Gregory DayCredit:act\karen.hardy
Herschell is living a quiet life in provincial'60s Geelong,committed to his day job as an engineer and nourishing his solitude with a reading list heavy on European Modernism. His superiors are dullards or boorish bullies,and he has little time for football,women,or other distractions. He is,by most standards of potential drama,a fizzer.
And yet from this quiet focus and bristling intelligence a mind and a sensibility emerges,gorgeously evoked by Day in prose that effortlessly combines the erudition of two rarely yoked disciplines:engineering and literature. Not only do we engage with a deftly handled series of writers (Julien Gracq and Grazia Deledda aren't names dropped often these days) but Day,to these untrained eyes,harnesses technical language to convincingly lyrical ends.
A Sand Archive,by Gregory Day
The novel's narrative grows more expansive when,researching French sand dunes,Herschell lands smack dab in the middle of Paris circa May'68,finding not only the beach under the paving stones,but love in the form of Mathilde,an artistically minded and politically engaged student.
It might be argued that dropping the bookish introvert into one of the 20th century's most profound moments of political and social upheaval reeks of convenience,but having so carefully laid the tracks of his reading and frustrated ambitions,it instead feels like a natural extension of FB's suppressed passion. Crucially,Day never leans on borrowed sophistication,and we're never allowed to forget this is a suburban Australian at play on the Left Bank – during a sex scene otherwise played entirely straight,Herschell grows momentarily self-conscious of his clothes as he sheds them,"embarrassed by how his singlet spoke of his life in Geelong".
It's this embarrassment – stifled,temporarily overcome,but undeniable – that defines the novel. Soon enough the pained distance between culture viewed aspirationally as a tourist and the demands of home must tell. Love affairs fall away. The frustrations and regrets of life take hold.
There is in Day's portraiture a genuine pain – the manner in which Herschell processes his losses,and his lack of self-pity,reads convincingly as a form of male stoicism rarely (for better or worse) seen these days.