Voss in Aussie Readers

Mar 27, 2016 David James rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

White, Patrick. Voss.

Voss, the hero of this epic novel set in Australia, leads a group of men into the outback where they suffer and ultimately perish. Restless and discontented, all of these men, like those of Melville’s Moby-Dick, are bewitched by the magnetism of an obsessed leader to encounter storm and stress in what seems to be a mad and purposeless venture. The early chapters focus on the gathering of suitable materials and men fit and willing to undertake this perilous venture. They are, White, Patrick. Voss.

Voss, the hero of this epic novel set in Australia, leads a group of men into the outback where they suffer and ultimately perish. Restless and discontented, all of these men, like those of Melville’s Moby-Dick, are bewitched by the magnetism of an obsessed leader to encounter storm and stress in what seems to be a mad and purposeless venture. The early chapters focus on the gathering of suitable materials and men fit and willing to undertake this perilous venture. They are, if you like, a microcosm of society, poor and rich, believers or sceptics, boys and men, black and white. Opposed to these active men are the women, occupied with parties, weddings, social sparring and all awaiting news from the explorers.

The action oscillates from one group to the other, linked in the main by the unlikely love between Laura Trevelyan and Voss, who meet only once socially but continually in their spiritual hankering. In fact fluctuation between the body and the spirit is a key motif throughout the book, which continually asks questions about what is real and what imaginary. White is constantly probing the nature of the world, its physical basis and its spiritual meaning. It seems that Laura and Voss are drawn to each other mainly by a mutual awareness of this dichotomy.

This is a very long and gripping tale of endurance and steadfastness, lightened of course by the sheer frivolity of the domestic scene at home, where picnics and parties, clothes and elegant conversation take precedence. While the dying poet Le Mesurier grows yellow ‘and the eyes in his hairy, melted face were become quite visionary’ Belle Bonner at home decides she will be married in white. And it seems that never the twain will meet, for none but the ‘clever’ and ‘peculiar’ Laura can understand much beyond the ballroom.

The tension of the novel depends on the two ‘sides’ being kept apart. Will Voss return? He is a man of steel, but can his heart be pierced by love? ‘What do you expect of Voss?’ asks the practical ‘ordinary sort of fellow’ Tom Radclyffe of Laura at a dancing party. But there is no answer. Voss is and will remain to other more ordinary men a symbol of mythic status, akin to Melville’s Ahab and Conrad’s Mistah Kurz.
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