This book didn't pass my 'page 73 test' (if a book hasn't grabbed my attention in some way by page 73 then we both accept it never will and we part company). I gave up on page 66 and, if I am being totally honest, I'd have given up earlier were it not for the fact that a respected friend had recommened the book to me.

I found the detail excrutiating. I found the core event and subsequent relationship that drives the story utterly improbable. I found Max to be a melodramatic yawn of a character. And I found that I don't enjoy being led by the hand like a 6-year old through a predictable story where I'm told what to think and how to feel at every step.

Journey to the Stone Country was a far better book. ( )

Excellent portrayal of a man at the end of an academic career who has lost his wife and will to live. A meeting with a Sydney academic at his farewell speech changes his future ( )

To see my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2009/10/23/landscape-of-farewell-by-alex-miller/ ( )

A poignant meditation on loss and secrets that can alienate families. This is the story of history professor Max Otto, who was a child in Germany during the second World War and whose life has been deeply affected by the subsequent guilt, most especially by the fact that he never knew exactly what his own father did during the war. As the book opens, he's grieving for his recently dead wife and planning on killing himself as soon as he's finished giving a paper at a local history conference. There he meets a young Australian academic, Professor Vita McLelland, and rediscovers his passion for life.

The rest of the book takes place in outback Queensland as Max spends a few weeks with Vita's Uncle Dougald. Max and Dougald get along very well, although - or perhaps because - they are both taciturn men, and the time they spend together ends up being far more profound and dramatic than they were expecting.

One of the interesting themes of this book was that of massacres. Max, although an innocent to World War Two's atrocities, feels deep guilt for them. And Dougald's ancestor was a powerful man in his Aboriginal community, another group of people who know all too well about massacres. And Max always yearned to write about such things as a historian, but was never able to because of his own guilt and took the easier path academically into medieval history.

I found this overall a bit too slow and stately, it focussed very much on the characters' inner lives, and I generally enjoy books that are less psychologically introspective. But the characters were interesting (although I never did quite understand Vita), and it was beautifully written. ( )

"Is it history that tells us who we are? Or is it the story we tell ourselves - humanity's great sagas, myths and legends, songs and poems and tales of battles over blood and soil - that defines who we are? As Miller [shows], it is a conundrum with profound consequences - he leaves the answer to us."

A fascinating book, about which anything I say won't do justice to it, or else I'll leave things that I meant to say unsaid. I do think it's a fairly improbable story, but contrived so well that I'm prepared to overlook the unlikeliness of it. ( )