![]() ![]() For someone so young his confidence is scary, believing creatively he is way away of other pupils at school. An early indication of what lies ahead for him. ![]() He doesn't get along with his siblings, and withdraws into his own world by scribbling on the walls. Hurtle feels a confused and endless discord between the physical and metaphysical world, and as a child he is convinced that only his thoughts are real. Hurtle is complex, and it's easy to simply despise him as an adult, but his redemption comes with the recognition that, perhaps, for his entire life he has been truly misunderstood. ![]() This is novel of great dense complexity and deserves to be approached in a way that sees the reader becomes the vivisectionist. The novel looks at his life from childhood to old age. That character is Hurtle Duffield, the vivisector by nature, the painter by profession. Although as the book progresses, you start to see him in a different light. At over 600 pages, The Vivisector was a book to relish over weeks rather than days, and for as much as I thought this novel was superb, it did contain one of the most unlikeable central characters I have come across recently. He's a worthy recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature for sure, and it's certainly one of great novels about painters. It will also likely be the best Australian novel I ever get to read. This was my third Patrick White book, and easily my favourite. ![]()
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