Book review: Crow Mellow, by Julian Davies

The title of Crow Mellow tees off a now obscure novel (Crome Yellow) by an English author who borrowed a more elegant title from a more eloquent source for the sole book of his which readers now remember (Aldous Huxley's Brave New World).

Julian Davies is more generous about Huxley's original, in which he discerns both "playful satire and urbane ideas". He could readily find both those qualities in his own work. This tribute, cum spinoff, cum riff, cum admirably original novel, is actually a consistently intelligent, sometimes intriguing tale, set in a mansion in the bush behind Sydney, where a millionaire watches his fortune evaporate while his wife collects tame artists, his daughter teases and torments young men,  and an evidently awful poet confronts choices about life.

So far, so good. Davies' characters do tend, at inordinate length, to show off and bang on. They fret about their plights despite being spoiled by luxury, surfeited at banquets, and sequestered away from the usual burdens of daily life. Davies lifts his eyes from the conversations to include some deliciously well-crafted interludes, on why books and writing still matter, on a family of king parrots (disrupted by yet another human squabble), and – in meticulously close observation – on the house and its setting almost as much as its inhabitants.

I felt honour bound to reread Huxley as a cross-beating, and frankly find Davies sharper, smarter and snappier in his observations as well as his judgments. The two stories are as relentlessly judgmental as they come. Both books might profit from a more generous dose of irony. Davies' would have been enhanced were his characters permitted more curious and alert things to say. When they open their mouths about sex, art or Americans, stale, sour memories of drearily pretentious dinner parties are irresistibly called to mind.

Crow Mellow contains illustrations on every page, drawings which both crowd and complement the text. Some are much superior to others, but, taken as an ensemble, the drawings do lend a sinister undertone to the text. They also transmute the book into a rather beautiful product. Like Shakespeare's, Davies' brave, new world has such people in it, but his book has life, grace and wit as well as a few grotesques.

Mark Thomas is a Canberra reviewer.