I am not at all sure that Bail isn’t showing that the life work of this so-called philosopher is a failure. “The desire to love is stronger than the desire to be loved.”īail ends his novel with five pages of these exceedingly wise or incredibly foolish lines written by the philosopher. “The process of disturbing the mind is the mind.”

“There is nothing ordinary about anything.” What exactly do philosophers do? They write lines like these: Enigmatic, elusive, ambiguous… These are words to describe Bail’s fiction. With Murray Bail, a subtle and profound writer to the extreme, I feel like I am extending my horizons beyond the limits that they were before. I would much rather read a writer who is too subtle and profound for me rather than one who is not subtle or profound enough. The novels of Murray Bail meet all these requirements for me. I like the fiction that I read to be original, intelligent, and as rich and strange as all the complications that arise in this life. Over the years I have come to appreciate Australian novelist Murray Bail and his atypical stories. This is the setup for the needless-to-say unusual plot of ‘The Pages’ by Murray Bail. There is a certain optimism behind all travel.” Comfortably seated and warm, they were hoping to experience the unexpected, an event or a person, preferably person, to enter and alter their lives. Erica is disciplined and systematic in her work Sophie is sexy and passionate and unruly. Actually Erica will be doing all the work Sophie, a psychoanalyst who is escaping Sydney after another of her disastrous romances fell through, is along for the ride accompanying her friend.

The philosopher did his work in an old shearing shed on the farm, and his papers are still in there to be read and evaluated. Still living on the sheep farm are the philosopher’s brother and sister.

Two women in their 40s – Erica and Sophie – are on a mission from Sydney to a family sheep farm in the interior of Australia in order to appraise the work of a philosopher who lived there and recently died.

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