From a Distant Shore by Bruce Bennett & Anne Pender: book review

From a Distant Shore: Australian Writers in Britain 1820-2012 (2013) commences with Geoffrey Serle’s “unanswerable” question—whether expatriate writers “wrote more or less, better or worse, after digging up their roots.” The authors add, “Sometimes, for a host of reasons, the writer’s art flourishes abroad; sometimes it falters and dies.” In trying to answer the question, the authors present portraits of 45 expatriate Australian writers over 200 years in chronological order. These include writers such as Henry Handel Richardson, Clive James, Barbara Hanrahan, Nikki Gemmel, Randall Stow, and even Barry Humphries as a dramatist.

But what is expatriation? And does the distinction of expatriation dissolve with the globalization of the book trade? The authors considered “postcolonial, diasporic, nationalistic and other theories of expatriation … but chose a more author-centered, eclectic approach.”

Exploring expatriation’s impact on Australian published writers, discussions are based on where they moved to in Britain and why. All the writers presented in the book were born in Australia with the exception of three (Martin Boyd, Patrick White, and M.J. Hyland) who moved to Australia as young children. Hence, the authors are selective, choosing writers whose expatriate years in Britain “made a difference, and in some way, inspired or enabled their literary careers.” The life stories and interpretations of the 45 expatriate writers’ published works depict the Australians as “so-called Englandists, wanderers, Europeanists, Anglophiles, prodigal sons and daughters, self-proclaimed exiles, denizens of London and Australian rowdies.

The authors make comparisons of writers and analyze them using the writers' own words (through their novels, letters and interviews) and in the words of their contemporaries and critics. Hence Bennett and Pender set out to “show the relationship between a writer’s life—his or her circumstances, early experiences, education, aspirations and choices, and his or her writing” thereby “illuminating the experience of expatriation, migration and travel.” Some of the writers returned to Australia and some never looked back.

Most chapters cram in so many authors that left me disappointed, wanting further information. And the insertion of Pamela Travers, the author of Mary Poppins— a book for children—in the chapter on War and Domestic Fronts seems incongruous. Another weakness is the ad hoc endings of each chapter. Only six chapters have some form of conclusion that makes observations about the similarities and differences of writers, or attempts to answer the “unanswerable” question proposed at the beginning of the book. Chapter 2, Early Expatriate Writers in Britain, has two pages on “Conclusions and Questions” while most have one paragraph.  One is not given a heading, while others are headed “Some Observations” or “Conclusion” or “Conclusions.” Some consistency would have added an appealing addition to an otherwise well-sequenced and well-structured book.

The best of the 15 chapters are those that more fully flesh out the lives, works, and critics of the writers, such as chapter 9 on Christina Stead, chapter 12 (Critics and Reformers) on Peter Conrad and Geoffrey Robertson, and chapter 13 on Germaine Greer. These chapters alone make the book a worthy addition to a reader’s library.

While it may appeal more to Australian and/or British readers, it is nevertheless an interesting account of writers across genres (from romance to crime to drama to literary fiction) and whether nationality or a sense of belonging to a country are meaningful to a writer’s productivity and creativity.