Gregory Day wants us to listen. Not to the bells of civilisation – the colonial pealing that keeps our trousers up, shielding us from our true beastly selves – but to the cacophonous medley of the land itself. The novelist, poet and essayist, whose accolades include the Patrick White Literary award and a Miles Franklin shortlisting, has a long history writing about the symbiotic relationships between place, nature and language. The Bell of the World is the crescendo of these preoccupations.
Set in the early 20th century in post-federation, colonial Australia, the novel follows Sarah Hutchinson, a young woman travelling to live with her uncle Ferny on his property in Ngangahook (a fictional town set among bush country south of Geelong). From a wealthy settler family, Sarah lives an unsettled existence after her parents’ acrimonious divorce, a forced exile to an English boarding school, and a brief excursion in Rome. She is adrift in the world, uncovering “new, almost astonishing levels of emptiness under the desolate appearance of things”.
