It is steeped in Australian folklore and cultural myth, and is recognised as the author’s attempt to infuse the idiosyncratic way of life in the remote Australian bush with some sense of the cultural traditions and ideologies that the epic history of Western civilisation has bequeathed to Australian society in general. It is a domestic drama chronicling the lives of the Parker family and their changing fortunes over many decades. The Tree of Man is the fourth published novel by the Australian novelist and 1973 Nobel Prize-winner, Patrick White. Together they face lives of joy and sorrow as they struggle against the environment. Once the land is cleared and a rudimentary house built, he brings his wife Amy to the wilderness. Stan Parker, with only a horse and a dog for company journeys to a remote patch of land he has inherited in the Australian hills. I highly recommend The Tree of Man, if you have not read anything yet by this great Australian author.

It is full of desolate and poignant poetry, just as the Australian landscape around the Parkers’, with all its changes during a life time. It is also a lot about communication, or lack of, even at the heart of a family and even between husband and wife, or to go one step further, about the challenge of expression of oneself to oneself or to one’s God or deity. Apart from a few family and local dramas, there is not much happening, and that is precisely the point and the beauty of this novel, which focuses on the inner roughness and beauty of the characters, and of their harsh though beautiful surroundings, if you are into raw nature, cows, and trees.

It encompasses the whole life of Stan Parker. This is a thick book, but I enjoyed every line of it. Some co-bloggers have encouraged me to read Patrick White, the only Australian author to have ever won the Nobel Prize of Literature, and The Tree of Man was available at my local library. I enjoy reading at least one novel during Australian Literature month. Published in 1955 This book counts for the following Reading Challenge:

Summary of voss by patrick white