DECEPTIVE SIMPLICITY

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33917, 9 August 1975, Page 10

DECEPTIVE SIMPLICITY

Johnno. By David Malcut. University of Queensland Press. 170 pp. N.Z. price $4.60 approx. This slight-looking novel with its unprepossessing cover showing a faded photo of a school life-saving team could easily be overlooked in a bookshop or library. That would be an undeserved fate, and a considerable loss to the reader. * first novel by an Australian author who has previously published three books of verse, “Johnno” deserves a wide public. It tells a simple enough story, starting with a moving prologue as an expatriate Australian returns to Brisbane for his father’s funeral and begins to clear out the family home. Then it moves back in time to retrace the unlikely friendship between the narrator and Johnno whose photo he discovers as he rummages through his old desk. David Malouf describes the relationship between two very different boys and men, and also captures the Brisbane of the warscarred forties, the compulsion of so

many Australians to travel and to return, and the envy or resentment of those who remain at home. All this is well done but never obtrusive; it remains background to the main purpose of the book, the exploration of the enigmatic character of Johnno and of the slowly growing comprehension of this character bv the narrator.

This may be Mr Malouf’s first novel, but he is fully in control of all aspects of it and the book is a beautifully conceived unity. It begins with a prologue and ends with an epilogue both set in the same day and mood and using the same metaphors. In the major portion of the book one watches the narrator’s character and understanding grow to the compassion expressed implicitly in the prologue and more explicitly at the end. Mr Malouf writes in a vivid, concise style, which moves easily into humour or tragedy. The seeming simplicity of ’“Johnno” (the man and the novel) conceals a complexity which richly repays study.