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Voss

Patrick White,

Robert Macfarlane (Goodreads Author) (Introduction)

3.78 · Rating details · 2,610 ratings · 237 reviews

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT MACFARLANE

Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only on a few occasions, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent, and as hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle aw ...more

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Paperback, 448 pages

Published July 21st 1994 by Vintage Classics (first published August 10th 1957)

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Oct 14, 2020 William2 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 20-ce, australia

“There were occasions, this fever-gutted man suspected, when his leader was not sensible of their common doom, and so, he must see for him, he must feel for him. By now he was able to read the faintest tremor of blood or earth, the recording of which was perhaps his sole surviving reason for existence.” (p. 280)

This is a novel of astonishing vision and talent. An adventure story and a love story, the writing is vivid and lush. Its characterizations have an emotional resonance that does not flag. “There were occasions, this fever-gutted man suspected, when his leader was not sensible of their common doom, and so, he must see for him, he must feel for him. By now he was able to read the faintest tremor of blood or earth, the recording of which was perhaps his sole surviving reason for existence.” (p. 280)

This is a novel of astonishing vision and talent. An adventure story and a love story, the writing is vivid and lush. Its characterizations have an emotional resonance that does not flag.

It’s about an expedition through what in 1845 were Australia’s uncharted northern territories. Not unknown territories, as a friend recently reminded me, but land unknown to the Europeans who were then colonizing it. Interestingly, it was written by a gay man about ostensibly straight men alone with each other under punishing conditions for long periods.

It is based on the life of explorer Ludwig Leichhardt who crossed from Newcastle to Port Essington in Australia’s Northern Territory. The North American parallel would probably be the Lewis & Clark expedition. A later Leichhardt expedition is believed to have met its demise in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. For narrative purposes the various expeditions have been condensed into one.

A second part is the love story. In Sydney, before setting out, the explorer, Johann Ulrich Voss, is smitten by the intelligent and attractive Laura Trevelyan. There’s a scene in the garden of Mr. Bonner—Miss Trevelyan’s uncle and Voss’s sponsor—that is among the finest I have read this year. They meet only a few times, but affinities, and areas of disagreement, especially with regard to the idea of humility, are found. Later, in the middle of his expedition, Voss, an eccentric, writes to ask for her hand, or rather for permission to ask her uncle for it.

There are especially long passages of dialogue and interior monologue which defy the reader’s expectations in their ability to extend character. Moreover, White’s ease in describing everything from a forlorn expedition to a gala ball is striking. Nothing seems beyond him. Voss is dense, however, and I don’t think it will reward anything but careful reading.

Some of the characters’ names are irresistible: Dr. Badgery, a ship’s surgeon; Rose Portion, Laura’s servant impregnated by a scoundrel; Mr. Palfreyman, an ornithologist with Voss’s expedition; even Trevelyan, with it suggestion of travail. In terms of evocation of landscape, another major strength of the book, I am reminded of Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing: The Border Trilogy 2, not in terms of style so much as ability or perhaps capacity. There is something here, too, of Henry James’s late style, though without the terse obliquity and resulting tedium.

Here’s a rare bit of authorial misogyny that stopped me dead. “Because she was a woman, she was also dishonest whenever it was really necessary.” (p. 314) Is this the exception which proves the rule? It would seem so, for elsewhere Laura Trevelyan is portrayed as an independent-minded woman chafing somewhat against propriety and society. She is also, deplorably, a reader of books. ...more

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Feb 05, 2016 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Voss is a splendidly dark and uncompromisingly realistic novel. The story is a conflict of the ideal and the actual…

They realized, standing on the wharf, that the orderly, grey, past life was of no significance. They had reached that point at which they would be offered up, in varying degrees, to chaos or to heroism. So they were shaking with their discovery, beside the water, as the crude, presumptuous town stretched out behind them, was reeling on its man-made foundations in the sour earth. No

...more

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Nov 20, 2017 Steven Godin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: australia-new-zealand, nobel-laureates, historical-fiction

Patrick White's 1957 novel I found to be an immensely challenging read, not what I was expecting, and I am still unclear whether my scoring is accurate, going by my first thoughts on completion, I think it's just about right, thinking a little deeper over the coming days it may well change. The story itself was certainly a case of substance over style, which as it turned out, was one of it's big strengths, and White's sentencing had a purposeful way of switching between brisk flashes of brillian Patrick White's 1957 novel I found to be an immensely challenging read, not what I was expecting, and I am still unclear whether my scoring is accurate, going by my first thoughts on completion, I think it's just about right, thinking a little deeper over the coming days it may well change. The story itself was certainly a case of substance over style, which as it turned out, was one of it's big strengths, and White's sentencing had a purposeful way of switching between brisk flashes of brilliance, whilst also drawing out scenarios that seem to take off wistfully, and glide over the never ending landscapes. In a nutshell, 'Voss' I would say is a combination of metaphysical drama and love story overseeing a harsh historical adventure into the unknown. The characters and events are meticulously orchestrated with a skill of precision, and it's 1845 setting really captures the time. Neither the explorers featured in the novel, nor myself, the reader, could have been prepared for the journey ahead...

White predominantly focuses on two characters: Johann Ulrich Voss, a German explorer who challenges himself (with the help of small band of others) to partake in an expedition crossing the Australian continent, and Laura Trevelyan, a young, slightly naive, but lovely orphan who recently arrived in New South Wales. Voss and Laura would meet for the first time in the house of Laura’s uncle (Mr. Bonner) the patron of Voss’s expedition. Theirs is a complex relationship, and they are bonded by not the close warmth and tenderness of each other, but with a mutual obsession based on separation, which, as time passes, grows greater the further they are apart. After the first third sets the scene, the rest of the novel alternates between Voss's adventure and Laura's life at home.
Although Voss is the one traveling great distances, both are on a journey of not just self-discovery, but also self-realization. White looks at the Australian outback, just as many would see it, a dangerous, overwhelmingly hot landscape, where what could go wrong, generally does, whether that be with man or beast, and when the party is split in two, a sense of oblivion and doom takes hold. For those who have read it, will know there is moment late on that really did send my jaw dropping towards the floor, something I just didn't think would happen, but it did.

Although the novel draws heavily on the complex ways of Voss, it was difficult to always like him. Whereas the time spent with Laura will stay with me the most, I found her really quite moving, and could have easily read a novel solely about her. She would live for the rare letters received from the expedition, whilst also writing them herself to travel the other way, to others there is no inkling that she is in love, she senses disaster the longer time goes on, and ultimately accepts a future of unwedded, unhappy, widowhood, this after seeing her adopt a baby she cannot keep, getting really sick with a dangerous fever, and watching her cousin wed, whilst she ponders the long lost Voss. I just wanted to give her a great big hug, I probably wouldn't want to let go.

It didn't strike me at first, but Patrick White does use religion as an extensive symbolism, there is often the reference of God, Christ or the Devil, a meeting in a garden prior to departure (Garden of Eden), Voss, leader of men walking though the desert, tending to the sick, a man of non-violence, a God to some, the devil to others. Both Voss and Laura seem to communicate through visions, whether this could be seen as dreams, disorientation or actual, it's about as remote as romance gets, but still, helped in keeping each other close by.

I don't think I have fully grasped White's achievement with this book, to deem it a masterpiece, may have to read again, in as little time as possible, it probably does require some longer reading sessions that I just couldn't give it, breaking up the pattern, but it was still, unquestionably, a mighty fine piece of writing that is still fluttering around inside my head, yet to find a way out. ...more

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Jun 28, 2019 Julie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, nobel, favorites, australia

10/10

Maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen

I couldn't think of a better placeholder, until I find words for a proper review. It's been an exhausting month in the desert with Voss.

“It is like using an iron crowbar at minus 65 degrees centigrade in Siberia: when you let go, part of the skin adheres to it. P ...more

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Jun 25, 2014 Lisa rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, nobels

While pondering on whether to read another Patrick White, I check my rating of "Voss", which I remember dimly as an excruciatingly slow ride through 19th century Australia with a man I couldn't stand at all until the very end of the story.

Even though I felt that it was a struggle to get to the end of that (reading) journey, it left an impression on me that lingered: that Patrick White's fiction is worth grappling with, that the effort the reader has to put in is mirrored in the effort of the c ...more

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Jun 15, 2010 Jonfaith rated it it was amazing

Apparently White listened repeatedly to Alban Berg's violin concerto while composing Voss. I was made aware of this about half way through. I lazily experimented but found myself engulfed in the novel's emotional torrents. Maybe my ears popped, but I wasn't aware of the music.

Voss is a story of volition. It is sun-baked and agonizing. Quickly thereafter I bought a half dozen of White's other works but Voss remains the only one I've finished.

Not to elaborate but Voss is about curiosity and will. ...more

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Apr 27, 2017 fourtriplezed rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: australia, my-fiction, miles-franklin

In the end I actually began to despise this book. Overwrought and pretentious in my opinion. A simple story based on an explorer disappearing in outback Australia during colonial times I never felt that the simplicity of the story was saved by the writing. Challenging prose is fine by me but this went beyond a challenge.

I almost feel that I read this book two and a half times as I read and reread passage after passage to try and get the nuances that were obviously completely above my tiny littl ...more

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May 03, 2016 Roger Brunyate rated it it was amazing

Shelves: religion, australia-nz, top-reviews, nobel-laureates, place-portraits

Into the Wilderness

The book opens with the delicacy of a Jane Austen. A young woman, alone in a Sydney drawing-room on a quiet Sunday morning around 1845, reluctantly receives a visitor from abroad. "That strange, foreign men should come on a Sunday when she herself had ventured on a headache was quite exasperating." The headache on which Laura Trevelyan, the heroine, has so deliciously ventured is a cover for her recent loss of faith in conventional Christianity, yet the vast novel that follow
Into the Wilderness

The book opens with the delicacy of a Jane Austen. A young woman, alone in a Sydney drawing-room on a quiet Sunday morning around 1845, reluctantly receives a visitor from abroad. "That strange, foreign men should come on a Sunday when she herself had ventured on a headache was quite exasperating." The headache on which Laura Trevelyan, the heroine, has so deliciously ventured is a cover for her recent loss of faith in conventional Christianity, yet the vast novel that follows will soon plunge into mysticism and madness, a magnificent wrestling match between man and God.

For the foreign visitor is Johann Ulrich Voss, a German explorer who is to lead an expedition to traverse the unexplored Australian interior. Awkward and antisocial, he is nonetheless a secular messiah with an almost divine sense of his own destiny. Funded by Laura's uncle, he gathers together a motley collection of misfits and visionaries: a secret poet, a sensitive ornithologist, a simple-minded boy, a rich dilettante, and a former convict whose practical know-how rivals Voss's own. [White's fondness for visionary loners will get even greater play in his next book, Riders in the Chariot.] Accompanied by two aborigines, Voss leads the party into the bush and through the desert, encountering both beauty and hardship, but ultimately tested less by the physical world than by the terrible discovery of their own inner natures.

But back to that meeting in the drawing-room:

So the light began to flow into the high room, and the sound of doves, and the intimate hum of insects. Then, too, the squat maid had returned, bearing a tray of wine and biscuits; the noise itself was a distraction, the breathing of a third person, before the trembling wine subsided in its decanter into a steady jewel. Order does prevail.

How beautifully White uses the intrusion of the "squat maid"—an ex-convict with an ugly hare lip—to emphasize that oasis of peace! Though Voss and Laura dislike each other at first, they recognize an inner kinship, and remain in each other's thoughts and, for a while, letters, even as the explorer puts half the continent between them. Chapters in the wilderness alternate with those in Sydney, where White's lucid wit (channeling Austen, Thackeray, and Trollope) provides a much-needed relief from the ordeals of Voss and his party. Yet Laura is no minor character, and her spiritual quest is no less intense for being conducted amid the confining world of picnics and balls.

Every part of this astonishingly diverse book seems to contain parallels, foreshadowings, or echoes of every other. It would be a great novel in any context, but specifically a great Australian one. The contrast between the thin veneer of culture at one corner of the country and the untamed vastness behind it must have had special resonance in its early years as a colony, but it has also entered the mythology of the emerging nation. The Australian outback becomes a metaphor for existential challenge, a crucible in which the externals of wealth and class melt in the forging of a new person. Yet it is also a reproach, a vast and magnificent barbarity that cannot be covered over with the lace-doily trappings of civilization. It can be challenged only by people of sense and spirit, visionaries and outcasts like Voss and his followers. Such people, Laura included, will suffer and may not always succeed; White, something of an outcast himself, is too much of a realist to offer easy solutions. But the spirit does endure. ...more

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Feb 11, 2018 Ailsa rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: australian

'I detest humility,' he said. 'Is man so ignoble that he must lie in the dust, like worms? If this is repentance, sin is less ugly.'

Patrick White is Australia's only Nobel prize laureate (if we haven't co-opted Coetzee yet). If you haven't heard of him, don't worry, it's only you and everyone else. He also was the first winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 1957, but people mainly focus on the Nobel prize winning for some reason.

Voss, his most famous work, is as prickly and difficult ...more

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Oct 27, 2017 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Laura by: Kris

Shelves: fiction-20th-century, read-2017, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, 1000-guardian, australia, mtbr-challenge-2017, australian-fiction, historical-fiction, nobel-prize

This book is based upon the life of the nineteenth-century Prussian explorer and naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt who disappeared whilst on an expedition into the Australian outback.

A magnificent and unforgettable book to be read by all fans of Australian fiction.

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Dec 29, 2010 K.D. Absolutely rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)

Shelves: 501, adventure, 1001-core, australian

Very interesting story. It is about crossing the then unexplored center of the vast Australian continent. Look at the globe. Australia is a big piece of land in the lower part of the Southern hemisphere. According to Wiki, a big part of that piece of land are desserts and one of the first land explorer who attempted to cross it from coast-to-coast, was a Prussian explorer, Ludwig Leichhardt (1814-1848), who disappered in the Australian outback while doing his 3rd land exploration.

In this 1957 b Very interesting story. It is about crossing the then unexplored center of the vast Australian continent. Look at the globe. Australia is a big piece of land in the lower part of the Southern hemisphere. According to Wiki, a big part of that piece of land are desserts and one of the first land explorer who attempted to cross it from coast-to-coast, was a Prussian explorer, Ludwig Leichhardt (1814-1848), who disappered in the Australian outback while doing his 3rd land exploration.

In this 1957 book by the only so far Australian who won 1973 Nobel laureate for literature, Patrick White (1912-1990), Leichhardt is the 27-y/o Johann Voss. Prior to his expedition, he meets an orphan spinster Laura Trevelyan who is Voss' love interest in the story. However, this book is not a love story and even if it is about a man's struggle against odds, it is neither an adventure nor survival story. It is one of its kind and cannot easily be categorized. Reading it makes me remember several books like the early part in Sydney, where Voss and Laura have met, has that taste of Jane Austen comedy of manners book. The land exploration reminds me of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and the distant psychic love affair of Voss and Laura makes me recall the story of Inman and Ada in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain.

In my opinion it is un-categorizable and it adds to the mystique of this modernist novel. But don't get me wrong. This is a hard-hitting book and a superb epic adventure part will keep your interest high especially towards the end. The start is a bit dragging because of that Austen style of writing but once you've passed that part, the story is becomes very informative and White really knows how to keep your interest high. There are some facts that I thought would help me appreciate the book if only I have the time to stop and Google while reading but I just let them go. Maybe I should re-read this when I retire and know more about that part of Australian history when land explorers from Europe flock to that big piece of land to study it or just to have another life. Mystical Australia is just as interesting as any other continents in the world.

For a superb epic like this as well as his other highly acclaimed works, Patrick White definitely deserves his Nobel prize. ...more

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Jul 15, 2015 Justin Evans rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

File under: novels whose eponymous character is not the most interesting character in the book. Right alongside 'Anna Karenina,' 'Lila,' 'Moby Dick,' and the central book in this tradition, 'Frankenstein.'

Anyway, this Patrick White novel, you will be surprised to learn, is about the internal states of a small number of characters, the heroes among whom don't fit in, the villains among whom fit in very well. The heroes are mystics and idealists, gazing longingly through this (natural) world at t ...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Marc rated it really liked it

Shelves: aboriginals, australia, english-literature

Wow, this was a surprising discovery! At first it seemed to be a classic adventure story about a sturdy German, named Voss, who was the first ever to make the passage through Australia, from east to west, around 1840. This story is mixed with the platonic lovestory between this Voss-character and the headstrong lady Laura. But the book offers much more than this: it is a derisive portrait of society in Sydney (in the manner of Jane Austen), an accumulation of wisdom on life, death and love (in t ...more

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Jun 13, 2012 Lynne rated it it was amazing

I'd avoided the books of Patrick White up till now because I'd heard he was difficult. With this year being the Centennary of his birth and a lot of arts programs being devoted to this, I decided to see what the fuss was all about. Now I'm only sorry I didn't pick him up earlier. From the very first page of this book, I was totally engaged. Inspired by the story of explorer Ludwig Leichardt who died in the Australian desert in 1849, it's a powerful narrative told in some of the most beautiful an ...more

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Mar 09, 2012 TheGirlBytheSeaofCortez rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literary-fiction, nobel-winning-authors, australian-authors

Lately I’ve been searching for really outstanding books set in Australia to read, and that search led me to Australia’s first, and so far only, Nobel Prize winner, Patrick White and his extraordinary novel, Voss. Voss is the fictionalized account of the life of German explorer Ludwig Leichardt and his 1848 trek into the heart of the Australian desert where only aboriginal tribesmen dared to roam, and his subsequent disappearance. Much has been made of White’s fictionalization of the life of a re ...more

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Sep 25, 2009 notgettingenough rated it liked it

Shelves: australian, modern-lit

Now why doesn't it surprise me that not one of my well read high brow friends, Australian or otherwise, has read this Nobel Prize winner?

Let alone reviewed it....

I'd do it myself, but why bother when Fred Dagg has this to say about writing The Great Australian Novel. Australians, if you haven't heard this, it's hilarious. For others, it is still very funny (he is great on Tolstoy), but there will be the odd reference you don't get.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc50Gc... ...more

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May 05, 2013 Christine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: lovers of words

Recommended to Christine by: Paul "the man" Stern

Shelves: historical-1700-1900, literature-aussie

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Why wasn't this in my World Lit courses?

I hit the spoiler button because I will warn would be readers the book does have animal death issues, such as with dogs and horses.

You know how some food is seemingly plain, but isn’t. Like a real good risotto. Rice, cheese, stock, maybe mushrooms and onions and yet it is really good. Patrick White reminds me of that. Chabon has a rich dark use of langue. White’s use of language, his ability to take your breath away when you are reading a passage is more ...more

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Jun 19, 2009 James Murphy rated it liked it

This is the first Patrick White novel I've read. I was prepared for central characters larger than life and perceived as mythic, as is Voss himself and his parallel, Laura Trevelyan. I wasn't surprised by a sense of divinity, of a journey into a kind of hell. What's impressive is the way White uses language, how he controls impressions and the emphasis of his narrative with so few words. It's the same way a poet isolates a single word on a line or uses a space to point to meaning. So White can g ...more

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Mar 19, 2020 Cphe rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020, obsession, psychological, australia, romance, boxall-2020, historical, faith

Set in Australia in the 1800's and tells the story of Voss an explorer and his deep connection to the younger Laura Trevalyn whose Uncle Bonner finances the expedition that Voss leads.

A difficult novel to rate and review. Initially found it slow to get into and find a reading rhythm but it did grab attention with patience. The ill fated expedition and the dynamics between the men who followed Voss made gripping reading. The conditions that they encountered intense and visual.

Well worth a look a ...more

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Apr 29, 2009 El rated it really liked it

Recommended to El by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (210/1001)

Shelves: 20th-centurylit-late, wanderlust, 1001-books-list

Exploration stories are love.

Primarily taking place in 1845, Johann Ulrich Voss, a German explorer, introduces the reader to the Australian outback by setting out across the continent. The story begins with Voss meeting Laura Trevalyan, a young orphaned woman who is new to the colony. Her uncle is funding Voss's expedition.

The story progresses into the outback and is almost the entirety of the book. Voss's expedition travels through both the dry and the wet lands, meeting adversity at every step ...more

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May 20, 2017 Kimbofo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-reviews, australian-lit, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you

Set in 19th century Australia, Voss charts the journey of a German naturalist, Johann Ulrich Voss, keen to explore inland Australia. It is largely based on the exploits of Ludwig Leichhardt, a legendary Prussian explorer, who disappeared in 1848 while midway through an ambitious expedition to cross the continent from east to west. To this day, no one quite knows what happened to him.

Voss not only tells the story of that fateful expedition, it also tells the (fictional) story of the woman he left ...more

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Apr 07, 2014 Paul rated it did not like it

SPOILER ALERT! A bunch of people go on a desert expedition and die. There! You've read the book more-or-less. ...more

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Dec 25, 2016 Alison rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, australia, fiction

To summarise: this is a beautifully written, evocative novel, with lots of philosophical and theological exploration. And maybe, if it wasn't for my huge aversion to the existential-angst-in-the-wilderness genre, I might have actually enjoyed it. But then there is the fact that I kinda found it, well, - I want to say 'wrong', but you can't really accuse great literature of being wrong, so we'll go with 'presents a view of the world that I don't share', or alternatively, "OMG enuff about the suff To summarise: this is a beautifully written, evocative novel, with lots of philosophical and theological exploration. And maybe, if it wasn't for my huge aversion to the existential-angst-in-the-wilderness genre, I might have actually enjoyed it. But then there is the fact that I kinda found it, well, - I want to say 'wrong', but you can't really accuse great literature of being wrong, so we'll go with 'presents a view of the world that I don't share', or alternatively, "OMG enuff about the suffering already! It doesn't make you a better person."
I use the word wilderness deliberately. Part of the attraction to me in this novel is the exploration of Australia's landscape. At the time White is writing, there is a dawning awareness in polite white society of the depth of Aboriginal culture, and the devastation which was visited upon it. You can see White's intention to portray Voss' white paternalism, his noble savage pretensions, and assumptions that they are a people looking for a god. Yet, the novel presents these people as so thoroughly 'other', so inexplicable in their motivations, that they become almost inhuman, part of an inhospitable and incomprehensible land - 'the unpleasanter portions of Australia' - through which a kind of dis-enlightenment and subsequent apotheosis can be achieved by accepting one's own frailty and inability to comprehend. But to my eyes - modern eyes I suppose - this reads just like another form of the noble savage myth, blacks as plot device, beyond rationality. It is a portrayal of the desert light years from the home to the thriving and varied Indigenous communities that the desert was in the 1850s. White doesn't use the word Savage, but it feels writ large over the book to me: a savage landscape; a savage people: the brutality of it bringing you closer to god. "But in this disturbing country, so far as I have become acquainted with it already, it is possible more easily to discard the inessential and to attempt the infinite."
The sections of the book set in Sydney have amazing evocation of place - you can taste the salt spray at Potts Point, feel the baking summer sun, see the bustle of Sussex Street in your mind's eye. White's wit in these sections is also nothing but delight. "[He] listened to this with some, though not with great, interest, because he had not discovered it for himself." or "What kind of man is he? wondered the public, who would never know. If he was already more of a statue than a man, they really did not care, for he would satisfy their longing to perch something on a column, in a square or gardens, as a memorial to their own achievement."
I could quote for hours. Truthfully, I have done a little agonising myself over this review. White is such a superlative writer. If I could write a single sentence as good as those above in a lifetime, I would be pretty damn happy. And he drops them on every page: "and the Queen had been saved, in song and with loyal hats" and A stranger might have failed to perceive the subtle sympathy that did exist between the couple, for coupled they were, even in irritation, by many tough, tangled, indestructible, instinctive links. and the magnificent and insightful But he had never allowed himself the luxury of other people’s strength, preferring the illusion of his own..
But White attempts far more than specky writing. He wants to comment on the nature of godhood, on the trinity and the role of suffering, frailty and acknoweldged ignorance. I didn't get all the theological references, I'm pretty sure there was some back-and-forthing on the divinity of Jesus debates - was his suffering human or divine? Did his suffering create or deny the divinity in him? But he core themes, of Voss descend from his pursuit of becoming an omnipotent, stern father god to "a frail god upon a rickety throne"(did I mention this man can WRITE?) through to a kind of fusion with country, is pretty clear. The most humble of characters, the gentle Palfreyman, operates as a kind of moral centre for the book, a man whose absence results in dispersal and discombobulation. Judd, who has been enured through his own persistent suffering, is the most able to retain his sanity and purpose in the landscape, purified or granted grace or something by his previous persecution.
See, the thing is, I just don't find this all that interesting. I don't think suffering grants peace, or enlightenment, and I certainly don't think it is a path to apotheosis. I think the sensible, sane, enlightened folk in the desert were the ones who knew where the soaks were, and what food was edible. The ones who took only the necessary risks. i had a great deal of sympathy for Mrs Bonner when she cried out "‘Who will forgive, who condemn, I cannot say, only that nobody has ever taken into consideration my powers of judgement,’"".
Laura's story I found less maddening, but still overly elevating - in her case - a support and caring role for others. I wanted her to do something more interesting than dreamscapades with Voss, and while I can her salvation in her connection with another, non-dream, human who loves her, it was all a bit too close to sacrifice for entire comfort. I do suspect as I type this, that this is unfair, and another reading I may have subtelty to spot in Laura's growing confidence.
Anyway, glad I read it, glad I don't have to read it again. But oh, those sentences! ...more

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Nov 01, 2012 John Anthony rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: re-read, fiction

I had a very turbulent relationship with this book which alternated between the ridiculous and the sublime.

Set in mid 19th century Australia, Voss is the German leader of an expeditionary force.A powerful psychological narrative, it reminded me at times of Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Golding's Lord of the Flies.Voss is an outsider who is patronised by the colonial gentry. The book centres upon 2 outsiders: Voss and the niece of his major patron and their relationship.

I found the portrayal of ...more

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Sep 03, 2010 !Tæmbuŝu marked it as to-read

Shelves: modern-classics, australia

KOBOBOOKS

Reviewed by The Independent
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Feb 12, 2019 Chris Gager rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I haven't started this yet, but I pulled it off my shelves while looking for a book, any book, by Nathaniel West that I might have rescued over the recent years. No luck there, but this book was mentioned favorably by William Finnegan in "Barbarian Days" so I've got it on the to-read-soon shelf now.

I'm back at this one after setting it aside for other things a while back. I have to say that it's possible I may put this down due to discomfort with the author's prose style. It seems very 1950's se ...more

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Jan 21, 2021 Sheila rated it liked it

Shelves: australia

I have feelings about this book all across the spectrum from bad to great!
The first couple of chapters are difficult stylistically but this eases with perserverence. On the whole I am really glad I read this book, I loved the story line, the characters, the auor's use of language. It is a complex book, which thoroughly warrants a second close read if I was someone who did second reads. The story has two strands - on one side the author's deft comic rendering of polite Sidney society in colonial ...more

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Jun 29, 2014 Matt rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: media-ebooks, eyes-on-the-prize

This was a strange book. I have seldom experienced so many ups and downs within a book.

In 1845 Johann Ulrich Voss, a German, sets out to explore the Australian outback as the first white man ever. Before that he meets the orphaned Laura Trevelyan, niece of a wealthy merchant and sponsor of Voss' expedition. Although Voss and Laura only meet twice face to face, a strange form of love story evolved between the two during the expedition.

I don't want to tell more of the plot to not spoil the excitem ...more

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Feb 13, 2015 Leonie rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction

Set in 1840's Australia. Voss is an intense German explorer being sponsored by Laura Trevelyan's uncle. Laura is the thoughtful, self-sufficient introvert orphan niece in a bustling socially ambitious family. Voss, a straggly, awkward figure dressed stiffly in black would be "ludicrous, if not for his arrogance" and does his best to ignore others. While Voss is preparing to set out into the bush he has a handful of encounters with Laura which reflect animosity, awkwardness and recognition. Their ...more

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Sep 24, 2009 Stephen Durrant rated it liked it · review of another edition

This novel has moments of mythic power, and White writes with originality and strength: "There comes a moment when an individual who is too honest to take refuge in the old illusion of self-importance is suspended agonizingly between the flat sky and the flat earth, and prayer is no more than a slight gumminess on the roof of the mouth" (p. 325). Themes of self-importance AND humility resonate throughout this story of a mysterious German, Voss, who leads a group of explorers and ne'er-do-wells o ...more

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Reading 1001: Voss by Patrick White	2	10	Jun 23, 2019 06:48PM
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About Patrick White

Patrick White

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Patrick Victor Martindale White was an Australian author widely regarded as one of the major English-language novelists of the 20th century. From 1935 until death, he published twelve novels, two short story collections, eight plays, and also non-fiction. His fiction freely employs shifting narrative vantages and the stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Li ...more