“the important thing was not the ending but its wake, the ripples left behind once it was all over and one could sit looking into a darkness full of ghosts”
The narrator of Austral is a middle aged academic, Julio, who, following an argument with his wife, ends up alone in their house as she travels abroad without him. Into this void a letter arrives informing him that a former friend, Aliza, who became a successful author, has died. She spent her last years in an artistic commune, supported by friends who were helping her write what was planned to be her final work. Knowing she would die before completion, she expressed a wish that Julio edit the manuscript and publish it.
Having received a letter explaining this situation, Julio travels to the remote commune in the Argentine desert. Here he meets those who got to know Aliza as she continued to work through her final illness, a condition that rendered her nearly mute. He reads the manuscript and ponders why he was chosen to prepare it for publication. He and Aliza had been close for only a few weeks three decades ago. As the years passed much changed, although not as once anticipated.
“Stubborn, arrogant in their stealth, those pages reinforced the frustrating sense that the last thirty years had passed by without his consent.”
Despite being a fairly short book, the plot is convoluted. It took some time and repeated rereading to work out who was who, and how each influenced whom across generations. Sections of Aliza’s manuscript are included – a memoir of sorts of her father, focusing on a significant if brief encounter.
There are details of an attempt to establish a previous community in Argentina, referred to as New Germany (this actually existed). Woven throughout the tale are those trying to escape a past shadowed by parental beliefs and societal expectations, to start afresh, to build a utopia. It is clear that groups define their utopias very differently.
Included is the story of a native tribe discovered by foreign explorers and decimated by imported illness. Those few who are left must choose to either assimilate with the colonisers or attempt to survive in a place that is shrinking or no longer exists.
At its heart this is an exploration of language, culture, memory and heritage. The threads unravel and are then pulled back together as character’s stories emerge.
“The village of Nataibo was emptied of inhabitants, New Germany of dreams, and Aliza of words, in a sequence of images that crossed decades and continents”
As well as her final novel or memoir, Aliza was working on a dictionary in which each entry is an anecdote connected to her past. Pictures are included here and described. The narrator is reading these pages during a pause in his life, a period of profound loneliness. In deciphering her words he comes to know more about what Aliza was before and after their short time together.
The final section of the book is headed ‘Theatre of Memory’. In this Julio meets a man who is attempting to gather recollections from former residents of a village he lived in as a young child that was violently destroyed. As a denouement I found this unsatisfactory. My attention waned and then Julio’s actions did not appear to do justice to the task a successful author might bequeath him.
This is not a difficult book to read but proved something of a challenge to follow and engage with, particularly towards the end. The jumping around in time and place requires that the reader keep in mind complex links and back stories for the many characters. Having held all this together, I found the reason given for Aliza choosing Julio to take forward her final writing projects unconvincing.
Any Cop?: A story that may benefit from re-reading to perhaps unpick the author’s underlying arc. I was not disappointed by the quality of writing. It was the chosen structure that had lost my interest by the end.
Jackie Law
Bookmunch 