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Im Auge des Sturms

von Patrick White

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467752,552 (3.88)1 / 29
Elizabeth Hunter, an ex-socialite in her '80s, has a mystical experience during a summer storm in Sydney which transforms all her relationships: her existence becomes charged with a meaning which communicates itself to those around her.From this simple scenario Patrick White unfurls a monumental exploration of the tides of love and hate, comedy and tragedy, impotence and longing that fester within family relationships.In the Sydney suburb of Centennial Park, three nurses, a housekeeper and a solicitor attend to Elizabeth, as her son and daughter convene at her deathbed. But, in death as in life, Elizabeth remains a destructive force on those who surround her.The Eye of The Storm is a savage exploration of family relationships - and the sharp undercurrents of love and hate, comedy and tragedy, which define them.… (mehr)
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More like 4.5. Eye isn't quite what I expected. My favorite White novels are plutonium-dense, deeply flawed in some way (i.e., there are totally gratuitous events, or the characters never seem to interact in any meaningful way--either on the realistic plane of, you know, dialogue, or on the intellectual plane of "what does this holocaust survivor have to do with this indigenous Australian aside from the obvious, and the obvious really doesn't take 500 pages to point out?"), but so singularly odd that I can't imagine doing without them for the rest of my life. Eye, on the other hand, is only moderately dense (reading it's kind of like sipping a Burgundy when you're expecting an Australian Shiraz), involves lots of character interaction on both planes, and has only one very slightly gratuitous event. So it's 'better' in that way. It's just not as interesting.

But 'not as interesting' as, say, Riders in the Chariot is still plenty interesting. White's ability to hold black comedy, cynicism, and mysticism together in a novel centering around three of the most horrific human beings to ever "grace" the house of fiction is amazing (for the record: a mother who intentionally undermines her children, a daughter who can't decide if she's a French aristocrat or an ocker ozzie, and a son who's a famous, aging actor). The people in the book talk to each other, and they don't go on huge mystic travels, and they don't get crucified. They're just people. In that way, this is much more humane than his other work, and that fits nicely with the conclusion, which should be trite, but somehow works. As Mrs Hunter very slowly dies, we read:

"Now surely, at the end of your* life, you can expect to be shown the inconceivable something you have always, it seems, been looking for. Though why you should expect it through the person of a steamy, devoted, often tiresome Jewess standing on one leg the other side of a veil of water (which is all the human vision amounts to) you could not have explained. Unless because you are both human, and consequently, flawed." [526]

That might come off a bit silly out of context, but after 500 odd pages of the horror, it's rather uplifting. Not to say the horror doesn't have its moments, too:

"Alone, Dorothy was already quailing for the kind of sentimental weaknesses a raking of the past might uncover. At the Judgement, too, you stand alone: not only Basil [her brother], all other sinners will contrive to be late. Your only hope in the present lies in indignation for whatever disgusts most: from faecal whiffs, breath filtered through mucus, the sickly scent of baby powder." [355].


*: nerdy literary technique point: White's use of the second person is really, really fascinating. Not quite stream of consciousness, not quite direct address to the character, not quite the character addressing herself. ( )
  stillatim | Oct 23, 2020 |
I only got to page 30. I found the language and descriptions too convoluted. I've got better things to do and lots of better books to read. ( )
  GeoffSC | Jul 25, 2020 |
White never has been one of my favourite authors. I would have liked to see the original television adaptation of this. It would have been a lot easier to get through.
The storyline is not unusual. Two middle-aged children come back to see what they can get from their wealthy 80-year old mother who is bedridden and expected to die - at some point. She, however, egotistical, unpleasant and self-serving, still controls their lives as well as the lives of her nurses, cook and family solicitor. The story also looks at her relationship with her late husband. She left their sheep property when the children were of school-age and set herself up in Sydney where she lived a life of wealth and luxury, and the occasional lover, leaving him to run the property alone.
If this had been written today, by an author not classically educated, this book would have been half the length of 500 or so pages, and a more enjoyable read. I would have liked to understand the French language dialogue between the daughter and her ex-inlaws, but there was too much of it to Google for translation. The book has a great deal of stream-of-consciousness and delving into people’s psyche. White finds sexual tensions and agendas in every action. I always feel he didn’t like people very much.
( )
  IMSauman | Dec 31, 2018 |
Patrick White was 61 when The Eye of the storm was published, his mother Ruth had died six years previously and the novel would appear to be some attempt at coming to terms with the difficult relationship between mother and son. Ruth’s final illness following a collapse was spent largely bed ridden surrounded by her acolytes. She had been a society woman, proud and overbearing towards her son and Patrick who was equally strong willed, found it difficult to get close to his mother and there was little love lost between them. The Eye of the Storm is centered around the final illness of Elizabeth Hunter, an ex-society hostess of indomitable will, known and feared for her cruelty towards friends and enemies alike. She is bed ridden and attended by a small team of nurses. Her two children Sir Basil Hunter a famous stage actor and his sister Dorothy: Princess of Lascabanes have long been estranged from her and each other, but both come to visit their mother during the final weeks, although they are mostly concerned about their inheritance. The parallels between fact and fiction in White’s novel are impossible to ignore.

Equally impossible to ignore is White’s passion for the theatre. He had some success in Australia as a playwright and burned to be considered as his Country’s most successful writer for the stage, this had always eluded him and so his character Sir Basil Hunter by now an overblown windbag of an actor completely self absorbed can be seen as an attempt to exorcise these ghosts from White’s own past. White however cannot carry out his exorcism because I think he is too intent in trying to turn sections of this novel into a play; born out by a couple of short passages where he uses dialogue as one would in a play.

Sir Basil Hunter becomes both this novels strength and its weakness, there is no doubt that White brings this character superbly alive, but the continual use of stage imagery whenever he appears becomes too obvious and in the end a little boring. Here is an example taken from late on in the novel when Basil and Dorothy are slumming it out in their old house, now owned by a poor family while waiting for their mother to die:

“When Sir Basil made his entrance with a real limp instead of that mannerism which passed for one, he advanced a shoulder, exorcised the wrinkles from his brow, exposed his jaw, and waited for the recognition he was not accorded. Again he found it was not his scene……….Dorothy Hunter realised somebody had mistimed an entrance. She frowned ferociously, not at a star actor, but at her tiresome brother.”

Very little happens in this novel which stretches to nearly 600 pages. Elizabeth Hunter lingers on in her final illness, developing increasingly strange relationships with the nurses looking after her. Basil and Dorothy arrive and soon leave for their old house a days drive away, Sister Flora Manhood’s life outside of the invalid’s house is taken into account as is Basil and Dorothy’s stay with the Macrory’s. There are some flashbacks to key events in Elizabeth Hunter’s life and the novels conclusion comes not unexpectedly with Elizabeth’s long awaited death. Having read all of Patrick White’s previous novels I am used to the fact that they generally start slowly as White feels his way into telling his story, however in Eye of the Storm he out-does himself and it is not until 120 pages into the novel that we first get to meet Sir Basil Hunter. Usually the slow starts to his novels are enlivened by some startling prose passages, but they are sadly lacking here. There is much to slog through before this novel gets airborne. When it does finally take off over half way through, with the flashback to Elizabeth and Dorothy’s trip to the uninhabited island owned by the Warming family and where Elizabeth gets to the eye of the storm; we find Patrick White writing at his thrilling best.

As usual in Whites novels his central characters are all deeply flawed, and The Eye of the Storm proves to be no exception. How much of this reflects White’s own difficulties in forming relationships is open to debate, but because much of this novel parallels his own family situation then there is much here that points to this being autobiographical in nature. Amidst all the greedy, self absorbed loveless characters in White’s novels there is usually a saintly female character and there is one here and so as not to leave us in any doubt Sister de Santis is continually referred to as Saint Mary. White is always in danger of alienating his readers from his characters, but in this case their sheer neediness of love or admiration just about keeps them as recognisably human in nature.

I found this novel overlong and badly structured, White does not bring anything new to the table and much of what is in this novel can be found better developed and written with more style in his previous books. I would recommend this novel to fans of Patrick White {I consider myself as one) but would advise that new readers of this author, should approach with caution. 3 stars ( )
11 abstimmen baswood | Nov 24, 2012 |
I can't believe I waited nearly forty years to read this brilliant book, then I went to see the movie and it was superb , with Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis and Charlotte Rampling. ( )
  lesleynicol | Jun 22, 2012 |
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Elizabeth Hunter, an ex-socialite in her '80s, has a mystical experience during a summer storm in Sydney which transforms all her relationships: her existence becomes charged with a meaning which communicates itself to those around her.From this simple scenario Patrick White unfurls a monumental exploration of the tides of love and hate, comedy and tragedy, impotence and longing that fester within family relationships.In the Sydney suburb of Centennial Park, three nurses, a housekeeper and a solicitor attend to Elizabeth, as her son and daughter convene at her deathbed. But, in death as in life, Elizabeth remains a destructive force on those who surround her.The Eye of The Storm is a savage exploration of family relationships - and the sharp undercurrents of love and hate, comedy and tragedy, which define them.

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