Gilgamesh

Rural Australia, 1937 as the world awaits a war, struggle and hardship take their toll on the surviving wife and daughters of man who was never meant to farm. As he lay dying, he thinks, "There has to be some point to it...perhaps it worked itself out in the following generations." His daughter Edith is seventeen when the visitors arrive. Her English cousin Leopold and his Armenian friend, Aram. Full of tales beyond her narrow horizon, they relate their travels beyond to an archaeological dig in Iraq. Two years later, Edith travels in search of Aram, traveling to Soviet Armenia when the war begins trapping her son Jim and herself, for the duration.

My single criticism of this fascinating novel is that the protagonist, Edith writes several letters to her dear cousin, they are long flowery and even quite literary letters. Up to this point in the tale she is actually portrayed as a mindless disappointment to her intellectual father, a girl who doesn't go beyond the eighth grade. It's hard to dispel this image as her inner life is revealed only in the third person narrative...The richness of the writing sets an seductive mood as a girl on the cusp of womanhood embarks on an epic adventure. Suspense builds as through the creation of taunt relationships intertwined with world events, geography, a melding of space and time. The environment, rugged and harsh echoes the inner struggles of each character, the relentless pace of time. Moments of clarity spin the plot hither onto interesting avenues, yet unexplored.

"It was then as Jim lay on his bed and heard their voices in the kitchen, that he realized that these sisters, the Clark girls, beneath all their travails, their air of martyrdom, their touchy pride, had never denied themselves anything that they really wanted. They did what they wanted to do , and always had, and they had a good time in their own way.

He thought of the generations of nameless dogs in the family, trained to stay at home and guard the women.

He had to get away."

~Gilgamesh by Joan London