Homesickness

You know you've entered Murray Bail territory when, in the first chapter of Homesickness, his 13 Australian tourists on a once-in-a-lifetime, round-the-world tour visit a museum in Africa: "Under glass three English toothpaste tubes were at different stages of use: full, half full (thumb-dented tube, white worm protruding), and a fine example of a completely empty one, squeezed dry, corrugated, curled and scratched. Alongside lay a pair of false teeth and arrows pointing back to the toothpaste. The teeth alone were a source of wonder." This Museum of Handicrafts also boasts several British lawnmowers, a French cigarette-rolling machine, a soda-water siphon, and a color TV that, "because there is no television in Africa, the dark continent" is filled with lime-green water, brightly colored fish and a baby crocodile, instead. If his hapless characters are nonplussed by what they find in this unnamed country, readers familiar with Bail's Eucalyptus will instantly recognize the universe in which they tread: this is epic fable at its finest. One would expect a story about a package tour of ill-matched compatriots to be heavy on the personal, but in fact Bail doesn't spend much time developing his characters. They are, for the most part, an unsavory bunch, albeit with a few interesting quirks. (Is Mr. Kaddok, the obsessive photographer, really blind, or just pretending to be?) And aside from their names and their predilections, we never get much insight