Acclaimed novelist, poet and musician Gregory Day has realised on the unsuspecting public his latest literary work, The Bell of the World, which is made up of many aspects of life: all encased within the lyrical. poetic, conferential and all too real.
Sarah Hutchinson and her Uncle Ferny are the central protagonists around which the plotlines twist and turn, each person a startling, vivid character, minutely detailed, around which the many other intimately presented characters’ flow and ebb.
The train driver and coal stoker on Sarah’s journey to meet her Uncle are bought alive, Maisie, the indigenous woman who cares for Sarah and nurtures her return to health, is so vividly portrayed you can see even the minute wrinkles in her well-worn, timeless face, to mention only a few of the many people who grace, or otherwise, the pages. Each word set down paints a fine detail in their portraits.
Set in a time when Colonialism was still a strong element in Australian Society, Sarah is sent away to a Girls School in England after the bitter divorce of her parents and her mother’s slow decent into a form of alcoholic madness. This establishes the thread of the plot line as Sarah eventually returns, via Italy, to a life back in Australia that is far from wonderful. Certainly far from her free lifestyle in Rome, under Uncle Ferny’s guidance.
She petitions her father to see if Uncle Ferny will allow her to go and live on the family holdings of Ngangahook. He agrees and she begins what is to be a monumental journey into the rest of her life.
Ferny is obsessed with a wonderful book Such is Life by Tom Collins (Joseph Furphy) which he extolls at every opportunity, Sarah becomes immersed in her music, tuning her piano with things she finds in nature to create differing sound patterns.
Life moves along in a somewhat abstract manner until the local Minister decides a Bell needs to be installed at the Church and approaches Ferny to fund this dismal object. This sets off a train of reactions that cause conflict in what was once the ‘idyllic world’ of Ngangahook, bringing with it distension, distress and disharmony.
The Bell of the World is lengthy, needing to be supped slowly and with care to be able to appreciate the beautiful flow of words: the power that had been created with so many elements drawn from the Australian bush and human nature, woven lyrically into a beautiful strand create a story that is as old as time, but as recent as today.
