insane prose

The set up is great, the individual sentences often exquisite...but the novel falls flat. Bizarrely for a book about the racy and kinetic Roman poet Ovid, it was almost anti-Ovidian in style, plot and characterization. No wit, no energy, no urbanity, no sex, scandals or romantic cynicism. Reading it put me to sleep, and not in a good way. Last thing Ovid would have wanted.

An Imaginary Life by David Malouf 1999
153 pages, I have exactly the version above with cover photography by Bill Bachman.

Recommendation - read this if you are into literature.

I was recommended An Imaginary Life by a friend, who highly praised David Malouf. I understand the author is resident in Brisbane, capital of Queensland, which is the state in Australia I live in. Strangely I can feel that a bit in reading this book, although it has nothing to do with Australia at all.

If you’re going to read An Imaginary Life I’d suggest you have a quick google of who Ovid is. You don’t need much and it’s not a spoiler, will just give you a grain of background so you don’t flounder around like I did at the beginning wondering what was happening in the book.

Malouf’s literary capacity is pretty good, I would not go as far to say Best I have ever read, but pretty good. This does make the book pretty readable.

The story, which as I indicated up top I was totally lost of until about page 40, is rather interesting and slowly and surely develops. By the time I was over half way through An Imaginary Life had become a page turner!

I gotta say that yet once again the ending just petered out, it was quite disappointing for all the build up and visual depiction that Malouf had put into the pros. Give me a better final ten pages and I would give this book five stars.

Who would enjoy An Imaginary Life?
You enjoy Australian literature.
You have an interest in ancient Roman history and people.
You are interested in the region of the west coast of the Black Sea, now called Constanta in Romania.
Stories about myths and folk stories lights you up!
You are interested in character development.

Who would not enjoy An Imaginary Life?
If you want a fast moving story, this is not for you.

Overall I found Malouf’s story telling and character development very intriguing, I reflected at length on what all this meant and how my own story compares. I think this is perhaps one of the key intentions of literature, to really get the reader to perceive the story whilst standing in the shoes of the protagonist (sometimes the antagonist). This Malouf did really well for me.

Great book … look forward to reading Ransom the other Malouf book that I have.

Ok, that's it. I am no longer reading anything that even loosely falls under the whiny-middle-aged-male-writer-as-narrator trope.

If you like words and can appreciate a particular turn of phrase, then you may find this to be a very enjoyable book. I certainly gained satisfaction from reading it, but was even more satisfied with myself once I finished it. By writing as the poet, Ovid, Malouf has woven a story out of such flowery phrases that each moment seemed to take a lifetime to read. Slow reading, but interesting in its own way.

My brother lent me this book. He said , as he held it out to me "I started this but...I dunno...couldn't really get into it " But me , I tucked right in and really enjoyed this book. I liked the range , and lack there of , of the personalities in this book and both the bleakness and the richness of the environment and characters. I was surprised to find out that it was written in like 1978 or something?

Like a play in five parts, this short story has incredible form and beauty in its craftsmanship. The transformation of the poet narrator in his pursuit of meaning in life and connection with nature is powerful, drawing upon the romantic tradition. Exiled from his life in Rome where he seeks beauty in the aesthetic and superficial challenges to the ruling powers, he is challenged to find a place in a hostile environment, and eventually find refuge and meaning in the power of people to overcome adverse conditions and adapt to and thrive in hostile environment. Malouf presents a man who in reflects the disconnection we can feel in constructed environments, harbouring guilt for not valuing the traditions of culture and expectations of society to adhere to its values. The protagonists' banishment forces him to seek what is over the horizon and beyond the borders of humanity and to live with purpose, however futile or short that life is.

Malouf writes beautiful prose... i was introduced to his work with 'Ransom' and had to get this book, and 'Remembering Babylon', both of which my library finally found for me... you'll either love this or really love this... there are so many gems in this book i won't even try to mention them all... my two faves are the men-and-horses, and the part about the demon... amazing read...

The bad reviews of this book on here reflects that people are forced to read it, because it’s pretty decent.

It tells the story of Roman poet, Ovid, forced into exile into Romania where he despairs of the lack of culture and the fact that he’s unable to speak the language and forced to learn everything from scratch like a child. When he masters this, he discovers a wild boy, raised by deers and takes him back to teach him. After some successes, he and they boy are blamed for a sickness and forced to go out in the world together.

In stoic philosophy, particularly popular with Romans, the point of philosophy was to learn how to die well. In many ways this book is about that. He’s been exiled after having been the most civilised of all civilised people in the civilised world, his is a life devoted to art, imagination and play. The place he is exiled to has no space for any of that. Where Latin is a language made to create subtle distinctions, the language he learns in exile is one that brings things together. What’s more, once the wild boy is found, he learns the language of nature from him, the calls of birds and animals. As Ovid progresses through the book, he sheds the things that distinguish him from nature till he is finally ready to be part of it and die. His metamorphosis is complete. It’s a neat little idea and effectively done.

That the Ovid in this book is nothing like the real one, nor that his place of exile is anything like the thriving Greek-built port that it was, is not important to the story being told. It would probably have been better if the historical element of the book had been jettisoned. That would also have avoided the problem of the prologue containing a description of a werewolf that is of a twentieth century one, and not the werewolves of legends before.

As for the wild child stuff, it was the most engaging part of the text, and the reason I read the book but having just read Savage Girls and Wild Boys, I recognised that it had all been cribbed directly off Itard’s depiction of Victor. That the author recognises this in an endnote does not undo the fact that the best parts of the book were simply lifted from somewhere else. Also, having read about real wild children, I’m not very susceptible to the myth, especially the notion that the child could lead Ovid back into nature.

As for the beautiful and poetic language. I was worried about that. I find ‘good sentences’ are frequently a distraction from a good novel, overwhelming the whole. But I found this book to be pretty straight-forwardly written and wasn’t distracted at all.

I read the book as filler while another arrived and it served that purpose well, entertaining me and leaving just a little to linger on the palate.

Wish I had a little wolf boy to run away with

I was given this by someone I like very much quite a long time ago, but when I read it then I just didn't get it or why she loved it so much. This year and events sparked a memory of it and I went back to it and I get rather more of it now (though even now some of the middle section about the transition of the wild young man defeated me). It is life seen through the eyes of the poet Ovid in his banishment and that change of perspective from belonging to just being - how he starts to see the world anew, initially through a poppy, but that part about bringing things into being through yourself - they are what you see them to be, that works and it is echoed again when he and the boy move out of the community and into the wild - that part describing how they live and really what it is just to be. Bits of that are extraordinary
'Here, the immensity, the emptiness, feeds the spirit, and leaves it with no hunger for anything but more space, more light - as if one had suddenly glimpsed the largeness, the emptiness of one's own soul , and come to terms with it, glorying at last in its open freedom.'

I got this from the library but I am now about to buy it because it shot straight onto my favourites shelf. And I would like to read it again in a quiet space so that I can reflect on it and take notes. Such an elegant and entrancing tale of rebirth. It made me want to take to the desert and begin again to see the world in a grain of sand.