Holland tells stories to his daughter Ellen is enthralled by a young storyteller the narrator tells us stories about eucalypts even the dull Cave has his story to tell, albeit brief and uneventful. When it seems that Cave can’t fail, Ellen takes to her bed and it’s left to the young storyteller to revive her with one last tale.Įucalyptus is a glorious celebration of storytelling. But Ellen has another suitor who appears on her daily walks, beguiling her with his storytelling.
Finally, one remains – Roy Cave, steeped in knowledge of eucalypts and little else. So begins a long parade of suitors, their imagination captured by stories of Ellen’s beauty. As she reaches marriageable age, Holland sets up a competition with Ellen’s apparent acquiescence – the first man who names all his eucalypts will marry her. When Ellen joins him, she passes her days walking, listening to her father’s stories, occasionally yearning for city life. With his wife dead, his daughter Ellen away at school and no apparent need to make a living, Holland perfects his eucalyptus collection until he has over five hundred trees on his isolated New South Wales estate. I remember being charmed by this modern day fairy tale, not wanting it to end. Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus manages to combine both beautifully. The pleasures of reading fiction are many and varied but broadly speaking they tend to fall into two categories: sometimes it’s all about the storytelling, sometimes it’s about the writing. This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy into as many hands as I could.
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