{"id":5715,"date":"2024-01-26T12:08:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T12:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/?p=5715"},"modified":"2024-08-02T13:41:09","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T13:41:09","slug":"robert-drewe-the-bodysurfers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/26\/robert-drewe-the-bodysurfers\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Drewe: The Bodysurfers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Three generations of the Lang family take up many of the stories in Robert Drewe\u2019s The Bodysurfers<\/em> (1983), a work that leans in on the men, their faltering relationships, and the perennial comfort of the Australian coast. It\u2019s a place of sex, surf and sharks; a place where so much happens so as to seem inseparable from life itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the opening story, The Manageress and the Mirage<\/em>, the themes are quickly set as Rex Lang takes his children out for a Christmas meal at a hotel. The narrator, his son, Max, notices the manageress informally calling his father by name. And when she pulls out presents for them, it becomes clear that he\u2019s introducing his new partner to his kids. These kids – Max, Annie and David – are visited again, across their lives in the following stories. Like their father\u2019s situation, their own doomed relationships, coming and going like the tide, form the focus of many. David\u2019s Lang\u2019s lovelife, especially, sees different partners from tale to tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only story set outside Australia (Looking for Malibu<\/em>) sees David in California, where he observes that \u201cwhen Australians run away they always run to the coast. They can\u2019t help it.\u201d, which is certainly thematic of the collection. The beaches that provide these stories are there for the escapes they provide, whether that be for crimes (Shark Logic<\/em>), infidelities (Baby Oil<\/em>), or, as in the title story, a break from domestic living.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the stories mostly come at the Langs from different angles the family is not always the focus. In The Silver Medallist<\/em>, we look back at their mother\u2019s original fiance, an Olympian who, it turns out, had a dark secret that was eventually exposed. After Noumea<\/em> revisits a side character from an earlier story, exploring how he\u2019s coping following the end of another doomed relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drewe\u2019s writing is wonderfully varied, shifting tonally to each story\u2019s needs; at one moment poetic, another matter-of-fact; at home in third person as he is in first. The View from the Sandhills<\/em> may cause some to roll their eyes, with its sexual and outdated language, as it invites us to inhabit an ex-con\u2019s story. Clearly unable to form bonds, and perving from a safe spot on a beach, it\u2019s an increasingly sinister piece that is only tangentially related to the Langs, primarily Anne. But it’s well ventriloquised and embodies the character absolutely.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that story touches on the Langs, there are others that seemingly bear no relation, such as The Last Explorer<\/em>, which turns its gaze inland from the beach. It\u2019s an oddly different piece from all the others, while staying on theme, but its historical account and unnamed character leave a certain vagueness. That said, many of the stories have a certain ambiguity to them, but one can never feel that it is anything other than controlled restraint and that the clues, if not directly referenced, are there, implicit in the text.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the disparate nature of the stories, the range of characters and the various times they inhabit, there\u2019s much to reread here, drawing lines between them. If anything, the beaches that provide Drewe\u2019s stories are the only unchanging things in a world where the characters’ lives are in flux. They are a sunny, sandy asylum for a maddeningly complex world, and it\u2019s no wonder the people retreat there given how much events seem to pour down on them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three generations of the Lang family take up many of the stories in Robert Drewe\u2019s The Bodysurfers (1983), a work that leans in on the men, their faltering relationships, and the perennial comfort of the Australian coast. It\u2019s a place of sex, surf and sharks; a place where so much happens so as to seem Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[313],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drewe-robert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/91pQ5tHrhlL._AC_UF8941000_QL80_-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pon-1ub","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5715"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5775,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5715\/revisions\/5775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}