The Fortunes Of Richard Mahony

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony #1-3

by Henry Handel Richardson

Set in Australia during the gold-mining boom, this remarkable trilogy is one of the classics of Australian literature.
Henry Handel Richardson’s great literary achievement, comprising the novels Australia Felix, The Way Home and Ultima Thule, weaves together many themes. Richard Mahony, despite finding initial contentment with his wife Mary, becomes increasingly dissatified with his ordered life. His restlessness is not understood by Mary, who has to endure the constant shattering of her security as Richard desperately attempts to free himself; his attempts finally plunge them into poverty. In the figure of Richard Mahony, Richardson captures the soul of the emigrant, ever restless, ever searching for some equilibrium, yet never really able to settle anywhere. Richard’s search, though, is also the more universal one for a meaning that will validate and give purpose to his existence.

Genres: Australia, Classics, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literature, 20th Century, Historical

841 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson Robertson for mixed motives used and adopted Henry Handel Richardson, a pen-name that probably militated against recognition especially when feminist literary history began. Maurice Guest was highly praised in Germany when it first appeared in translation in 1912, but received a bad press in England, though it influenced other novelists. The publishers bowdlerized the language for the second imprint. The trilogy suffered from the long intervals between its three volumes: Australia Felix (1917); The Way Home (1925) and Ultima Thule (1929). The last brought overnight fame and the three volumes were published as one in 1930. Her fame in England was short-lived; as late as 1977, when Virago Press republished The Getting of Wisdom, some London critics referred to the author as 'Mr Richardson'. Her short stories, The End of a Childhood (1934), and the novel, The Young Cosima (1939), had lukewarm receptions.

Henry Handel Richardson's place in Australian literature is important and secure. The Fortunes is an archetypal novel of the country, written about the great upsurge of nineteenth-century Western capitalism fuelled by the gold discoveries. With relentless objectivity it surveys all the main issues which were to define the direction of white Australian society from the 1850s onwards, within the domestic framework of a marriage. Powerfully symbolic in a realistic mode it is, as an English critic said in 1973, 'one of the great inexorable books of the world'.

Reviews

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cry Me a River

I don't think I have ever cried so hard and so long as when I arrived at the end of this book.

In Defence of Slow Reading

I read it at a time when I had the time and inclination to embrace and be embraced by a genuine epic.
I don't know whether I would be as patient now, but that is my loss.
Hopefully, you, with the time available to you, will be more patient than me and you will be rewarded more recently as well.
Some things in life, as Paul Keating once said of his political opponent, should be done slowly.
This book and great literature in general are good examples.
I have dropped a star only to protect you from length and sadness, but if you fear neither, it's a five star achievement.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warning: plot spoilers.

When your country has a tiny population, like Australia's, authors often have to symbolize more than one thing. Richardson, for instance, is Australia's Joyce (insofar as she wrote one of the great Australian young person comes of age novel). She is Australia's Eliot; not only did she, like George, give herself a 'man's' name; she also knew far more about 19th century intellectual life than most people of her circle would have known, and put that to good work in her novels. She is Australia's Melville, having written a quasi-symbolic novel about her young nation's growth and, more importantly, its flaws. And she's Australia's Mann, having written the country's great realist novel, and one of its great modernist novels. But Richardson managed to make them two parts of one massive book, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony.

Sadly, Richardson's major novel is not as great as that by those men and women, but 'Richard Mahony' is, I'm fairly sure, unique in world literature. The first volume, 'Australia Felix,' starts out with an astonishing 'proem,' an almost grotesque visual sequence in which men are "ensorcelled--without witchcraft" by the "unholy hunger" for gold. But this is better read as the proem to the novel as a whole. 'Australia Felix' is a standard, enjoyable realist tale of a young migrant, who wins a wife, makes some money, and decides to return home. In volume two, 'The Way Home,' our hero fails in the old world, returns home, and becomes massively wealthy. In 'Ultima Thule', his wealth gone, he slowly goes insane.

If it were only this, the book would be fairly forgettable. But it is also to some degree a portrait of the nation's soul (though Richardson might have been uncomfortable with this reading): deeply ambivalent about its relationship to the old world, with fears of inferiority ('culture cringe'), ambitious but disgusted by ambition, greedy but egalitarian, and so on.

More importantly, Richardson begins the book in a fairly bland, realistic style, but as Mahony becomes more and more unstable, the strong third person narrator loses its grip. We get more stream of consciousness, more free indirect discourse, more ellipses and non sequiturs. Richardson uses modernist tools, but uses them to depict Mahony's madness, or the way he appears to his young son. Whenever we're back with Mahony's sane (and long suffering) wife, Mary, the narrator is strong.

But that madness at the end returns us to the grotesque proem at the mine's face: the nation, more or less founded (on this telling) on the receipts of the gold rush, can't escape the madness that was present at that foundation. This is the history that gave us modernism, and you can't help but feel nostalgic, at the end, for the cliches and clunkiness of the book's opening. But, as Mahony learns (twice!), you can't just go back home as if nothing has happened.

[Rick Harsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

900 page fat penguin classics get five stars if they get read.
Epics about the Australian adventure that are not at all about that adventure yet do use it as background get five stars.
Why have I never heard of this author, this book? This was written from about 1910 through 1929; it's not so old. And though its Epo is the male Richard Mahoney, few novels I have read have so thoroughly explored a female character while exposing a variety of patriarchal ravages AND as thoroughly explored a male character...So humans are covered. You know all those Nobel Prize winners you can't remember, or never heard of? This could easily have been one of them.
My intention was to read this fat naturalist classic side by side with Mulligan Stew, mostly as a reason to finally commit to finishing M. Stew, which I love enough to leave and return to; but that dreaded forward slugging plot forced me to shed the funnies of the book that mocks all, particularly plots and the slugs that detain them...But Richardson--Henry!--wrote such compelling psychologicals that this epic of simply a marriage, though I knew the end toward which it was mining, gripped me by the mental scrotum and pulled me into its dark fucking truths, which I already know, knew, and need not yet could not shake off. What a miserable fucking book. But all true.
Not one kangaroo the whole book.
Since the author is dead, I don't mind saying I could have done without her taking her prose into the naturalist playground of the children and spared me the arrs spoke as UUs. She earned my patience but by the end of the book I was glad that I zipped through those witto sections, blew the dust of them off my settee.
Highly recommend.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book shortly after the birth of my second child (who turns 29 in about six weeks time). It was on the syllabus for a university course I was doing at the time. My enduring memory is sitting in bed at 2.00 am, reading while feeding the baby, with my tears falling onto his head. And then, continuing to read, well after the baby was asleep again, because I couldn't put it down. An epic book.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have found it impossible to continue with this read right now. It is so boring that I literally fall asleep every time I pick it up. My mind is not at its best for focusing right now, so it may not be entirely the fault of the book.

In any event, I will put this one aside, unread, perhaps forever.

[Angela Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's about the life of the restless Richard Mahony, from the Ballarat goldfields in the 1850s, via many adventures in Australia and abroad, to the latter part of the nineteenth century. It’s also a stunning portrait of a marriage, and an incredibly detailed account of colonial Australia: Ballarat, Melbourne, the bush and the seaside.

Reading it was one of the most fulfilling literary experiences I’ve ever had. This is mainly due to the character of Richard Mahony and his self-induced tribulations, and the intimate details of his marriage to Polly (later known as Mary). But it is also due to the historical aspects: Mahony provides complete immersion in the experience of the past, through the eyes of just a few characters. It’s also an incredibly compassionate novel. I only read afterwards that the character of Mahony was partly inspired by Richardson’s father, and that just broke my heart all over again.

The novel is so large that the characters become more than complex, they become real. The style is naturalistic, and the characters’ mental states are given as much attention as the surrounding landscape. I found myself exasperated at Richard (as Mary is), for his impractical flightiness, but at the same time I was so fond and forgiving of him. And I related at times to his need for peace, quiet; to not be bothered (and then sided with him, too, in his annoyance at Mary’s complete rationality). The Mahonys are truly both kind-hearted—Mary charitable with her being and her space, to her friends; Mahony a gentle doctor who hesitates to chase up bills, and who often rethinks his first, rash opinions of people—but they also are at times hateful, frayed, even cruel. Mahony is a terrible listener, and unable to adapt to colonial attitudes (holding onto notions of gentlemanliness without realising it sometimes makes him a laughing stock). But then! When they go to England he reacts to their snobbishness. You think it will change him…

Mary slowly becomes perceptive to Richard’s foibles—particularly the ones that get them into trouble—and becomes stronger, and less materially motivated. At the beginning you can see how well they match: it centres around their kindnesses, they way they (attempt to) perceive the good in others (though Mary soon learns that sometimes Richard will maintain a grudge). Mary is more likely to see the ‘good’ and that is where she is kind, whereas Richard will crumble when faced with the ‘weak’. Richardson exquisitely renders a long-term relationship: the way they misinterpret each other and begin to keep secrets, the way they manage each other, sometimes fear each other. The novel is an incredible, humble, love story.

Each revelation of character comes about through sections of the novel that are book length. That makes it sound dreary, but it’s not. There are seeds planted (sometimes in conversations with other characters), events foreshadowed. When you begin reading it, you think it is all about the goldfields, and the men (and it is). But then Polly/Mary and a new cast of characters come along. Way, way down the line there are windfalls and travel and children and tragedy. Each ‘event’ is, as mentioned, a book of its own, so I can only be vague here. The whole that these events add up to is so revealing. As an Australian, too. (Though I think this holds up against European novels set in the 19th Century, is in fact much more accessible than many of them.) I had, for example, never thought very much about the way the gold rush messed up the class system for those who clung to it, fresh from the old country, and what that meant, how confusing it could be for them. More generally there is so much to learn (and so much colour) in regards to colonial Australia and the foundation of Victoria.

I want to talk about Richard (though I really cannot possibly capture him). He is self-absorbed, he is manic at times—bursting with excitement for an idea, mainly a change—and then he sinks into deep depressions. He is over-sensitive: ‘How strange Richard was… how difficult! First, to be able to forget all about how things stood with him, and then to be twice as upset as other people’. He is definitely fickle, an ‘unpractical old dreamer’ as Mary thinks of him at one stage. He is paranoid and nervous, more so as he gets older. He loves isolation, but becomes bored of that too and surprises Mary (and the reader) with bouts of socialising. He is a skilled doctor, he is curious (a great reader, at one point becoming obsessed with spiritualism: ‘He believed and would continue to believe it impossible wholly to account for life and its phenomena in terms of physiology, chemistry, physics’). He is not humourless but his sensitivity sometimes gets in the way. He is sometimes confused. He is embarrassing to his son, Cuffy. Cuffy is such a surprising and wonderful voice added to the novel in later parts. Cuffy allows the reader to see the relationship of his parents, the places they live, their life and his father from a different angle. The way Richardson writes him captures the wonder and confusion (and temper) of childhood.

I’ll share one longer extract which is revealing of Richard. After a description of travel and all of its difficulties, this is what follows:

'Yes! there was always something. He never let himself have any real peace or enjoyment. Or so thought Mary at the time. It was not till afterwards, when he fell to re-living his travels in memory, that she learned how great was the pleasure he had got out of them. Inconveniences and annoyances were by then sunk below the horizon. Above, remained visions of white cities, and slender towers, and vine-clad hills; of olive groves bedded in violets; fine music heard in opera and oratorio; coffee-drinking in shady gardens on the banks of a lake; orchards of pink almond-blossom massed against the misty blue of far mountain valleys.'

This gives you an idea of the contradictions within, and the changeability of Richard, and how he values having experienced different things (no matter how troublesome at the time). It also gives you an idea of the rhythm in the prose, and the humour in the novel, too. It is not a solemn affair, even tragic circumstances are often given fresh views (ie. by Cuffy, the son).

Highly, highly recommended.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

A soul's slow, slow descent. I remember the trauma.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic epic of what it means to be human, by following the life of a man and a marriage, with all the foibles of humanity and love and weakness and fear, but the memory is love. A rereading of a favourite.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see why this book was a classic, but I found it too long. I disengaged several times. The strength of thos book to me, was the characters. They really evoked strong emotions ranging from sympathy and affection to disgust and annoyance, often about the same character in the same chapter.

[Leonie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Expecting from the title for this to be the story of someone with a lot of ups and downs in their lives, and not knowing much else about it, I was a little surprised to meet Richard Mahony. He is not at first glance a tumultuous figure but a rather dour, cautious figure who has trouble connecting with the world. He begins as a shopkeeper but spends much of the novel practising as a doctor, though there are also periods of independent wealth. He broods in an uncharismatic, touchy way, left out of the world’s bonhomie because of his inability to consistently produce or appreciate it, but envying its warmth. He is much less earthbound and more erratic than he at first appears however, more of an idealist, occasionally hyper-social and periodically subject to an irresistible urge to destroy his present life and start again.

He has one friend who means a lot to him, and through this friend he meets Mary, who becomes his wife when she is only 16 and he is 12 years older. At this stage in their lives they both have a good deal of idealism in their make-up; their high ethical standards will continue to be the one thing they have in common. At the beginning the differences in their world-views seems insignificant, not least because Mary is very young. All of Richard’s energies are bound up with the inner world. He pursues the great intellectual questions and is a classic case of caring about injustice while being unable to stand people in the flesh. His interest in spiritualism is a trial for his wife and she doesn’t understand his love of animals. He doesn’t understand and certainly can’t share her patience with real people which comes from both love and loyalty for friends and family and pragmatism, her ability to make useful connections for him if only he will play his part. Richardson does very well at making us understand the tug at both ends, each straining for nourishment in opposite directions. We can enter into each character’s frustrations with the other at times. Occasionally, however, I felt that Richardson hit a false note with Mary’s characterisation in order to achieve this. Generally her kindness and ability to relate to others is emphasised, except when Richardson wants to make too clear a dichotomy between her kind of perceptions and Richard’s and she suddenly fails in kindness due to her lack of ability to perceive the nature of others’ problems. I find it hard to buy the idea that kindness can exist without emotional intelligence and in general Mary’s kindness is clearly shown not to be confined to material problems and their solutions.

The need for companionship and the question of what companionship consists of is one of the novel’s themes. True understanding and sharing of what is most individual or just the simple solidarity and continuing presence of married life? One of the things I liked most about this book is its treatment of marriage as something that creates a partnership like a separate entity from either of them. Romance might have been the lure to enter into the relationship at the beginning but has very little to do with the substance of it. And in the end the fact of having spent so much time together is more important than whether it was ever really the best decision to do so.

This book is Introversion: The Three Act Tragedy and I found it horribly convincing. For me, this passage, which comes at the crux of Richard’s desperation, is the climax of this theme:

For there had been no real love in him: never a feeler thrown out to his fellow-men. Such sympathy as he felt, he had been too backward to show: had given of it only in thought, and from afar. Pride, again! — oh! rightly was a pride like his reckoned among the seven capital sins. For what WAS it, but an iron determination to live untouched and untrammelled . . . to preserve one’s liberty, of body and of mind, at the expense of all human sentiment. To be sufficient unto oneself, asking neither help nor regard, and spending none. A fierce, Lucifer-like inhibition. Yes, this . . . but more besides. Pride also meant the shuddering withdrawal of oneself, because of a rawness . . . a skinlessness . . . on which the touch of any rough hand could cause agony; even the chance contacts of everyday prove a source of exquisite discomfort.

It’s one of those books which makes you wonder why it isn’t better known as one of the Great Books even though you feel a little protective about of it because really you know why it isn’t one of the Great Books even though it has Greatness within it. Partly it might be that Richard’s tragedy is a little too specific; I related to enough of it to be unsure how universal it was. Mostly though because of the accumulation of domestic detail; immense quantities of parties given and home improvements and births, deaths and marriages in their family circle. I have a high tolerance for this stuff and also I thought it conveyed the sense of time; it’s important for this book to convey the impression that it contains the sum of Richard and Mary’s lives. But I can see how others might be defeated.

[John Purcell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beyond brilliant. Without peer.

[Paul Blakemore · Rating 3 out of 5]

It takes a perverse type of courage to write a 900 page novel about such an obstinate and unlikeable man. The three books tell the repeating cycle of Richard Mahony's attempts to settle and find happiness in various towns in Australia and England. Each time he disastrously upheaves his family, plunging them into more financial peril, he ignores all the advice and experience of those around him in order to make the same mistakes yet again.

The incredible frustration of this pattern is only tempered by the book's one shining light, the character of his wife Mary: a stoical and quietly heroic force, working in the background to reclaim what she can from the wreck of Mahony's misadventures.

I preferred the final volume to the first three; the narration is more varied in terms point of view and structure and the ending of the trilogy does a lot to help you forgive the pigheadedness of Mahony.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a difficult one to rate. For most of the book (nearly 90% of it, according to my Kindle) I was ready to give up at any moment. I was going to give it a two-star rating. Not one star, because even in the depths of its interminably meandering middle, it had clear literary merit. But god, it was so BORING. In the chronicle of the lives of Richard and Mary Mahony, it felt as though the author left not a single day undescribed. And then, towards the end, it suddenly became not only interesting but heart-rending. The last ten percent is beautiful and sad, an incredible feat of naturalistic writing.
Is it worth slogging through seven hundred pages of tedium to get to this stunning finish? I haven't quite made up my mind yet.

I've also written a review of this book on my blog, Around the World in 2000 Books.

[Estott · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Australian Novel. Heavy going in spots, but worth it. Mahony (pronounced MAhony as he would remind you) is an intelligent man with ambitions to rise. He has a restlessness and a somewhat contrary nature, both of which characteristics contribute to his eventual downfall. He is championed only by his long suffering wife- he loves her deeply but never really understands her. Mahony is like a warped version of Micawber- he believes that if he picks up and moves to a new situation then everything will at last improve, but his financial, his physical, and at last his mental downfall has the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. The ending is heartbreaking.

[Carole Dent · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED this book. Absolutely unputdownable

[Michael Dalton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whew! Amazing!

[GaiB · Rating 2 out of 5]

An absolute slog, with a foolish protagonist

[Bob Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rise, decline and fall in Australia

This Australian novel is extremely difficult to rate because it can be different things to different people. I bought it before I left Australia in 1989, but because of its 830-page length, I put off reading it till now. Due to a rather misleading cover, I thought it was perhaps a military or adventure story. I also did not realize that “Henry Handel” was actually “Ethel Florence”! Like several other female authors, she had taken a male name to make her work “heavier” in the eyes of the public. Not only is the author’s name thus misleading, but the title is also dubious. The real hero of the book is the heroine, Richard Mahony’s long-suffering wife, Mary. She saves the family again and again, puts up with an irascible, capricious, never-satisfied husband, and sticks out all the dire consequences of his follies. His only real fortune was to have married that wife. The strength of the wife is constantly contrasted to the fragility and weakness of the husband.

Learning about the author, one discovers that the novel has many resemblances to her own life in that her father suffered the same fate as Richard Mahony. She spent a good part of her life in Europe, but felt Australian always. Some of the descriptions of the Australian land seemed a bit strange to me even so, and I felt that she might have written them from afar, so to speak. The conditions of the gold rush in Ballarat, which she was born too late to see, may or may not have been accurate, as with her description of the famed uprising at the Eureka Stockade.

TFORM is an epic family story. Richard Mahony is a medical graduate who comes to Australia and takes up shopkeeping rather than medicine. He marries Mary close to the beginning of the novel, then we follow their lives as he goes back into medicine, becomes successful, but feels unfulfilled, wishes somehow to “find himself”. These wishes prove his eventual undoing. He despises Australia and wishes for English civilization. He sells up and they sail for “home”. As one who emigrated to Australia from a small town in Massachusetts but returned home after many years, I particularly identified with this section of the book in which he wonders (p.350) after settling in an English village,

“Here the familiar atmosphere of his childhood laps him round, and he breathes it greedily—even while he marvels how time has stood still for the home-keepers, and asks himself if he can ever again be one of them.”

He lasts only a year in England before re-embarking for Melbourne. Then, a sudden leap of fortune, his shares in gold mines rocket up and they begin to enjoy a leisured urban life with the elite of the city. But it doesn’t endure. Mahony gets into spiritism and séances, retreats from social life into himself. The slow decline of the family and of Richard Mahony is best left for a reader to discover, but it is not accompanied by any Hollywood Pollyanna-ism. It is a novel that will leave you feeling sad, but his ruinous restlessness and lack of fulfillment is another part of the human drama, one which also brings out the atmosphere of Melbourne and the surrounding country in that era. It is considered an Australian classic, though of an older type. So far, so good.

However. I would say that the book—perhaps originally three volumes in 1930—is too long. It could have been cut by at least a couple of hundred pages. Some sections, especially those in which we see things through the mind or words of a 7 or 8 year old boy, are certainly superfluous. I disliked reading the purported mispronunciations of Australian children of the late 19th century. There seems to have been a trend some time ago in Australia to write long sections in “dialect”. I refer to two other very lengthy books: “The Man Who Loved Children” by Christina Stead (a much better book I would say) and “Poor Fellow My Country” by Xavier Herbert, in which a dozen dialects occupy numerous pages very tiresomely.

Also by way of criticism, I felt that there were too many deus ex-machinas and too much preaching of a philosophical kind, perhaps a 19th century style no longer popular. So, in conclusion, it’s very hard to assign stars. In terms of a look at human nature and Australia in the late 19th century it may be a five star novel, but in terms of literature and readability, maybe only three. Hence I'll settle for four. See what you think.

[Maia · Rating 4 out of 5]

the ending is SAD! oh god i cried, and i couldn't sleep after. (i never cry from books)
okay, lots of this book is nice people, little events, writing varies from fine to amazing, but like lots of writing of this period has passages of intense emotional insight into how people work.

What makes me want to give it 5/5 is the incredible, central portrait of a marriage, in-depth and life-long, showing two completely believable natures and how they unite then drift apart, so that, when you're reading the part that alternates POV sections (done in 3rd person but pov), you believe this person is totally write, a living, breathing person, reasonable and feeling, and the other is a selfish monster, of each person, as you read it in turn: how can one person manage to write that, to inhabit both and make both fully real? As for the portrait, from the inside, of mental illness, i couldn't write that, and i've had it. How could someone, never mentally ill, imaginatively invent that, and get it right?

This is all set in a pretty conventional victorian-edwardian portrait-of-a-life novel, that's not scared of length, people, events, crowds, in the way writers don't write now, and therefore in parts quite humdrum - the stuff written above is not there to give the novel some drama, it's just part of the trajectory of life. Long parts of this novel are quite uneventful. Very memorable. Victorian marriage is a bit annoying, but it's worth learning how much power men had over their wives - if they wanted to put your children in boarding school and cart you to the other side of the world, you had to go - to understand the past. Her plotting is very cunning, with lots of parallels and forshadowing you won't mostly guess till you get there and very clever setting up - for instance, the wife's dislike of animals near the start is a set up for something near the end.....

My verdict is, read it: your life will be the richer. If i don't remember parts of this vividly years hence, i'll be surprised.

[Diane B · Rating 4 out of 5]

To start with, a warning - this book is LONG. 942 pages of fairly small print. It's really three novels in one, so you need to be committed!

The story is set in the latter half of the 19th century during the Australian gold rush and as the title describes, it tells of the rising and falling (and rising and falling...) fortunes of Richard Mahony, a man for whom the grass is always greener elsewhere. I found him incredibly frustrating and maddening, but also a strangely sympathetic character, trapped in the confines of his era. In parallel to his fortunes, it shows the changes in his relationship with his wife and beautifully illustrates the complexity and love-hate nature of marriage.

Given this is a book written by a woman who had to use a man's name in order to get published, I find its gender representations fascinating. Women are described as being ideally suited to housework, with a number of similar comments throughout, and they are always - at least superficially - at the beck and call of their men. Yet several women, and Richard's wife in particular, are more sensible, cleverer, even more business-minded than their husbands. I like to think of 'Henry' (Ethel) having a chuckle as she inserted some subtle (and not so subtle) feminist perspectives into a book that became an Australian classic.

This is a story very much of its time, and I enjoyed getting into the historical period and the little details of life in that era, but its realistic writing style feels quite modern and its themes and characters are still very relatable.

[Dai · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have experienced something akin to grief in finishing this novel. In the days since, I have caught myself welling with emotion and a deep sadness as my mind wanders back to the harsh Australian bushland of Barambogie, the deeply unsettling and remote dictrict of Gymgurra and those final moments overlooking the sparse Victorian windswept cliffs in which we must yield to what we so desperately hoped would turn around as these characters are finally put to rest (albeit disquieting and unfulfilled).

This novel is brilliant. It is not always perfect but its inconsistencies I think, point to the author's closeness to her characters as she draws on the hardships her own father experienced. The sense of never belonging socially or geographically, the restlessness in throwing caution to the wind to find peace, and the ever-present awareness that as time escapes them, so too does any certainty that they ever will find peace as friendships get shorter and connections fall by the wayside; are such honest portrayals of the restless spirit in so many of us. This story clearly comes from a deeply personal experience.

The people, moments and experiences set out in this novel will haunt me forever.

[Glenn Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been called one of the true classics of Australian literature, and without a doubt I would have to agree.

I don't think I've ever read a book with such good characterizations as what is contained in this book. All the major characters were so clearly defined that they came alive with their own persona and moods, and how these minds and personas were so well delved into, that the novel was acutely psychological and introspective.

The story took over 15 years to write, with the result that the story has an air of having been lived in. It is an evolution rather than a fabrication. It was thoroughly matured in the mind before it was given to print.

Many might say that this epic was mainly about Richard Mahoney, but it would be a severe failing on the readers part not to acknowledge that it was equally about his wife Mary. Where Richard was weak in mind and progressively getting weaker, in contrast Mary was undaunted and unwavering and continued to become stronger.

This was such a beautiful tale; beautiful in a dark, sad way - definitely not something that once having read could easily be forgotten.

[Elizabeth Sheppard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony is a colonial settler Anglo-Australian classic, written from a covertly female perspective. Set as a study text in Australian Literature courses at Australian Universities in the 1960s, this book has influenced a whole generation of Anglo-Australian authors and academics. The mournful hero, who sees himself as a benevolent, law abiding, civilised gentleman, suffers a string of disastrous events that, he fails to recognise, are the result of his own blindsided ineptitude. The fact that its female author Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson Robertson was obliged to adopt a male pseudonym to break into publishing her work in Australia, speaks volumes about the unrestrained patriarchial domination that oppressed the Australian women of her generation and beyond, and has bullied Australia’s Indigenous population into segregated suppression, for over rwo centuries. If you want to understand the conflicted motives and illogical behaviour of Anglo-Australian patriarchs, read this book.

[Mandy Partridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

My copy of this book is titled "The Adventures of Cuffy Mahony, and Other Stories."
Richardson wrote of the abject poverty of English and Irish immigrants to Australia, and the downward spiral of Mahony in particular.
Richardson had the opposite upbringing, attending the prestigious Methodist Ladies College, but she was a keen observer of people of all classes. She married an academic, and moved to Europe- Germany and Britain, where she lived most of her life, and published using a man's name.
In her day, writing about the working class was still a very new thing, and she observes the inequality of our new colonial society very keenly.

[Tamsin Davidson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found it difficult to rate this one. Such a long book. Mid way through, I couldn’t wait to finally finish it, but the end was so beautifully and movingly written. The characters’ personalities are brilliantly captured, as also are the behaviours and etiquette of the time. I understand now why this novel is a classic. Whilst reading it, I also really enjoyed looking up and learning new vocabulary. Many words that are not in common usage these days but are fabulous words nonetheless.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little bored during the middle bit and thought I had the trajectory of the rest of the book figured out, but again HHR throws a doozy and kept me guessing. Some more thoughts:
- this is a story about Mary just as much or even more than Richard
- Richard was a bit of a dick for most of his life
- women were hugely undervalued in 18th century Australia
- fraud, scams and theft were much easier in the 18th century too

[Geoffrey Gates · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney has been sitting on my bookshelf for years. It’s not that I don’t admire the author: Richardson’s first novel Maurice Guest (1908) is a true favourite I read about once a decade. But I baulked at Mahoney – it seemed overly long; the image on the cover looked too colonial; I liked her Leipzig tale so much it was bound to disappoint. At last, I found a reason.

https://gatesyread.blogspot.com/2024/...

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in various locations, from the Ballarat goldfields, to a very young Melbourne, and various parts of rural Victoria, this is a fascinating account of a doctor's battle with living in a country where he doesn't feel at home, while battling his mental demons. This is as sad as A Little Life, or Jude the Obscure. Surprised it hasn't been made into a movie.

[Barby · Rating 5 out of 5]

The trilogy is an absolute classic of Australian literature. The author describes colonial life in a way which is still true in Australia today- practical skills are needed and valued more than intellectual skills. Her comment on the ridiculous behaviour of the English class system is no doubt just as accurate today.

[Michele Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most enjoyable books I have ever read, and easily the best Australian book. I continue to be amazed that this is not more well known and recognised as one of the best examples of Australian fiction.
I read it as a three volume set and couldn't put it down.
Highly recommended.