Martin BoydBesprekingen

Hard to believe Boyd's Australian classic has so few reviews on here!

From the supremely talented Boyd family. The first in the Langton Quartet I read these books in high school and am revisiting them nearly 40 years later. The first is the story of Alice, grandmother to the fictional author and tells of her family's peripatetic lives. It is also an interesting look at early Melbourne. Loved the books in 1980, loved this now and will go on to read the rest in the series.

The best of the Langton Quartet, largely because it sidelines the terribly romantic, terribly serious, terribly dull Dominic and looks instead at the fascinating, charming, slightly sad Langton relatives. Funny, wise, sad, nicely written. This is as close as Boyd comes to being the Australian Anthony Powell (which is meant as praise, though some might dissent).

If you're looking for a Great War novel, this one might tickle your fancy, but it's a bit of an anti-climax to a quartet of novels that are, in other places, charming, witty, smart, and interesting. This, by contrast, is a fairly standard, livened up only by Dominic's odd position as an Australian serving for the British. Australia famously became a nation at Gallipoli, and this novel is a bit of a symbolic version of that nationification. But it lacks the romance of earlier books (sex, yes; romance, less so), and the cleverness (the narrator is entirely effaced here), and the wit.

Not quite as enjoyable as 'Cardboard Crown,' because it was much less even, and more diffuse. But still amusing, moving, and intelligent, particularly for those of us who would like to believe, against all the evidence, that some people care about human civilization.

Stumbles a bit at the start, but the conceit--our narrator is convinced to tell the story of his family as mediated by his grandmother's diaries--is a very nice one, and once we get into the family story, the awkward flaws fall away. Then you're left with Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead style), or the early volumes of Powell's 'Dance to the Music of Time,' only in Australia.

"Austin understood much better le plaisir aristocratique which consists not as his guest had imagined in rudeness to someone whom it is safe to snub, but in a confidence so complete in one's own values that one affirms them clearly, indifferent to the fact that they are incompatible with the ideas of a bourgeois society, and the pleasure consists in seeing the bewilderment of a conventional mind, when faced with an idea too generous, or a taste too eclectic or even an honesty too obvious for its comprehension."

(8.5)½

When Blackbirds Sing is the last installment in the Langton quartet. We rejoin Dominic as he journeys back to war, re-enlisting at the start of World War I. Leaving his wife in Australia to tend to their sheep farm he heads back to England and reconnects with an old flame, Sylvia.
After killing a man and witnessing the atrocities of war Dominic has sobered of all immoral actions and indiscretions. He returns home to Australia a changed man inside and out.
I can honestly say I enjoyed this book much more than the last three (none of which I completely finished). Still, everything about Boyd's quartet was old and stuffy. The series is supposed to depict the early 1900s but the writing seems older and more staid than that.

Throughout earlier Boyd books (Cardboard Crown, etc) we have been following the Langton family. In Outbreak of Love we focus on Diana. She has been married for twenty-three long years to egotistical and stuffy musician named "Wolfie." Wolfie is an adulterer and it's this unfaithful behavior that brings the drama to the book. Diana, of course, finds out and decides she needs an interesting relationship of her own.

I have to admit this story lagged for me. It wasn't as non-directional as The Cardboard Crown but it still couldn't hold my attention for long periods of time. Shoot, I couldn't get through ten pages without straying from the page. A fly crawling along a windowsill could capture my attention faster and hold it longer.
So, right from the start I need to tell you the "difficult young man" of the story is Dominic Langton, grandson of Alice (writer of the journal in The Cardboard Crown). Dominic's story is being told by his younger brother, Guy. Dominic is indeed difficult and troubled and sort of a loose cannon. He kills a horse, after all. But, it's also the story of a family who is discontent wherever they are. Bounding between England and Australia, the grass is always greener on the other side.

This is the story of Alice Verso told through her grandson's discovery of her diary. From its pages half written in French he is able to uncover generations of intricate and complicated relationships. Alice marries into the Langton family and brings the clan financial stability. But, despite this Alice discovers her husband is having an affair with a childhood friend named Hetty. Told across three generations and bouncing between Australia and England everything about this story was strange. As a reader, I couldn't stay engaged with the story or the characters. There wasn't a single person I connected with or cared about. It was the kind of story I often lost place with - meaning, when I put it down I couldn't remember the last thing I read.

The second book in Martin Boyd's semi-autobiographical Langton quartet. For full review please read whisperinggums at: http://whisperinggums.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/martin-boyd-a-difficult-young-man...½