Reviews

• What makes a great novel? Many things, but among them I would certainly list Scale, Characters, and Moral Vision. All three of these qualities are to be found in this towering novel by Patrick White. It is the first book by the Nobel laureate that I have encountered; it will certainly not be the last. This is a long book (640 pages), but a very easy one to read. In any case, when speaking of scale, physical length is less important than breadth of implication. White concentrates on a small group of people living on the outskirts of Sydney after WW2, but makes them seem emblematic of the entire continent. There is also a wide range of origin and social class; the characters include the last survivor of a once-rich aristocratic family, a German Jewish professor fleeing the Holocaust, a poor washerwoman who emigrated from England as a child, and a half-aboriginal painter. Since each character is given almost 100 pages of back-story, the novel is by no means confined in place or period either; the section set in Germany between the wars can hold its own with the best Holocaust writing anywhere, with particular insights into Jewish social, intellectual, and spiritual life. But the most important aspect of the book's scale is the feeling held by each of the four major characters that the universe is an immensely greater place than anything they may see around them. White has the great gift of loving his characters. Each of the four is something of an outcast. Miss Hare, the faded aristocrat, is clearly mad; Himmelfarb, the professor, now chooses to work in a menial job, without possessions or other signs of status; Mrs. Godbold, the washerwoman, lives with her many daughters in a tumble-down shack; Alf Dubbo, the half-caste painter, works by day as a janitor and is given to fits of drunkenness. And yet White writes so convincingly through the eyes of each that we do more than feel sympathy for them; we begin to see the others around them as impoverished of spirit, living only partial lives. White is brilliant in creating a gallery of semi-comic secondary characters -- some bad, some well-meaning, some merely lacking in imagination -- to set off the qualities of his principal quartet, but even these have dimension and are far from caricatures. One of the curious aspects of the book is that the four characters hardly ever meet, although they recognize an immediate kinship when they do. For all four are religious visionaries. Their visions may occur only once or twice in their lives, but the image is the same for each: the approach of Ezekiel's fiery chariot, both wonderful and terrible. I can think of few books that are so successful at portraying the mystical dimension while being so firmly rooted in the mundane. This is clearly a religious book, but not at all a sectarian one. It is White's strength that he endows his visionaries with everyday failings, and gives each a very different religious background. Miss Hare's religion, if she has one, is a pantheism rooted in the plants and animals on her moldering estate. Himmelfarb has returned to Judaism only after years of secular life, and considers himself morally unworthy. Mrs. Godbold is a staunch evangelical, but her religion shows more in her practical kindnesses to others than in any doctrinal fundamentalism. And Alf Dubbo, though raised by a preacher and especially inspired by religious subjects, is dissolute and virtually autistic in his day to day life. A fourth quality that I might have mentioned is Style. White's writing, as I say, is easy to read, but very varied and always appropriate to the tone of the moment. While he can neatly skewer the social pretensions of the Rosetrees (the employers of Himmelfarb and Alf), he can also shift to the kind of description that portrays everyday things as symbolic of eternal conflicts or reflections of the infinite. His descriptions of Alf Dubbo's paintings, for example, are equaled by no author I can think of except perhaps Chaim Potok in MY NAME IS ASHER LEV , in their ability to convey a truly incandescent artistic vision. Such mastery of style is essential because, as loners, his characters cannot interact much together in terms of everyday plot, and in narrative terms the concluding section of the book is less compelling than the long set-up. But where the characters do meet is in their common vision, their unspoken sense of rightness, and it is precisely in White's evocative language that this sounds, resonates, and resounds.

• No words to do justice to the experience I had reading this novel. Having worked my way through THE TREE OF MAN and VOSS I thought I knew what to expect from RIDERS IN THE CHARIOT. How wrong I was. Never have I been so moved or inspired by a book. This is an epic in every meaning of the word. Not just epic in its sweep within time and space, taking in WW2, Europe, Australia, the Holocaust etc, but epic in its emotion and spiritual vision. White pulls of what so few novelists even attempt, a compelling expression of the Mystic Vision. The imagery of the Chariot (or Merkavah, to use its Hebrew name), which the four main characters share stands out like a cathedral in the book as the perfect metaphor for the Transcendent. If you are interested in mysticism, this is the book for you, as it is steeped in Judaic, Kabbalistic and Christian mystical imagery, but far from being airy-fairy or intangible, it is a concrete, as real, if not more real, than the meticulously detailed and fully realised material world of Australia and pre-War Germany White evokes. And if you are not interested in mysticism, this is the book for you too, as nowhere does any of this imagery work more powerfully than simply a symbol of the human spirit. No book has ever spoken of the tension between the ecstatic vision and the numbing and brutal experience of being in a world which does not understand it so powerfully as this book did for me. Its characters are unforgettable, and although the vision of a world which is filled with darkness is powerfully vivid, White still finds space for immense compassion in his descriptions of it. Even his negative characters have flashes of insight and humanity. And his constant series of epiphanies in Nature unfailingly take the breath away. Although tragic in scope, the book also has a deep resilience and belief in the Spirit to somehow endure. RIDERS IN THE CHARIOT is up there with Dostoyevsky, Lawrence, Tolstoy and others in its ability to mix the transcendent and the mystical with the ordinary. This book is vast. White was a genius, and one who somehow managed to overcome his own black pain and anger to still express a hope in something more. Go read. One of the least-known masterpieces of the last or any other century...

• Typical output from Australia's pre-eminent author, this novel explores the search for spiritual alternatives to traditional faith by four "outcasts" from mainstream society - the "riders in the chariot". It is a complex rendering of what it was like in post-war suburban Australia; the prejudices, the mores, the attitudes all wrapped up in the insidious expansion of suburbia and everything it stands for. If there is a criticism, I believe White spends too much time on the back-story of the individuals. As usual with White, his text is wordy and often convoluted, but not to the point of distraction.

• Le récit part de Miss Hare, un petit bout de femme ratatinée à l'âge indéfini mais avancé qui vit seule dans une immense maison en décrépitude dans la banlieue de Sydney, à Salsaparilla. Cette propriété autrefois splendide a pour nom `Xanadu' et fut construite par le père de Miss Hare, un héritier fort riche qui n'eut de cesse que de se faire construire un véritable palais et d'y donner des réceptions somptueuses. Xanadu est envahi par les plantes du jardin qui reprennent petit à petit le dessus et détruisent le `palais' avec un certain panache. Miss Hare est une âme simple, à demi-folle, proche de la nature et de ses êtres auxquels elle s'identifie parfois totalement ; elle a peu le sens des réalités pratiques et finit par engager une domestique, Mrs Jolley pour s'occuper des pièces encore habitables de la maison. Cette dernière, sous des dehors joviaux, est plutôt une incarnation du mal, de la bêtise et de la méchanceté, elle sera à l'origine d'actions malfaisantes. Miss Hare est l'un des quatre personnages dont Patrick White va raconter l'histoire dans ce roman, elle est l'un des passagers symboliques du Char, le char des élus, ce char auréolé de feu qui est envoyé pour chercher les âmes pures au moment de leur mort. Il y a aussi Mme Godbold, une blanchisseuse aux nombreux enfants qui vit avec eux et son ivrogne de mari dans une grange minable un peu à l'écart, c'est une sorte d'ange qui vient au secours des plus démunis qu'elle comme Miss Hare et M. Himmelfarb, un vieux juif émigré rescapé des horreurs des camps. Il y a encore le pauvre Dubbo un métis aborigène, malade, rejeté de tous. Ces quatre êtres survivent avec grâce dans un monde cruel envahi par l'indifférence ou pire par le mal. Tous ont été abîmés et rejetés, mais tous ont eu la vision du Char à un moment donné et sous une forme différente ; c'est ce qui les relient, les réunit et leur laisse entrevoir la possibilité d'un monde meilleur. Un livre dense, humain, passionnant, riche en symboles, avec de nombreuses références intertextuelles (souvent bibliques). Les personnages sont à la fois très humains et incroyablement emblématiques. La langue est belle, travaillée, riche en métaphores, en images poétiques qui s'appellent les unes et les autres - des métaphores filées si mes vieux souvenirs sont bons. C'est tout simplement magnifique. Un vrai souffle lyrique, qui touche parfois au mystique nous emporte jusqu'au bout de ce livre. Pour moi il s'agit d'un chef d'aeuvre et croyez-moi, j'emploie rarement ce terme.

• I have returned two times still I got the worst printing book. Don't buy this

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