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Milk and Honey
A self-absorbed young musician comes as a pupil-boarder to the house of an 'old European' family and gradually his life is taken over and consumed. But this, seemingly, by dark, mysterious forces within as much as outside himself.
Milk and Honey is a haunting new novel showing this skilled and sensitive writer at her best. While much of what we have come to expect and admire in Elizabeth Jolley's work is powerfully present - vivid and diverse characters, pathos, humour and acute perceptions of people and their situations - this novel is in many ways quite unlike anything the author has previously written. It is a work of gothid proportions, an astonishing tapestry of character and incident that surprises while never failing to convince.
Elizabeth Jolley continues to take great risks in her work, extending her range and readership at the same time. Milk and Honey consolidates her reputation as a major Australian writer, it is an exciting work of remarkable insight that expands the imaginative dimensions of our world.
Milk and Honey is a haunting new novel showing this skilled and sensitive writer at her best. While much of what we have come to expect and admire in Elizabeth Jolley's work is powerfully present - vivid and diverse characters, pathos, humour and acute perceptions of people and their situations - this novel is in many ways quite unlike anything the author has previously written. It is a work of gothid proportions, an astonishing tapestry of character and incident that surprises while never failing to convince.
Elizabeth Jolley continues to take great risks in her work, extending her range and readership at the same time. Milk and Honey consolidates her reputation as a major Australian writer, it is an exciting work of remarkable insight that expands the imaginative dimensions of our world.
185 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
Elizabeth Jolley
58 books64 followersMonica Elizabeth Jolley was an award-winning writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 1950s. She was 53 years old when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels (including an autobiographical trilogy), four short story collections, and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s and achieving significant critical acclaim. She was also a pioneer of creative writing teaching in Australia, counting many well known writers such as Tim Winton among her students. Her novels explore alienated characters and the nature of loneliness and entrapment.
Honours:
1987: Western Australian Citizen of the Year
1988: Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to literature
1989: Canada/Australia Literary Award
1997: Australian Living Treasure
Honours:
1987: Western Australian Citizen of the Year
1988: Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to literature
1989: Canada/Australia Literary Award
1997: Australian Living Treasure
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 28, 2023
In anticipation of the centenary of Elizabeth Jolley's death on June 4th, I read my Fremantle Arts Centre Press edition of Jolley's fifth novel, Milk and Honey.
First published in 1984, Milk and Honey is in some ways classic Jolley: it features a lonely character alienated from and yet trapped in the society around him; but the Gothic elements in this novel were a departure from her previous fiction.
Somehow, I was able to get behind the paywall at the ABR to find Stephanie Trigg's 1986 review of The Well, which makes reference to the common themes in Jolley's fiction.
Comparing Jolley with Helen Garner whose work is said by critics and reviews to be similarly confined to a domestic canvas, Triggs writes that Jolley’s pictures of domestic life are much wilder, more dramatic, and more violent. Murder, madness, sexual and psychological violence abound, and many Jolley narratives in their bare bones are quite alarming and bizarre. That is most certainly true of Milk and Honey, despite the Biblical allusion of its title to a 'promised land' of abundance and fertility. There are unexplained deaths, illnesses and disappearances, and a death which is not a death though the 'murderer' thinks it is. The central character's wife has a child but it's not his because he is impotent with her, though not with his lover who is herself infertile. The sterile marriage is offset by the birth of a child through incest.
The 'mad woman in the attic' is not a woman and is not mad either, but rather a grotesque caricature whose tragedy is that he has been denied a life because of his parents' fear of doctors. Reminiscent of the entrapment imposed by the destitute elderly Russian émigré, Nastasya, in The Newspaper of Claremont Street (1981, see my review) Waldemar both traps his family and is trapped by them because they refuse to hand him over to institutional care. Childlike Waldemar, dripping with the honey that he loves to eat, is the only character who represents fertility and abundance.
And the musical prodigy turns out to be really rather ordinary, fit only for a provincial orchestra and then not even that when his own violence disfigures his hands. This is not a story of resilience or triumph over adversity and there is little kindness in it.
In Brian Dibble's 2008 biography Doing Life (which I can't find on my shelves, did I lend it to someone?), Jolley's story begins with the enigmas of her own family life. As I wrote in my review, Jolley’s father bore his wife’s love for the enigmatic (and underfoot) Mr Berrington with fortitude, and this influenced Jolley’s interest in depicting sexual triangles.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/05/28/m...
First published in 1984, Milk and Honey is in some ways classic Jolley: it features a lonely character alienated from and yet trapped in the society around him; but the Gothic elements in this novel were a departure from her previous fiction.
Somehow, I was able to get behind the paywall at the ABR to find Stephanie Trigg's 1986 review of The Well, which makes reference to the common themes in Jolley's fiction.
Comparing Jolley with Helen Garner whose work is said by critics and reviews to be similarly confined to a domestic canvas, Triggs writes that Jolley’s pictures of domestic life are much wilder, more dramatic, and more violent. Murder, madness, sexual and psychological violence abound, and many Jolley narratives in their bare bones are quite alarming and bizarre. That is most certainly true of Milk and Honey, despite the Biblical allusion of its title to a 'promised land' of abundance and fertility. There are unexplained deaths, illnesses and disappearances, and a death which is not a death though the 'murderer' thinks it is. The central character's wife has a child but it's not his because he is impotent with her, though not with his lover who is herself infertile. The sterile marriage is offset by the birth of a child through incest.
The 'mad woman in the attic' is not a woman and is not mad either, but rather a grotesque caricature whose tragedy is that he has been denied a life because of his parents' fear of doctors. Reminiscent of the entrapment imposed by the destitute elderly Russian émigré, Nastasya, in The Newspaper of Claremont Street (1981, see my review) Waldemar both traps his family and is trapped by them because they refuse to hand him over to institutional care. Childlike Waldemar, dripping with the honey that he loves to eat, is the only character who represents fertility and abundance.
And the musical prodigy turns out to be really rather ordinary, fit only for a provincial orchestra and then not even that when his own violence disfigures his hands. This is not a story of resilience or triumph over adversity and there is little kindness in it.
In Brian Dibble's 2008 biography Doing Life (which I can't find on my shelves, did I lend it to someone?), Jolley's story begins with the enigmas of her own family life. As I wrote in my review, Jolley’s father bore his wife’s love for the enigmatic (and underfoot) Mr Berrington with fortitude, and this influenced Jolley’s interest in depicting sexual triangles.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/05/28/m...
February 26, 2017
No Jolley aficionado--this is my only read outside of studying The Well in high school--but surely she flies the flag for an Australian Gothic as assuredly as Nick Cave.
Jacob narrates and leads this short but densely written novel. He is a gifted cellist shipped off by his widowed and land wealthy father to board with a European family (the book takes place somewhere around Perth) who can tend to his musical education. Jacob survives on the generosity of the dotting family and, married off to the family's repressed and sweet daughter, Louise, he falls fall the worldly Madge from his orchestra. Madge, ten years his senior, is unhappily married to the hapless and devoted Norman. Norman, Louise and the family seemingly turn a blind eye to the affair, though deeper family secrets perhaps distract them from confrontation, as perhaps do their takes on loyalty and devotion.
At heart this novel is a study of selfishness versus selflessness. The most horrific moments, in a book of many unsettling and vividly rendered turn of events, are Jacob's realisations of a life unloved/unloving.
The ending is a little abrupt and unconvincing, but overall powerful writing.
Jacob narrates and leads this short but densely written novel. He is a gifted cellist shipped off by his widowed and land wealthy father to board with a European family (the book takes place somewhere around Perth) who can tend to his musical education. Jacob survives on the generosity of the dotting family and, married off to the family's repressed and sweet daughter, Louise, he falls fall the worldly Madge from his orchestra. Madge, ten years his senior, is unhappily married to the hapless and devoted Norman. Norman, Louise and the family seemingly turn a blind eye to the affair, though deeper family secrets perhaps distract them from confrontation, as perhaps do their takes on loyalty and devotion.
At heart this novel is a study of selfishness versus selflessness. The most horrific moments, in a book of many unsettling and vividly rendered turn of events, are Jacob's realisations of a life unloved/unloving.
The ending is a little abrupt and unconvincing, but overall powerful writing.
March 18, 2013
This was like one of those grimy, ponderous and off-putting movies you come across late at night on tv, probably on SBS, with characters so annoying and charmless you start fantasising for a last minute genre twist that sees them all getting blown up by terrorists or caught in a freak tornado. And as it comes to an end you are filled with self-loathing for having willingly sat through something so tawdry and forgettable. Where did life go so wrong, you ask.
Anyway, that's another notch for the reading challenge.
Anyway, that's another notch for the reading challenge.
March 21, 2020
I came to this book knowing nothing about it, and I have put it down feeling very much the same. Apart from being set in Australia, ( the characters Madge and Norman come across as a very Australian, unlike every other character in the book), there is no reference to where it might be taking place, or when. I am presuming perhaps the 1960s or 1970s, but I really did not get a sense of time from the text, other than it was after WWII.
The story follows Jacob, a young musician, moving from the family home to a boarding house with his new music teacher and his family of two sisters, daughter and son. From here on, it gets confusing and muddled for me. Jacob is obviously being manipulated by the family, but for whose benefit ? He becomes withdrawn from the world, but this seems to suit him.
The story follows him through to adulthood, where he is involved both with Madge, a married woman from the orchestra he plays with, as well as Louise, the daughter of his music teacher.
Once more, I am confused. I couldn't seem to grasp what anyone's motives were and which characters were driving events, and what was real and what, perhaps might be unreal. Even the ending, in my mind, is open to interpretation, did Jacob really get a job, or is there perhaps another reason for him being where he has ended up ( to tell you where would perhaps be spoiling it).
I don't think that any of the confusion is a fault of the text. I think Jolley is being deliberately ambiguous in her writing, blurring a lot of the lines to give a sense of the very self-involved and sheltered lives these characters lead, how withdrawn they are from the world and how this effects their perspectives and actions, and perhaps stability.
I don't know that this was an enjoyable read, but it was certainly an intriguing one.
The story follows Jacob, a young musician, moving from the family home to a boarding house with his new music teacher and his family of two sisters, daughter and son. From here on, it gets confusing and muddled for me. Jacob is obviously being manipulated by the family, but for whose benefit ? He becomes withdrawn from the world, but this seems to suit him.
The story follows him through to adulthood, where he is involved both with Madge, a married woman from the orchestra he plays with, as well as Louise, the daughter of his music teacher.
Once more, I am confused. I couldn't seem to grasp what anyone's motives were and which characters were driving events, and what was real and what, perhaps might be unreal. Even the ending, in my mind, is open to interpretation, did Jacob really get a job, or is there perhaps another reason for him being where he has ended up ( to tell you where would perhaps be spoiling it).
I don't think that any of the confusion is a fault of the text. I think Jolley is being deliberately ambiguous in her writing, blurring a lot of the lines to give a sense of the very self-involved and sheltered lives these characters lead, how withdrawn they are from the world and how this effects their perspectives and actions, and perhaps stability.
I don't know that this was an enjoyable read, but it was certainly an intriguing one.
May 8, 2026
the expression hit hard. some take a moment. it's written with rawness if emotions, hit back at those who've been hurtful. it takes ones power back. empowering and daring. colorful and exu France I felt from her words
May 31, 2026
This book will always be a favorite of mine. I’ve read it over and over again and it never fails to teach me something new in a life. These poems always have me hooked like crazy and becoming an adult and reading it again just hits harder.
January 7, 2020
Read it for a possible essay, but not quite what I was looking for. Will continue reading it some time in the future, probably.
January 16, 2016
I came to this book knowing nothing about it, and I have put it down feeling very much the same. Apart from being set in Australia, ( the characters Madge and Norman come across as a very Australian, unlike every other character in the book), there is no reference to where it might be taking place, or when. I am presuming perhaps the 1960s or 1970s, but I really did not get a sense of time from the text, other than it was after WWII.
The story follows Jacob, a young musician, moving from the family home to a boarding house with his new music teacher and his family of two sisters, daughter and son. From here on, it gets confusing and muddled for me. Jacob is obviously being manipulated by the family, but for whose benefit ? He becomes withdrawn from the world, but this seems to suit him.
The story follows him through to adulthood, where he is involved both with Madge, a married woman from the orchestra he plays with, as well as Louise, the daughter of his music teacher.
Once more, I am confused. I couldn't seem to grasp what anyone's motives were and which characters were driving events, and what was real and what, perhaps might be unreal. Even the ending, in my mind, is open to interpretation, did Jacob really get a job, or is there perhaps another reason for him being where he has ended up ( to tell you where would perhaps be spoiling it).
I don't think that any of the confusion is a fault of the text. I think Jolley is being deliberately ambiguous in her writing, blurring a lot of the lines to give a sense of the very self-involved and sheltered lives these characters lead, how withdrawn they are from the world and how this effects their perspectives and actions, and perhaps stability.
I don't know that this was an enjoyable read, but it was certainly an intriguing one.
The story follows Jacob, a young musician, moving from the family home to a boarding house with his new music teacher and his family of two sisters, daughter and son. From here on, it gets confusing and muddled for me. Jacob is obviously being manipulated by the family, but for whose benefit ? He becomes withdrawn from the world, but this seems to suit him.
The story follows him through to adulthood, where he is involved both with Madge, a married woman from the orchestra he plays with, as well as Louise, the daughter of his music teacher.
Once more, I am confused. I couldn't seem to grasp what anyone's motives were and which characters were driving events, and what was real and what, perhaps might be unreal. Even the ending, in my mind, is open to interpretation, did Jacob really get a job, or is there perhaps another reason for him being where he has ended up ( to tell you where would perhaps be spoiling it).
I don't think that any of the confusion is a fault of the text. I think Jolley is being deliberately ambiguous in her writing, blurring a lot of the lines to give a sense of the very self-involved and sheltered lives these characters lead, how withdrawn they are from the world and how this effects their perspectives and actions, and perhaps stability.
I don't know that this was an enjoyable read, but it was certainly an intriguing one.
May 5, 2012
Wow, this was a surprise. I love it when something comes out of left field and you just don't expect it. Several times I had to re-read to make sure what had happened in the story. Very interesting characters.
May 20, 2014
Some enjoyably evocative description, but overall outmoded for my taste. The pathetic protagonist, Jacob reminds me of Meursault from Camus' 'The Outsider'.
September 20, 2017
Loved this book; so evocative of a Viennese music household transplanted to Australia, replete with traumas, financial worries, rituals, parochialism, and folk ways.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews