Matthew Kneale: English Passengers

By PENELOPE BIEDER*

A breathtaking ride, this epic novel. The Whitbread Prize-winner of last year, sweeps around the world at the height of the British Empire, starting out from the Isle of Man in 1857 and fetching up in Tasmania years earlier.

English novelist Matthew Kneale has succeeded, with his scrupulous, thorough research, in bringing many disparate voices to vivid life.

It soon becomes apparent that different views lead to completely different accounts of historic events. And all the major events are based on fact, shameful as they may be.

With his third novel Kneale is intent on showing Britain today is living in the shadow of its colonial past.

English Passengers is the riotous, action-packed story of two journeys - the first is begun by a group of Manxmen aboard a refurbished clipper ship, the misnamed Sincerity, loaded with contraband cleverly hidden in a double hull. A series of adventures and disasters later they find themselves chartered to a puritanical vicar leading a "scientific" expedition to Tasmania.

The Rev Geoffrey Wilson, a figure of merciless fun, is convinced that the original Garden of Eden lies in a remote corner of Tasmania. His hypothesis, he hopes, will also support his obsessive "Theory of Divine Refrigeration - A Proof Against the Atheisms of Geology," the notion that the planet is only 6000 years old (it cooled down suddenly) and that Darwin's ideas are bunkum.

Dr Thomas Potter is a nasty, misguided bigot engaged on a biological study of the races.

Just as we settle down to enjoy what appears to be a fine, farcical romp, we meet Peevay, the young son of a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman who was brutally raped by a white man. His tragic journey, recounted first-person in pidgin English, mirrors the appalling plight of the Aborigines, and especially the Tasmanian people, at the hands of the settlers. "Other fellows might lose their way after that ruination, never to find it after, but not me. I did endure. Then again, enduring always was my special skill."

To have combined hilarious action-adventure with a strong, sometimes angry, moral message, to stir in comedy with tragedy, to show extreme stupidity next to silent dignity, takes a great deal of skill. Kneale has written an important historical novel that is uplifting, edifying and satisfying.

Penguin

$24.95

* Penelope Bieder is a freelance writer.