I haven’t posted for a while, being busy with course preparations, corrections, and the writing of my EACLALS conference paper on the representation of Tasmanian spaces in convict novels. (BTW: I promised an update on the GNEL conference in Hanover? Yes, I will be giving my paper there. And yes, try to go, all of you: it is one of the few professional German conferences in English Studies that allows full student participation — in fact invites it.) Which brought me back into close contact with Koch’s writing on Tasmania.
Originally, the convict novel course as planned for last winter term had included Christopher Koch’s novel Out of Ireland, which I had to cut from the syllabus for this summer term. Ideally: to give us more time for Flanagan’s highly complex text Gould’s Book of Fish , of which more to follow. Practically: There was no way we could stuff Koch’s text into a few sessions’ discussion. To those who still bought it, I recommend by all means you read it. It is a thoughtful book, to be read and relished slowly, but insinuates its characters into your mind. You will find yourself returning to them. The recommendation is particularly directed to those of you who attended my Irish literature course in the winter term 10/11 — Guys, I know you will love it!
The narrator figure, an exiled Irish politician-rebel, balances precariously between Romantic twat, self-deluded & all, and modern, thoughtful etc. character. Yes, you will sympathise and understand his motivation and actions and ruminations, but parts of the man remain opaque. Sometimes he rises to the level of infuriating any reader, because he so little seems to know himself or be willing to consider the implications of his actions on others. It is only when you are done with the novel, and find yourself restlessly unhappy that it does not continue, and that it’s closure (probably. presumably? ah well: highly likely…) has failed you, that you will realise how little you, as a reader, know yourself. Though it may take you a few years to return to this novel, it is almost guaranteed it will eventually reel you back in. In that it is very much like a good 19th century novel of realism, say something by Flaubert: you will eventually want to go back to 
it. Sapere aude!
On a happy aside, I have managed to find in that wondrous digital archive, the State Library of Tasmania, a photo of Legrand’s bookshop that features in the novel! With the man himself standing at the door. In Koch’s novel, that slightly odd roof space is where the narrator hides away when he escapes from Van Diemen’s Land.
Meanwhile, I’m onto Rosa Praed’s Outlaw and Lawmaker, and frankly have no idea yet what to make of it. Intriguing woman. Intriguing book. So, stay tuned! 🙂
PS — Finished reading Praed… it’s a bushranger romance that can’t quite decide if it should not prefer some local colour realism, at least psychologically, to the otherwise trite romance sentiment. Spoiler alert: Girl falls in love with (Irish!) secret bushranger and takes 270 pages to realise his true identity — while readers strive for equaniminity of zen proportions. She decides to marry him over the dependable Aussie bloke. Poor fellow’s been dangling at her apron strings for the entire novel and knew what he had coming, even to the point of knowing her to drool for his Irish opponent. He was convenient enough as a screen engagement to protect her from social censure when a (cad!) Victorian touring Lord (moustache!) tries to make her his mistress. It takes more than a diamond star, however, to buy the affections of our Elsie (seriously: that is her name). A black stallion, a bushranger lair, a dramatic rhetorical talent and some mysterious (Catholic!) forefathers in a raven-shat tower in the misty swamps south of Dublin, on the other hand, do the trick. Sadly, the Irish decides to rather dash out his brains than get arrested and jumps off a cliff. In between, there is some nice English footporn, of the repressed Victorian kind, some heaving bossoms, some Mrs Bennet-like mothers and angelic (betrayed!) housewifes. The nobility comes to save the day. And the girl got her man, with more than hints of early colonial feminism, as she makes up his mind for him — he was into the virtuous rejection, originally (“No. I cannot ask a woman to share this horrid past with me.”) but spouts incredibly romantic twaddle to the end. Fascinating romp of a novel, altogether, and quite entertaining to boot. But not part of the convict novel genre, period.
