an English water biscuit
7:30 bathes and dresses
8:30 lays out papers, unscrews his pen and begins

writes steadily till just before 12
lunch
rest for 1 hr
read for another hour
then works again...

4:30 strolls for an hour before tea on the lawn above the garden

Dinner at 8:30
11 PM Bed

From the hands of beneficient nature, his taskmaster and nurse, another day.
- - - - - -

So I walk.

And in the miraculous assurance of being safe at last, walk on under the early blossoms.

THE BREAD OF TIME TO COME

For Elizabeth Riddell

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If it is
not true that a divine creature fell, then we can
only say that one of the animals went entirely off
its head -- GK Chesterton

One day soon, she might make a photograph of this new thing. To catch its moment, its brilliant balance up there, of movement and stillness, of tense energy and ease - that would be something.

This eager turning, for a moment, to the future, surprised and hurt her.
Jim, she moaned silently, somewhere deep inside.Jim. Jim There was in there a mourning woman who rocked eternally back and forth; who would not be seen and was herself.

[Vincent · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only read Child's Play. It was published in 1989 but you are thinking about 911 the entire time. A small cell of terrorists and their strict and mostly mundane existence with nice a surreal ending.