The gruff widower Holland has two possessions he cherishes above all others: his sprawling property of eucalyptus trees and his ravishingly beautiful daughter, Ellen. When Ellen turns nineteen Holland makes an announcement: she may marry only the man who can correctly name the species of each of the hundreds of gum trees on his property. Ellen is uninterested in the many suitors who arrive from around the world, until one afternoon she chances on a strange, handsome young man resting under a Coolibah tree. In the days that follow, he spins dozens of tales set in cities, deserts, and faraway countries. As the contest draws to a close, Ellen and the stranger's meetings become more erotic, the stories more urgent. Murray Bail's rich narrative is filled with unexpected wisdom about art, feminine beauty, landscape, and language. Eucalyptus is a shimmering love story that affirms the beguiling power of storytelling itself.
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Product Description:
1999 Winner of the Miles Franklin Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. On a property in western New South Wales a man named Holland lives with his daughter Ellen. Over the years, as she grows into a beautiful young woman, he plants hundreds of different gum trees on his land. When Ellen is nineteen her father announces his decision: she will marry the man who can name all his species of eucalyptus, down to the last tree...Eucalyptus is a modern fairy tale and an unpredictable love story. Haunting and mesmeric, it illuminates the nature of story-telling itself. "Wonderful...brilliantly told...a moving, exhilarating love story." Australian
Review:
"...it's a pleasure simply to be immersed in Bail's caprice-prone mind." (The New York Times Book Review)
"Curious power is precisely what this novel delivers. Part of its charm is its style, the quirky sentences that rarely go where we expect, the sinister Arthur Machenesque beauty of the landscape descriptions, the meandering stories that fail to deliver their expected allegories, that never really end but instead begin others." (The Washington Post)
“One of the great and most surprising courtships in literature.” (Michael Ondaatje)
"Whatever the source of Bail's peculiar magic, Eucalyptus casts a spell that will carry readers from first page to last and leave them wishing for a thousand and one more stories just like it." (Amazon)
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherHarvest Books
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0156007819
- ISBN 13 9780156007818
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages261
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