The Pages: A Novel - Softcover

Bail, Murray

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590513533 ISBN 13: 9781590513538

Publisher: Other Press, 2010

Synopsis

On a family sheep farm in the interior of Australia, a brother and sister work the land while their reclusive brother, Wesley Antill, spends years toiling away in one of the sheds, writing his philosophy. Having forsaken the family business to travel through European cities in search of a foundation,Wesley returned home to spend his days holed up to write his magnum opus, trying to invent a new philosophy, a “theory of the emotions.” But after his untimely death, his papers are left untouched in his study, to be handled posthumously by his siblings.  They call on Erica Hazlehurst, a philosopher, to travel from Sydney to appraise Wesley’s work to see if it is publishable. Accompanying her is her sexy and passionate friend, Sophie, a psychoanalyst who needs a distraction from a string of failed relationships. These two women, each with different views of the world and counter approaches to life, face a situation they have never experienced before, with surprising results. What begins as a spontaneous, brief sojourn will end up changing their lives.
   The Pages is a beguiling meditation on friendship and love, on men and women, on landscape and the difficulties of thought itself, by one of Australia’s greatest novelists, the author of the much-loved Eucalyptus.

About this title

About the Author

Murray Bail was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1941. He is the author of four novels and two collections of short stories. His novel Eucalyptus was awarded the 1999 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

At dawn—what a word: the beginning of the world all over again—the two women set out from Sydney in a small car, as other people were slowly going about their tasks, or at least beginning to stir, producing a series of overlapping movements and stoppages, awakenings and false dawns, framed by the glass of the car.
   They were city women. Comfortably seated and warm they were hoping to experience the unexpected, an event or a person, preferably person, to enter and alter their lives. There is a certain optimism behind all travel. The passenger, who wore a chunky necklace like pebbles made out of beer bottles, had never been over the mountains before. And she was forty-three. Directions had been given in biro, on a page torn out of an exercise book. It would take all day getting there. Over the mountains, into the interior, in the backblocks of western New South Wales, which in the end is towards the sun.
   At an earlier time, perspiring travelers found no other way but to hack a path through the jungle or the dry bush. Very common image. Now on the long wide road called Parramatta, the obstacles consisted of nouns, adjectives and flags, and flashing lights in the shape of arrows, the many different interruptions of
color and promises, honestly, the hard work of selling jutting into the road itself, cluttering and distracting the mind. Traffic kept stopping, starting: you’d think by now they could synchronize the lights.

About this edition

• Publisher: Other Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1590513533
• ISBN 13: 9781590513538
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196