The Man Who Loved Children

I started off the Australian Readers’ Challenge by tackling The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead. I started the book on 15 April and only finished it a couple of days ago. I found it a challenging, at times tiring, and often intriguing read.

A tale about a family, the Pollits, the book looks at the unhappy relationship between the father, Sam Pollit, and his wife Henny (short for Henrietta), and its effect on the six children. I found both parents equally annoying. Sam was self-righteous, full of grandiose plans, and completely unable to take responsibility for anything. When he lost his job due to political power plays he refused to defend himself. This interchange between Sam and his friend, Saul:

‘Faith,’ said Sam, ‘yes, I have faith: that is the great gift my dear good mother gave me: faith in the good.’
‘But why does faith prevent you from answering the charges made against you?’ asked Saul.
‘Who touches pitch is defiled,’ said Sam.
‘You will lose everything, Sam: position, salary, pension. What about your children?’
‘I will never answer such charges,’ Sam declared, scarlet with indignation, ‘and if my children have to live in utmost poverty, let them do what I have done. “Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like a toad ugly and venomous, still has a precious jewel in its head,” said silly old Broadway Willy Shakespeare. I don’t go much by what poets say, but he was a man, he had his reverses, as his verses sometimes show.’

p.325; Penguin Modern Classics 1970 edition.

I felt like wringing his neck!

Henny was just as bad. She and Sam didn’t speak to each other, preferring to communicate through their children:

‘Tell your father, ‘ she said to Evie, seated beside her, ‘that it’s enough to be ordered like a dog: I don’t want to listen to his mawkery.’ Evie turned her head toward her father and silently pleaded with him to consider this message transmitted. Sam had his eyes on his plate, trying to restrain himself, and getting redder every minute.
Ernest said at once, ‘Daddy, Mother says not to speak to her.’
No one laughed.

With the rest of the family, her usual way of communicating was by screaming, launching into tirades at the whole family from within the safety of her bedroom, and occasionally fainting when she got too overwrought.

I found Stead’s writing both challenging and enjoyable:

Sam turned his back to the house and looked south, over the dark, susurrous orchard, towards the faint lights of Rosslyn. A zephyr stole up the slope as quietly as a nocturnal animal and with it all the domestic scents, wrapping Sam’s body in peace. Within, a torment raged, day and night, week, month, year, always the same, an endless conflict, with its truces and breathing spaces; out here were a dark peace and love.

I love finding unfamiliar words – I had to look susurrous up. According to the Oxford English Dictionary:

Of the nature of a whisper; characterized by, or full of, whispering.

1859. W. H. RUSSELL Diary in India(1860) II. xiii. 247 There were eyes peering through, and a gentle, susurrous whispering.
1886 WEBSTER Susurrous..,whispering;..full of whispering sounds.
1946 M. PEAKE Titus Groan lxiv. 388 The long corridors were susurrous with rumour.

Great word!

Now reading The Bone People by Keri Hulme. I hope this one doesn’t take me as long. Got to pick up the pace a bit or I won’t finish the challenge in time! Am reading Naked Conversations and The Cluetrain Manifesto as well, along with assorted journal articles.

Categories: AustralianReadersChallenge, review, ChristinaStead