The Pages
Australian novelist of ideas Bail (Eucalyptus, 1998), known for critiquing his native land, here posits that the development of modern Australia was too problem-free to provide a welcome environment for philosophy; on the contrary, psychology “and its vine-like offshoot, psychoanalysis” came to thrive there. So he intertwines the two contrasting disciplines in this tale, in which Erica Hazelhurst is sent from her Sydney university philosophy department to evaluate the work of the late Wesley Anthill and takes along her friend, psychoanalyst Sophie Perloff. Interspersed with the changing relationship between the two women is Anthill’s story and his years of solitary work on a “theory of the emotions,” during which he was supported by his sister and brother, who shared the family homestead. Bail’s prose is elegant, precise, and eminently quotable, but this short novel—which concludes with the distillation of pages of Anthill’s lifework—seems more a discursive finger exercise by a master of the language. --Michele Leber--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.