Roddy Parr by Peter Rose

This book was recommended by someone on the panel of the First Tuesday Book Club – Richard Flanagan perhaps? It’s about a young literary PhD grad who through a family friend ends up being absorbed into the world of one of the great literary families of Australia, as secretary, later friend, and biographer. The jacket is covered in accolades from people I respect, like Helen Garner, but somehow this book irritated me. To begin with, you get the sense that these fictional characters are real characters in the Oz literary world in disguise, which is perhaps why the folks at the book club were so keen on it – they may have recognised themselves or someone they knew. The whole thing is peppered with references to Sydney and Melbourne personalities and places, like Tony Bilson and Bill Henson and Patrick White and The Flower Drum, and somehow that annoyed the hell out of me too because they ended up being involved in the plot with White saying this, and Bilson saying that, again as if the writer is trying to pass this thing off as a piece of non fiction.
The story line - the unpacking of family secrets and development of relationships - is interesting enough but the characters don’t ring true. They keep saying awkward things that nobody says, like one woman talking about entertaining people to dinner and saying ‘I just give them a chop’. Now, who says that? It’s like something out of PG Wodehouse. And there’s lots more of this irritating lack of authenticity in the characters and the way they speak.
And finally the writing – OTT. This guy has ‘discovered’ literary language so his prose is full of dreadful metaphors and unwieldy language that just goes clunk at the bottom of the bucket. Nothing seems to live, not the characters and not the action. The main character Roddy is an onlooker, who reports, diarises, but barely lives the action. Contrived and awkward I think. 2 ½ stars.