I didn't know all that much about it, but - in-between all of the awards it picked up for being this hugely wonderful novel - I was slightly aware that it was more or less a tale of the high seas. Now, I don't know about you, but - these days - tales of the high seas do not conjure up an image of Errol Flynn or Burt Lancaster swinging from the mizzen-mast and confronting pirates or insane customs men or what-have-you. No. When you hear tell of some tale of the high seas, you think of some retired Colonel drinking port by a roaring fire, blithering on about his time in the campaigns and how - if it wasn't for the likes of him blither blither young whippersnapper etc etc etc
And, yes, it is - at least in part - a tale of the high seas, told variously by Captain Illiam Kewley (blaggardly smuggler - ah-haahh, Jim-lad), Reverend Geoffrey Wilson (slightly potty vicar in search of the Garden of Eden in Tasmania), Dr Potter (sinister racial theorist), Timothy Renshaw (wayward son of well-to-do parents and - ahem - servant of Onan and Bacchus) and a host of other Manx sailors.
At the same time, it also recounts - in no small detail - the history of the Aboriginal peoples in Tasmania, as seen through the eyes of various natives and white devils, respectively (the thrust of the book being how these two disparate strains of history clang up against each other).
Now, at first, this can all seem a bit much (it was certainly part of the reason I avoided the book for a while). When you reach the end of the first chapter and find the action racing back thirty years to events seemingly unrelated to events previously described, you do scratch your head a wee bit. What is going on, you may ask? This feeling doesn't evaporate straight away either. For quite some time (a couple of hundred pages really), the action pans back 1857 to 1837, from 1837 to 1857 and so on. And you know that - yes - something has to come of this, and - yes - the events of 1837 are set in and around Van Diemen's land where - yes - the inhabitants of 1857 are heading, but it doesn't always help: sometimes you want a clear white flag raising saying BEAR WITH ME - HANG IN THERE, KID!
Still: you DO continue reading because each individual narrator is rather entertaining (albeit in some quite radically different ways). As a reader, you tend to with-hold judgement, allowing the thing to unfold, trying to work out precisely what picture this rather elaborate canvass is going to produce.
I'll tell you: it is worthwhile. "English Passengers" combines vaulting ambition and old fashioned entertainment in a way I have not chanced across for quite some time - in fact, the last book I read of this calibre was probably Charles Palliser's "The Quincunx" (which is high praise indeed, believe you me). Funnily enough, similar caveats apply to both books: there is a sturdy Englishness here, and an almost T Coraghessan Boyle-ish love of capers and japes (particularly Boyle's "Water Music"). The old fashioned entertainment is - by about page three hundred - the thing that propels you through the adventure, but by the climax (and what a climax) it is the vaulting ambition (the fact that resolution can be achieved with such a cast of characters, the thrill of such villainy finding its grisly ends, all that) that stays with you.
The novel has a large cast of characters and is told from the points of view of many of them. The multiple viewpoints tell two converging stories; one being a comic opera excursion from Britain to Tasmania and the other being the tragic story of the genocide of Tasmanian natives. By providing the converging stories from a plethora of viewpoints Kneale is able to tell a story that is hilarious on one page, tragic on the next and touching on the next.
The English passengers of the title are a cleric with a selectively literal interpretation of the Bible, a physician with racial theories that would be comical if they had not been acted out in the 20th century and a ne'er do well son of a wealthy family. To make their passage to Tasmania they secure the ship of Manx smugglers. The Manxmen are a delightful bunch of largely incompetent and most harmless rogues. The story of their trip to Tasmania is often hilarious.
The other story is one of genocide against the aboriginal inhabitants of Tasmania. Although Kneale switches back and forth, the first Tasmanian episodes begin some 30 years before the English episodes. Kneale shows the genocide as being equal parts planned murder and destruction, misunderstanding and surprisingly good intentions. Like the English episodes they make fascinating reading. Unlike the English episodes the Tasmanian setting is not humourous. Perhaps Kneale juxtaposed the two story lines to provide the humour that is a welcome relief from the genocide.
The two stories do converge with great foreboding leading to a fair amount of action and a thrilling climax at sea, not bad for a novel so highly praised as literature. English Passengers works on a number of levels and is very readable. The only question that I can ask, and this is no reflection on English Passengers, is if this novel is worthy of a Booker nomination, why were the sea stories of Patrick O'Brian ignored for so many years?
