Wrack

by James Bradley

Archaeologist David Norfolk is searching for a 400-year-old Portuguese shipwreck off the coast of New South Wales. Such a find would rewrite the history of the discovery of Australia. But instead he unearths the body of a man murdered fifty years earlier, and begins to unravel a more personal kind of history.

An elderly recluse, dying in a nearby shack, seems to know something of the corpse’s identity – and also its connection to the shipwreck. He begins telling David about his own past, a story of a life marred by passion, rivalry and betrayal. But what does he know about the ship and the murder – and will he tell David before it is too late?

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Australia, Contemporary, Literary Fiction

305 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James is the author of five novels: the critically acclaimed climate change narratives, Ghost Species (Hamish Hamilton 2020) and Clade (Hamish Hamilton 2015); The Resurrectionist (Picador 2006), which explores the murky world of underground anatomists in Victorian England and was featured as one of Richard and Judy's Summer Reads in 2008; The Deep Field (Sceptre 1999), which is set in the near future and tells the story of a love affair between a photographer and a blind palaeontologist; and Wrack (Vintage 1997) about the search for a semi-mythical Portuguese wreck. He has also written The Change Trilogy for young adults. a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and edited two anthologies, The Penguin Book of the Ocean and Blur, a collection of stories by young Australian writers. His first book of non-fiction, Deep Water: the World in the Ocean will be published in 2024.

Twice one of The Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelists, his books have won The Age Fiction Book of the Year Award, the Fellowship of Australian Writers Literature Award and the Kathleen Mitchell Award, and have been shortlisted for awards such as the Miles Franklin Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the NSW Premier's Christina Stead Award for Fiction, the Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction and the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and have been widely translated. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines and collections, including Best Australian Stories, Best Australian Fantasy and Horror and The Penguin Century of Australian Stories, and has been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards for Best Science Fiction Short Story and Best Horror Short Story.

As well as writing fiction and poetry, James writes and reviews for a wide range of Australian and international newspapers and magazines. In 2012 he won the Pascall Prize for Australia's Critic of the year.

Reviews

[Terri Kempton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wrack was a wreck. The only moderately interesting bits were stolen directly from The English Patient (and he even quotes Ondaatje, in case you were confused about his source). It's a cruel book: just as the male lead is put on hold, strung along, and left with nothing - we are strung along, left with nothing, thinking, "wow, that's 4 hours I'll never get back."

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. An interesting historical fiction novel. The story is about archeologists trying to validate whether a Portuguese ship surveyed part of the east coast of Australia in the sixteenth century. Around 200 years earlier than Captain Cooks discovery of eastern Australia. It’s the 1980s and archeologist David Norfolk is searching for a Portuguese ship supposedly in the sand hills of the southern coast of New South Wales, Australia. He finds a corpse that has been in the sand for over fifty years. A coroner establishes that the corpse had been murdered. The location of the corpse is around the area where a very old ship had been wrecked.

There are a couple of romances in the novel. One involving David Norfolk. The other relates to a couple of archeologists in the late 1930s researching the possibility of a Portuguese ship beached on the New South Wales coast in the sixteenth century.

I particularly liked the informative historical content in the novel.

This book was shortlisted for the 1997 Miles Franklin award.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man searches for the Portuguese ship that theoretically discovered Australia and finds himself sucked into a dying man's sadistic flashback. Bradley blends academic and theoretical history with archaeology, high angst, and wartime drama. The writing style jars and is generally discordant - it's hard to read. The words cut and rub sand in the wounds, and tell a story of the hardest love and the perpetuity of the disappointing politics of academia. Its emotions run high and hard and well-expressed in their inarticulation. I shouldn't have liked it - I squirmed my way through it - but I loved it and couldn't put it down.

[Lara · Rating 1 out of 5]

A complete wreck.

This book had no beginning. It was drudgery. There is a story of man and his love. The story of an old man. The story of navigators from centuries prior and then the story of random author comments. All four happen randomly. All four are boring.

This book was horrendous.

The middle began to speed up and you could tell it was written by a more confident writer and it was edited far more. The story became more engrossing.

Then, the author ruined it. In this building story, he kept giving history lessons. More and more during the most dramatic parts!

All might be forgivable except, there was no ending. Characters vanished for no reason. Plot was left completely unlooked at. It was a mess. Nothing came of any of the stories. It was like someone walking in a room and saying, "I want to tell you about the most powerful love affair in history. But let me tell you first about how carpet is manufactured." Then you listen to that for five hours and the orator says, "Oh actually, no that's not how carpet's made. Oh, and i forgot the story of the love affair. Sorry. Bye." Then walks out the door.

It's as if a bomb goes off and no one sticks around to

[Gaby Meares · Rating 1 out of 5]

This started with such promise.......and then, well, it was downhill all the way. Initially I enjoyed the historic asides about maps and explorers, but then they started to intrude more and more, to the point where I skipped them altogether, and I don't think it made a spot of difference to the story.
Ah, yes, and then there is the story......again, it started well: an archeological dig unearths a body while searching for a [mythical] shipwreck. But then the 'romance' elements start to intrude. I'm using the term 'romance' ironically as there is nothing romantic about this book or the relationships therein. And it then descends into a turgid pool of angst, animal like 'f@#cking'(Bradley's word, not mine), which is supposed to tell us it's intense? Yuck! I think Bradley was trying to channel The English Patient, with absolutely no success.
There were occasional pretty turns of phrase, but not enough to save this wreck.
I believe this is an HSC text, which I find a very disturbing!

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was hoping this was going to be about 19th century ships and fun. Instead it's an archeologist trying to find a 15th century ship. Sometimes the first chapter can be misleading. An easy 1-day beach read: typical floaty prose, love interest, etc. Standard average novel

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tedious story involving miserable and unlikeable characters.

[Alyson · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was OK. A bit dull in the middle. No speech marks annoyed me.

[Suzanne Manners · Rating 2 out of 5]

David, an Australian archeologist, is searching for evidence of a Portuguese ship that was rumored to have been lost centuries earlier on a quest to discover Australia. What he finds is the remains of a body over 50 years old. He later meets Kurt, an old man, suffering in the final stages of cancer. Believing that this man holds the secret to the body and knows about the ship as well, he convinces a friend, Claire, to help him care for the dying man. While probing for information, he learns that Kurt as a young man was involved in an affair with Veronica, the wife of his best friend Frazier. The two friends were in WWII together and in an escape from a war torn city where they were stationed, Veronica goes missing. Frazier discovers the secret of his friend’s betrayal when he reads a letter left in his wife things. He goes to kill Kurt in a drunken state and ends up being the one fatally shot. Kurt buries the body and it is this corpse that David discovered. Before Kurt breathes his last breath, he admits that he did know about the ship, but it will never be found. For some reason he burned it.

While Claire and David were caring for Kurt, they start their own affair. Though both are not technically unfaithful to others; both live with memories. David not able to forget the memory of his former girlfriend who died from an asthma attack and Claire still obsessed with a former boyfriend with whom she had parted ways. Kurt’s story of his love for Veronica and the tragic end of their romance, leave David and Claire unsure about whether they should allow their hearts to love again.

Bradley begins each part of his novel with references to Magellan, Marco Polo, Columbus, and other legendary explorers. The scenery and emotions of the characters were poetically described throughout.

[Joyce Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first thing to say about this book is there are no quotation marks! As a former proof reader, I found this quite bizarre and took some getting used to. Other than that the story is quite good, especially if you're interested in history as there lot of passages about the basis for the story (the possibility a Portuguese ship landed on Australia first).

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

so - so . predictable .

[Polack · Rating 2 out of 5]

A silly attempt at a best-seller list novel. Romance fiction at its most banal.

[Pedro L. Fragoso · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally read the book, as beach summer reading (appropriate, I think, as most of the plot happens on a strecht of sandy coast). It is a literary tour de force and it's unbelievable that this is a first novel.

The novel is essentially about the "past", the nature of the past, and our relation with its unfathomable mysteries. “Our physical bodies, our minds, are created in such a way that we can only see time as a progression from one moment to the next, where the future is unknown and the past only remembered. We feel time’s pressure, but not time itself, our access to the universe limited to a dim and faded understanding of its possibilities, so we live feeling the past slip away as we fall into an unknown and constantly fluctuating future. And within this illusion there is nestled another, even more terrifying. Although we believe we remember the past, it is no more accessible to us than the future, what it holds lost to us for ever, as our minds and bodies blind us and condemn us to no more than a half-remembered dream of what was. The past is as inaccessible as the future, and as untrustworthy.” Or, more crudely: “Because the past is nothing, and we are nothing, and you, you’re still foolish enough to believe. You come here with your pious belief in the past, your desire to understand, but you’re too stupid to realise that none of it is true, none of it. Faith is a lie. Love is a lie. Only death is certain, and you, you’re too blind to see that.” After these considerations about the gone before, it's probably not all that surprising that Bradley lately has turned to (near future) science-fiction...

This is a richly textured novel, with layers, spanning decades, even centuries, and a non-linear telling of the tales, almost a mosaic. It works masterly, magically, a prodigy. The writing is very elegant and compelling.

I don't think that, 23 years already after the first printing in Australia, this book has been translated into Portuguese. It makes no sense.

“The Portuguese caravel was a small ship, a convergence of European and Arabian design, usually three-masted, with a rounded hull and high bow and stern. Small, seldom more than a hundred feet long and twenty-five feet in the beam, the caravel’s hull was a fusion of the rounded shape of European cargo ships and the smaller displacement and caravel construction of Arabian ships. Its rigging showed the influence of both parents, with a combination of square-rigged sails and the triangular lateen sails of the Arabian dhow. These small ships were more manoeuvrable than their European antecedents, and it was their manoeuvrability and sturdiness that allowed the tiny nation state of Portugal to take the lead in the exploration of the African coast, carrying them south, beyond the margins of their maps and into the shadowy realms of the imagination.”

Read on paper, the Vintage Australia paperback printing from 1997, with the evocative mosaic cover by Vivien Sung.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's the thing, the idea of this book excited you. The plot of the book intrigued you. Even the story held your interest. However, in actuality, the book, as whole, fell a little short. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, I don't think, but I also wouldn't say I completely hated reading this book. There were a lot of interesting elements, such as all the moving parts, the back stories, the anticipation for the ending (which had way more potential than we were given), the characters, the history. One thing I really liked was how the author laid out the book. I loved the flow of it (even with all the history chapters). But I really wanted a happy ending.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a lost 16th century Portuguese caravel while looking for the land mass that is now Australia propels the plot of this book. In the 1930s an archaeologist and his protégée make it their life's work to find the wreck, giving up their reputations, their loves and their health to find it. The plot moves back and forth between the original search for the wreck, information on the great Pacific explorers, and the present day as a new archeologist is trying to solve the puzzle with the help of a dying old man. The author manages to weave the three disparate stories into an adventurous look at the cutthroat world of academic archeology.

[Terry Tschann Skelton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rarely do I even consider reading fiction without quotation marks. And besides, at my advanced age, I've almost given up reading books with what I call "heavy" themes. The excellent prose in the first few pages, however, urged me to read further. Anyone who says this writing isn't any good doesn't know excellent writing when they see it. No, it's not an easy read, but to me it was well worth the effort. Forget the plot, but no, the plot is the thing after all. And the ending is a let-down some would say, but really, it's inevitable--where else does obsession lead?

[kayleigh · Rating 2 out of 5]

hmmm, I'm not sure how to feel about this one..I can't quite put my finger on it but I found it kinda creepy (and not in a good way). I came into it for the archeology / history, but actually it turned out mostly to be angst / psychosexual drama, which might be fine in a different book, but here I just found the two main protagonists attitudes towards love and women quite upsetting. it also introduces issues of race but then fails to properly deal with them, which is weird in a book with detailed sections on colonialism.

2 stars 🐚🗺️

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love books about ancient maps, shipwrecks and historical mysteries. Wrack has all of that plus romantic triangles, obsessive love and an unsolved murder. What’s more, poet James Bradley knows how to build curiosity and suspense in this his award-winning first novel first published in 1998.
The protagonist, David Norfolk, an archaeologist, is leading a dig on the Australian coast just south of Sydney searching for the wreckage of a Portuguese ship thought to have been wrecked there in the early 16th century. If he finds it, it will prove the much-disputed theory that Portuguese sailors set foot on Australia and could have claimed it long before the Spanish saw it and the British colonized it. It is a theory that still has some adherents and the Australian government, from time to time, has offered rewards for anyone who finds the remains of the ship.
David Norfolk’s problem is that his belief in this theory is out of fashion and so if this dig is unsuccessful, he is unlikely to have the resources to do another one and may even lose his place in academia. The metallic objects detected by a survey turn out to be farming equipment and the discovery by the team of a body with multiple bullet wounds further delays the dig because the site is now a crime scene.
Not far down the beach from the dig is a shack which is the home of a disfigured and sick man whom locals suggest might know something about the wreck. Norfolk visits him. The man rambles on but knows enough about the theory that Norfolk is convinced he does know something about the wreck and its whereabouts. Norfolk also soon realizes that the recluse is dying of cancer and may not survive long enough to tell what he knows particularly because he seems determined to tell the whole story of his life as a lead-up to what he knows about the wreck. It is a race against time and Norfolk’s obsession with the wreck makes it a very tense story.
Bradley was inspired to write this novel by accounts of archaeologists pursuing the idea. You can see the Dieppe maps on-line that for many, backed up the theory. Although this is a novel, a work of fiction, Bradley provides enough real background from the world of archaeology to make this narrative intriguing and, well, believable.
No spoilers here but this book keeps you enthralled until the last page.

[Jill Bowman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the way this book was arranged. The back and forth, the different stories, the history. I know so little about Australia yet this seemed to me like a very 'Australia ' book. Unknowable, shifting, stories, independent people. I was sorry to set it down at bedtime and will think about it for a long time.

[David Mitchell · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is much merit in this book.

I like the genre mix of history and fiction. The reason I have offered two stars is that there some startling absences in the early development of the story. Key facts only emerge late in the book. For instance, it was page 125 before I could place the activity in the far south coast of New South Wales.

[Thaydra · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book about a man's obsession- well a few men's obsession. There were many historical accounts in this book. I am not sure if they were fact or fiction, as history is not something I am interested in enough to pursue. However it lent a sort of dark under-currant to the book.

Interesting read.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a uniquely written book, one that's vivid and atmospheric, and almost feels as if you are sorting through the pieces of your own shipwreck. The stories layer together beautifully, combined with essay fragments, histories, and quotes.

[Emily D · Rating 4 out of 5]

At heart this is a romantic story about lost loves and obsessions. The setting was wild and unyielding, the characters engulfed by emotions, and an ancient lost ruin of a ship as a fitting metaphor of it all. I enjoyed being lost with them all.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved Kurt's story, not so much David's, especially as the book progressed. The historical detours worked really well. Never expected to get as much enjoyment as I did out of this book.

[Marissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not like the ending!

[Amy Heap]

I got about half way through, and just wasn't enjoying the setting, characters, or story.

[Red · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5

Nie podobało mi się to w jaki sposób ta książka została napisana...

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A weird premise for a novel and I had a hard time getting through it. 2.8/5

[Daniela · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Beverly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some call it ambitious. I finished it but it was so fragmented that it wasn’t enjoyable. Too many story lines.