COONARDO. By Katharine Susannah Pritchard. (Cape. 7s. 6d.)—Miss Pritchard's book,
which won the 1928 Best Australian Novel prize, tells a very old story. We have read over and over again of white men succumbing to the charms of native women and of their wives' discovery of these indiscretions. Here we have the same theme with a difference. We are led by some marvellous descriptions of native ceremonies to an understanding of aboriginal sex- consciousness, until we (like Mrs. Bessie, the hero's mother) find in it "something impersonal, universal and of a religious mysticism," and can sympathize with Coonardo, who bore her lover one son, as much as with the white wife, who gave him four daughters. Hugh himself is an insignificant char- acter compared with his wise, brisk mother, his uncom- promising wife, and the entrancing Coonardo, in whom savagery and tenderness, primeval instincts and imposed conventions warred incessantly. This very tragic novel has great worth, not only as a story but as a commentary on two opposed moralities : as either it is worth reading. Miss Pritchard writes very directly and has no mannerisms : she has given us, too, the words of many very lovely native songs, which have not been translated before.
Previous page
