Books of the Month

'Camouflage' by Murray Bail

I'll confess right away that I'd never even heard of Murray Bail until the shortlist for this year's Miles Franklin Award - Australia's premier literary prize - was announced. Bail is in contention for his novel The Pages. Camouflage though, is a collection of short stories, and while reading a writer's short fiction is sometimes a reliable way of getting a taste of their full length work, sometimes it's not. Sometimes writers use short fiction rather more creatively, to experiment in ways they can't in longer work, and by and large that's the sense I get here.

It doesn't take long to realise that Bail has an eye for surreal oddity. In the collection's opener, 'The Seduction of My Sister', a childish game of frisbeeing old records across the street becomes increasingly bizarre and loaded with meaning when the records run out and other items have to be found. And in 'Life of the Party' a man throws a typical suburban barbecue and invites all his friends - only there's no sign of the host, who watches the party take place beneath him from the seclusion of a gum tree in the garden. Stories like 'Zoellner's Definition', 'Cul de Sac', and 'The Partitions' experiment even further with our expectations from the story form. Some are set in cities, some in the desert, but Bail's mot comfortable territory - perhaps where his taste for surrealism and satire truly find fertile ground - is Australian suburbia.

The final story, 'Camouflage', is a gem. A diffident piano tuner is called up to the Second World War effort, and suprises himself by enjoying the camaraderie of army life, and by not much missing his wife and daughter. His job gets him lumped in with several other 'artists' and despatched to painting the shiny new surfaces of an airbase to camouflage it from the enemy. He finds the work strangely fulfilling, and the peace and time it affords him gives him plenty of opportunity to start questioning things, wondering 'whether he - his life - could have turned out differently'. It's a beautifully weighted piece of writing, especially in its conclusion.

Susan Tranter

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