This is an exquisite little novella that begins in beauty on the coast of Queensland and ends (almost) in the mud of Flanders on the other side of the world. Birds, of course, make similar migrations; this is one of the things that fascinates 20-year-old Jim Saddler as he studies birds with borrowed binoculars, noting their species, their habits, their comings and goings. He strikes up a friendship with Ashley Crowther, the young owner of this stretch of Australian farmland, and also with Imogen Harcourt, a middle-aged photographer with a similar passion. But then the 1914 War breaks out, and Jim and Ashley sign up, in different regiments and at different ranks.

There are many books about the Western Front. The ingredients are all much the same: boredom, companionship, carnage. What makes one stand out from another is the quality of the writing, the particular point of view, and whatever aspects of normal life the author chooses to set against the obscenity of war. The last book I read about the trenches, for example, Sebastian Barry's A LONG LONG WAY, was written with a rich Irish poetry, kept its point of view very much at ground level, and set the War against the very different Irish fight for independence back home. Malouf's writing is also poetic, but simpler, and he excels particularly at describing the air above and the land behind the war, as in the following:

"Often, as Jim later discovered, you entered the war through an ordinary looking gap in a hedge. One minute you were in a ploughed field, with snowy troughs between ridges that marked old furrows and peasants off at the edge of it digging turnips or winter greens, and the next you were through the hedge and on duckboards, and although you could look back and still see the farmers at work, or sullenly watching as the soldiers passed over their land and went slowly below ground, there was all the difference in the world between your state and theirs. They were in a field and very nearly at home. You were in the trench system that led to the war."

But it is Malouf's juxtaposition of the battlefield to the Australian nature reserve that is so daring. For there is no possibility of a literal resolution that connects them. Indeed, Malouf seems to avoid following narrative links; Ashley and Jim barely meet again, and the biplane so prominently featured on the cover ultimately serves only to offer Jim a metaphor for his own bird's eye view on life. Yet it is an important metaphor. The two halves of the book portray beauty and destruction with memorable power. But the coherence of the novel as a whole depends upon the final chapter, which returns to Imogen Harcourt watching the birds among the sand dunes. I had to sleep on this and re-read it for it to fully work, but now I see the beauty in her simple understanding of the life that connects both birds and man.

The futility of war and the loss of young lives, the theme more young people should read about before rushing off to quieten their sense of nationalism through signing up for the cause. Thirty years ago David Malouf wrote this astounding description of war and sadly his character's understanding of the world has come true. War is truly a bottomless pit requiring endless blood loss to work its machinery. 'He and his contemporaries had fallen into a dark pocket of time from which there was no escape'. Malouf uses dream-like scenes to soften the death blow striking its victim. 'He had a fearful vision. The war or something like it with a different name would go on growing from here till the whole earth was involved.' 'He realised what an innocent life he had led before....' Nevertheless the reader is left admiring the experience.

I highly recommend "Fly Away Peter" to anyone who either enjoys reading David Malouf's work or to anyone who may be discovering him for the first time. In this book, Malouf's images of the absolute horrors of war are nothing short of amazing. I could almost smell the stench of dead and dying bodies while I read. Battle after battle you find yourself praying for our hero to make it through once more. I have read several of Malouf's works and found this one to be particularly haunting. The characters of Jim Saddler and Ashley Crowther became so well know to me, that in the final pages of the book I found myself in tears. It was so moving I couldn't help myself. Read "Fly Away Peter" and I guarantee you too will be hooked on Malouf. He is not only one of the finest writers in Australia but without a doubt one of the finest writers of our time.

Extraordinary book

Exquisite!

Jim Saddler lives in Queensland, Australia, just outside Brisbane. He is a young, countryman who has not quite found his place in the world. Jim does not know what he wants to do, with who or where. According to his drunken, gruff, unfeeling father Jim is of no consequence, a useless burden. But there is one thing that Jim likes to do and that is watching the native birds that frequent the local swamplands near the ocean. "... lorikeets, rosellas and different families of pigeons - fruit-pigeon, bronze-wings, the occasional topknot or squatter - and high over all stood the birds of prey, the hawks and kestrels": Jim knows them by the tens of hundreds and can name their place of migratory origin and the times of their arrival and departure. The ebb and flow of nature speaks to him and he becomes lost in them for hours at a time. Then by coincidence Jim meets Ashley Crowther, the young new master of the property on which the swamp lies. Ashley to is fascinated by birds but lacks knowledge of the local wildlife. He was born in Australia, but has spent most of his life being educated in England. Seeing Jim's potential immediately Ashley offers Jim a job. Jim, as a kind of amateur naturalist, is to keep records of the arrival, number and behavior of the birds on Ashley's property. The two men become close friends. They share a bond more than employer and employee. Next Jim meets Imogen Harcourt, an aging spinster who supplements her meager funds by selling the nature photographs she takes in the local countryside. Once again like Jim Imogen has a love of birds. She struggles to photograph them at just the right pose so as to capture their essence. Soon Jim and Imogen become an 'odd' pair. But the year is 1914 and soon a rush of excitement goes through the local neighborhood. There is war in Europe. How will these three people, tied by their mutual love of nature, fair in the coming tumult? Most of all how will Jim survive the ugly machinations?

This is a book of contrasts: the delicate cry of birds, and the brutal thud of bombs: the lush fields of the country, and the stinking mud of the war field: the brief moment of friendship first realized, and the almost impersonal, repeated, agonizing loss of comrades-in-arms. This book is a celebration of life, though the author has no delusions that beauty is lasting or even common. It is also an anti-war book, though the author has not written a single word of condemnation or judgment, not one diatribe. The events simply speak for themselves.

Malouf began his career as a poet and this book shows the mark of that experience. In this book words are used carefully and sparingly. The first part of the book is beautiful in its lyric charm. Briefly the author records scenes of life and friendship that move us. Malouf is not maudlin or sickly-sweet, just honest. The second part of the book can be read like one long nightmare, increasingly violent and dehumanizing. Yet here too words are used sparingly. The author does not need to dwell on the ugliness. Once again honest, brief description serves the purpose.

The book centers on Jim and his odyssey from the fields of Queensland to the trenches of Armenitieres, in France. Malouf describes well the metamorphosis of the bright-eyed, country boy into the numbed, weary, brutalized soldier. The characters of Ashley and Imogen are dealt with only briefly. Here we have more static pictures rather than rounded development. The author could have spent just a little more time on these portraits. The reader does not see them quite enough to develop an attachment to them. As a result, for example, Imogen's grief seems understandable enough, but we don't quite feel for her.

Of course all novels take their place in the history of literature, as does this book. Reading it I am reminded of Stephen Crane's _The Red Badge of Courage_: the country lad, the psychological struggles of the soldier, the carnage of war, the beauty of nature even amid the destruction of war, the final flight from the slaughterhouse. Both books are poetic in their style, and both are brief in length. Crane's book has been called "the first modern war novel" and Malouf would find it difficult to escape from its shadow. Malouf does have, however, his own voice and has used his imagination in unique ways: the nature sanctuary, the description of naive Brisbane, the chance meeting with the city girl, the numbered, unbelieving life of the peasants near the front, the squalor of the trenches.

_Fly Away Peter_ is a short read, and indeed could even be described as a novella, but it deals with weighty issues. The reader will find that it works a charm over them and they will not want to put it down. Malouf has won many literary prizes for his various works, and this book took the 1982 Melbourne _Age_ Book of the Year Award.