Eucalyptus - Softcover

"One of the great and most surprising courtships in literature" (Michael Ondaatje)

"Bail tells a story which is encrusted with delicious detail, and writes in an affecting mood of rapt tenderness. The book will haunt its readers long after more perfectly-finished fictions have faded from their memories" (Andrew Motion Observer)

"Tall trees inspire tall tales. Eucalyptus makes most other novels seem weedy by comparison. It is a towering achievement" (Mark Sanderson Time Out)

"His sentences have a perpetually off-balance wit which gives you life's jumble, its mystery, its unexplained compactness. You take in the humour first, but then they deepen and deepen. Buy the book. You won't have read anything like it" (Francis Spufford Evening Standard)

"A most unusual, enchanting work...a novel of most beguiling originality" (Carmen Callil Daily Telegraph)

A man called Holland, living on a remote estate in New South Wales, planted on his land a collection of all eucalyptus trees known to man. He then set, for his beautiful and only daughter Ellen, one of those traps essential to fairy tales: only a man who could correctly name each tree in his vast collection could have her hand in marriage.