L'Épouse

Yandilli Trilogy #2

by Rodney Hall

"In this stunning new novel, Rodney Hall tells the story of Catherine Byrne, a nineteenth-century English missionary who travels to remotest Australia with her prophetic husband and his band of women disciples, the Household of Hidden Stars. Named Muley Moloch after the famous Irish lay preacher whose soul he is determined to save, he is a man of miraculous powers who leads his followers through severe hardship - shipwreck, disease and death - in their millenarian quest.Set in 1863 at the dawn of the modern era (with photography, steam power and domestic machines such as the lawn mower revolutionizing people's understanding of their world) The Grisly Wife resonates with echoes and presentiments just beneath the surface of colonial Australia.The Grisly Wife is the keystone to Hall's trilogy which begins with The Second Bridegroom and ends with Captivity Captive - surely destined to become one of the great works of Australian fiction."

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Born in Solihull, Warwickshire, England, Hall came to Australia as a child after World War II and studied at the University of Queensland. Between 1967 and 1978 he was the Poetry Editor of The Australian. After a period living in Shanghai in the 1980s, Hall returned to Australia, and took up residence in Victoria.

Hall has twice won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and has received seven nominations for the prestigious Miles Franklin Award, for which he has twice won ("Just Relations" in 1982 and "The Grisly Wife" in 1994).

Reviews

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. An interesting, unusual historical fiction novel set in a remote part of Eastern Australia, mostly in the 1860s. Catherine Byrne, a sixteen year old young woman is married and sets off from England with her husband, as missionaries. They establish a home on the coast where Catherine’s prophetic husband lives with women disciples. There are no other men on the property. Catherine is the narrator and she writes about her life with her husband, her woman associates and what occurs over close to twenty years.

There is good plot momentum and Catherine’s character is well developed, however the other characters in the novel are only briefly described.

This book won the 1994 Miles Franklin Award.

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The truth is that if we are to be any use tomorrow we have to accept what happened yesterday - so you may be sure there's something amiss when one hears so much about what we will do in the future while there's never a peep about what we have already done."

Rodney Hall is an utterly absorbing writer, and The Grisly Wife is another great success, haunting, atmospheric, darkly funny, and painful in its profundity. In the late 1860s, a radical preacher sails from England to Australia to set up a mission in a remote part of the east coast, with his posse of female followers and his virgin wife, Catherine Byrne, the narrator of the novel. The emigrants set up their new home in the (fictional) settlement of Yandilli, the site of Hall's previous novel The Second Bridegroom which was set around 1838, making this novel a thematic sequel.

Catherine - narrating her tale years later to an initially unnamed listener - is, like many of Hall's protagonists, a figure on the outskirts of her own culture. Like The Second Bridegroom's convict, who experienced the painful dawning of recognition when forced to interact with a society different to his own, Catherine is asking herself questions about social expectations, cultural norms, a figure of suppressed doubt amongst those who would see the choice between belief and savagery as a binary one.

"Ambition is a curious urge, don't you agree? being as much as to say if I do not surrender my place in life to struggle for a different place (some other person's place) then I will not quite fully live."

The novel falls squarely into the long tradition of tales about starchy British colonialists facing off against the Australian bush, attempting valiantly to replicate their culture in a location so very hostile to it. But it is also a novel about belief and doubt, about human connection, and the ways we attempt to navigate our lives as individuals while also existing in tandem with others. It is perhaps a slightly tougher read than Bridegroom on the grounds that Catherine's memory flits from idea to idea, year to year, seemingly haphazardly and with a more idiosyncratic speech pattern (she is rather like Emily Dickinson, with her love of dashes above all other punctuation).

The goal of literature is to discover. The goal of Australian literature is usually to discover what defines our country, our people. Hall suggests that we may not like what we find, but we have little choice, bound on a wheel of fire that must, someday, come full circle.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

In some ways, The Grisly Wife is a difficult novel to write about, because it's No. #2 of a trilogy that was written in reverse order. As Peter Mathews (who numbers them in order of publication) advised me in comments a few days ago

'Yandilli #3 (The Grisly Wife) is a tricky work to evaluate, because it is intimately entwined with the aftermath of Yandilli #1 (Captivity Captive) – except that this only starts to become clear about halfway through. It’s much easier to follow on a reread!'

Peter says:

When they are collected in a single volume, they are ordered as follows: The Second Bridegroom, The Grisly Wife, Captivity Captive. However, this order makes no sense! The events that occur in Captivity Captive are what lead to the protagonist of The Grisly Wife telling her story.

But by the time I learned this, it was too late. I was committed to the order that is listed at Wikipedia and elsewhere.   I'd already read The Second Bridegroom (see my review) and was half way through The Grisly Wife.  Captivity Captive will have to wait, and my thoughts about The Grisly Wife will reflect the fact that I haven't read the catalyst for the narrator's confession. (If that's what it is.)

No #1 is The Second Bridegroom (1991, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 1992) 
No #2 is The Grisly Wife (1993, winner of the Miles Franklin in 1994) and
No #3 is Captivity Captive (1988, winner of the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Miles Franklin).

The title hints that the chatty narrator is not all that she seems, but (though the reader has her suspicions already) her husband doesn't hurl the epithet at her until well into the book.  Catherine Byrne is enjoying herself, pleased to have an audience for her life story, which she is determined to tell breathlessly from the very beginning and not above making patronising remarks about the ignorance of one who wasn't there and couldn't know.  She seems like an old woman because she's outlived everyone else, but she's actually only in her forties.

It's not clear who she's talking to.  This reminded me of Tell (2024, see my review), by Jonathan Buckley (which won the Novel Prize). That was also the narrative of a garrulous, gossipy, self-righteous woman and the author withholds the identity of her audience until almost the end of the story. Tell’s narrator — like Catherine Bryce — reveals more than she intends to because she can't help herself.  And also like Catherine, Tell's narrator is in thrall to a man with charisma, though the subject of Catherine's admiration is a very different creature indeed.

Catherine is captivated by a man she believes to be a prophet.  In the first flush of enthusiasm because she believes she has witnessed a miracle, (which must forever be kept a secret, of course) she imprudently marries a man not of her class or education, and sets out from 19th century Bristol with eight female disciples to found a paradise on earth in the Australian wilderness.

The whole enterprise depended on the prophet — the idea of the mission — the inspiration — the firm sense of being in contact with the Almighty — without the prophet's powerful personality the tragedy would never have been possible — oh let people say what they like about him being something of a weaselish specimen (I've heard it myself) and admittedly he does have a small face but a face simply filled with features — big ears big eyes high cheekbones thick brows — not to mention the perpetually big amazement of an individual determined to escape something in his past — something conceivably stupid — though once you startle him out of himself his eyes come so alive they astonish you and he can smile a whole gallery of teeth and show himself in a trice so handsome it hurts your heart to see his black hair gleam without a trace of grey —

As for his not being masterful — didn't he sweep us off our feet? didn't he gather us together as disciples? didn't he unite us as a family of women? though he could neither read nor write didn't he succeed in firing us with his vision? (p.4, BTW this is the narrative style of the entire novel).

Catherine's narrative goes on to show, however, that these women were not at all united, and that bluster as Catherine might, Muley Moloch has feet of clay.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/07/08/t...

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really struggled with this Miles Franklin Award winning book. There is a total lack of punctuation and structure to the book, even though the story was largely concerning a journey by religious evangelists in the early stages of Australian colonial development. The character development was OK but I didn’t feel invested in the well being of the characters. It was often difficult to get to the bottom of what was happening, therefore making the story mostly incomprehensible.

[Noah Melser · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel I must be at fault in missing layers here. Always have trouble with 1st person direct address and conversation with reader in books. It feels clever for the sake of it here, particularly as it felt hard to see landscape and characters behind the voice. The twisting play of memory and present here just felt laboured and was so glad to finish it, the second of Hall's books I've been glad to finish.