‘I suspect that what happens with Michael, with his dream of the perfect ball or why he’s so obsessed with it, is that for many people this is the only way that a sense of the sublime actually enters ordinary living. I loathe golf, but it may be someone teeing off on the golf course and feeling the perfect impact, or it may be something else, but the ordinary things can sometimes bring some sense of the sublime into life … In lots of ways I’m writing about cricket but I’m also writing about writing, and what you’ve got in Michael, to an extent, is the artistic temperament, the loner, the one who goes by himself and doesn’t troop off in a gang…
‘The idea was to write a book that is about speed on different thematic levels. In many ways The Art of the Engine Driver is about speed too, and The Gift of Speed is just thematically the extension of that. I wanted to write a book about people obsessed with speed, living in a world of speed, but to write it in the present tense, and to portray this experience almost in slow motion, so that the people who are living these lives, caught up in almost a constant and frantic state of becoming, might miss the “moments” of their lives, but the book itself doesn’t. And neither, through the book, does the reader.
‘what you’ve got in Michael, to an extent, is the artistic temperament, the loner, the one who goes by himself’
‘Speed operates in lots of different ways in the book but one is actually the suburb itself, and it’s a phase of history [when] the country seemed to go into fast-forward from about 1946 onwards, and these suburbs just bloomed and sprung up.’
Have You Read…?
The Time We Have Taken
One summer morning in 1970, Peter van Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless shop, pronounces his Melbourne suburb one hundred years old.
That same morning, Rita is awakened by a dream of her husband’s snores, yet it is years since Vic moved north. Their son, Michael, has left for the city, and is entering the awkward terrain of first love.
As the suburb prepares to celebrate progress, Michael’s friend Mulligan is commissioned to paint a mural of the area’s history. But what vision of the past will his painting reveal?
Meanwhile, Rita’s sometime friend Mrs Webster confronts the mystery of her husband’s death. And Michael discovers that innocence can only be sustained for so long.
The Time We Have Taken is both a meditation on the rhythms of suburban life and a luminous exploration of public and private reckoning during a time of radical change.
The Critical Eye
‘PART OF CARROLL’S SKILL is the ability to create a strong sense of the presence of characters who, emotionally at least, are someplace else. There are times in this book where I paused to admire the subtle craft of what Carroll is doing. Every piece of this book is sanded and planed and perfectly joined. But there is no mistaking the knots in the raw material with which he is working,’ wrote Michael McGirr in his review of The Gift of Speed in Melbourne’s The Age. ‘[This] is a meditative book in which words such as Somme and Larwood “are their own story. Complete miniatures”. Rarely has such an arid place as suburban Melbourne in the heat of 1961 evoked such graceful and tender prose.’
‘Carroll’s a rare beast in that he writes with great affection and understanding about life in the suburbs’
‘It’s a quiet, intelligent and unobtrusive little book, one that doesn’t beg for attention, but that lingers in memory,’ said Good Reading magazine, while Kabita Dharam, a book buyer at Dymocks booksellers, wrote in the Australian Bookseller and Publisher that ‘Carroll’s gift for evocative storytelling reaches new depths here and the result had me captivated.’
In his Australian literature blog Matilda, Perry Middlemiss wrote that ‘by extending the characters’ inner worlds out into the wider physical landscape the novel is told in a languid prose that flows with the speed of contemplation’, while The Age’s literary editor Jason Steger, looking back over his list of the year’s twenty best books, wrote that, ‘Carroll’s a rare beast in that he writes with great affection and understanding about life in the suburbs … A lovely rites of passage novel that is oh so carefully crafted and captures the evanescence of the time to perfection. Don’t worry that it’s a sequel; it works beautifully as a stand alone.’
In his review in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Spectrum section, writer Paul Maley said, ‘Carroll evokes this monochrome Australia with an odd blend of affection and hostility. On the one hand, the care with which he conjures the place is suggestive of someone fondly recalling his childhood. On another level, though, by dismantling the myths of simplicity and tranquility that have come to be associated with this era, Carroll turns The Gift of Speed into an act of quiet subversion.’ He concluded, ‘Carroll’s hold on the story is firm and his use of detail is precise. This period of Australia’s history – eulogised by some, derided by others and largely ignored by our artists – is Carroll’s home turf and he knows it well. If, as they say, the past is another country, then Carroll is the ideal guide.’
‘a thoughtful and sensitive examination of the life of ordinary people trying to live worthwhile lives’
Finally, the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2005 Judging Panel said in their formal comments, ‘Carroll successfully uses the different voices of his memorable characters to examine moments in their memory as he takes their story forward. A boy finds his first love, a wife considers leaving her husband, a husband dreams of a different life, a mother dies, neighbours’ lives are watched. As the story unfolds it becomes a thoughtful and sensitive examination of the life of ordinary people trying to live worthwhile lives.’
Read on
Find Out More
ON THE WEB:
www.abc.net.au/calypso/history
A web version of the ABC–TV show Calypso Summer, about the 1960–62 West Indies tour.
www.caribbeancricket.com
‘The independent voice of West Indies cricket’
www.334notout.com/bodyline
The most comprehensive site dedicated to the Bodyline tour and Ashes history.
www.hotkey.net.au/~jwilliams4/homes
A list of Australian ‘Girls’ Homes’.
READ:
The novels of Henry James, who said, on what he thought was his deathbed, ‘So this is it at last, the distinguished thing!’
Imagining the Fifties: Hope and Its Discontents in Menzies’ Australia by John Murphy, UNSW Press, 2000
The annual Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack, and other Wisden cricketing publications
Endless Summer:140 Years of Australian Cricket in Wisden by Gideon Haigh, Hardie Grant, 2002
WATCH:
Bodyline: It’s Just Not Cricket The 1984 mini-series starring Gary Sweet as Don Bradman and Hugo Weaving as Douglas Jardine.
VISIT:
The MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground)
Yarra Park, Melbourne
Tours: phone (03) 9657 8864
The website www.mcg.org.au includes a seating map, tour details and history.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the following for their help during the writing of this novel:
The Australia Council for a New Work Grant (Established Writers) in 2002 and a six-month residency at the Australia Council’s Keesing Studio, Paris, in 2003.
Warwick Franks, former editor of Wisden, Australia, for reading the manuscript and for his advice.
Shona Martyn, Linda Funnell, Rod Morrison and Vanessa Radnidge at HarperCollins, and my agent Sonia Land, for their support and enthusiasm.
Finally, my special thanks to Fiona Capp for her constant help, suggestions and advice during the writing of the book. And to Leo — the lion-hearted boy.
About the Author
Steven Carroll was born in Melbourne and grew up in Glenroy. He went to La Trobe University and taught English in high schools before playing in bands in the 1970s. After leaving the music scene he began writing as a playwright and became the theatre critic for the Sunday Age. After lecturing at RMIT, Steven now writ
es full time and lives in Brunswick, Victoria.
His novels The Art of the Engine Driver and The Gift of Speed were both shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. The Art of the Engine Driver was also shortlisted for France’s Prix Femina. In 2008 The Time We Have Taken won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, South-East Asia and South Pacific region, as well as the 2008 Miles Franklin Award, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize.
Praise
Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2005 Highly Commended for the Fellowship of Australian Writers National Literary Awards, 2005
‘Exquisite … There are times in this book where I paused to admire the subtle craft of what Carroll is doing. Every piece of this book is sanded and planed and perfectly joined… Rarely has such an arid place as suburban Melbourne in the heat of 1961 evoked such graceful and tender prose’
Michael McGirr, The Age
‘It is the tender awareness he has of human frailty which lifts the spirit and implores us to simply think better of others and ourselves … Carroll writes like a bird freed from a cage. Feeling the pulse of the words with each sentence, the novel has a great current of melancholia coursing through it…’
Christopher Bantick, West Australian
‘A novel of tender and harrowing melancholy’
Le Nouvel Observateur
‘Carroll’s gift for evocative storytelling … had me captivated’
Australian Bookseller & Publisher
‘What makes Steven Carroll’s novels extraordinary is the metaphysical depth that he gives to his story’
Télérama
‘Carroll’s writing is astonishingly assured’
James Bradley, Australian Book Review
‘by extending the characters’ inner worlds out into the wider physical landscape the novel is told in a languid prose that flows with the speed of contemplation’
Perry Middlemiss, Matilda (online)
‘Carroll’s a rare beast in that he writes with great affection and understanding about life in the suburbs … A lovely rites of passage novel that is oh so carefully crafted and captures the evanescence of time to perfection. Don’t worry that it’s a sequel; it works beautifully as a stand alone’
Jason Steger, The Age
‘If, as they say, the past is another country, then Carroll is the ideal guide’
Paul Maley, Sydney Morning Herald
‘an achievement of subtle force, a fictional performance that stands as one of the most uncommon and quietly arresting in Australia this year’
Peter Pierce, Canberra Times
‘A must-read’
Australian Publisher & Bookseller
‘Steven Carroll evokes adulthood with the eye of a child, curious and greedy for the future, whatever promises life may have broken’
Le Figaro
Other Books by Steven Carroll:
Remember Me, Jimmy James
Momoko
The Love Song of Lucy McBride
The Art of the Engine Driver
The Time We Have Taken
Copyright
This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth
Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding
and advisory body.
Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia
First published in Australia in 2004
This edition published in 2012
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
www.harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Steven Carroll 2004
The right of Steven Carroll to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Carroll, Steven, 1949–
The gift of speed / Steven Carroll.
ISBN: 978 0 7322 8899 0 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978 1 7430 9969 8 (epub)
Glenroy novels
A823.3
Cover design by Matt Stanton
The Gift of Speed Page 22
