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MAGAZINE: BOOKS
Last hurrah from
superb storyteller
THE LOVERS. By Morris West. Wil
liam Heinemann Australia. 314pp.
$32.95.
Reviewer: LEONARD WARD.
AFTER writing 27 books,
mostly novels, including
such best-sellers as The Dev
il's Advocate and The Shoes of the
Fisherman, which have enjoyed
' sales of 60 million copies worldwide,
Morris West has decided at the age
of 77 to bow out of his great literary
career with The Lovers.
It is hardly necessary to state that
he is one of Australia's most distin
guished and succcssful writers. His
prose is elegant and sometimes
downright lyrical and his plots al
ways logical and usually a credible
reflection of some facet of the hu
man predicament.
The publishers state that his last
novel is to some extent autobio
graphical but leave it to the reader to
work out what is fact and where
fiction embellishes it:
Certainly the action largely occurs
on a yacht bearing the same name as
West's own, the Salamandra D'oro,
on which he and his family spent
five summers cruising the Mediter
ranean at a period when the family
lived mainly in Italy, England, New
York, Florida and Los Angeles.
They returned to Australia in 1982.
The principal character in The
Lovers, Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh,
is described as an Australian of Irish
descent. The others arc Italian and
American.
Like others of West's novels, the
plot contains strong links with the
Roman Catholic faith and people
close to the Vatican, which West
understands intimately. He was a
member of the Christian Brothers
order as a postulant and spent 10
"years as a teacher in that order's
schools. At age 24 he decided against
taking his final vows.
But to return to his novel. In 1952,
after war service as a junior officer in
the Royal Australian Navy and post
war training in law, the still young
Morris West Help
Morris West
Cavanagh decides to take a working
holiday in Europe and chance leads
him to a job as alternate navigator
and more or less first officer of the
Salamandra D'oro, owned by the
American millionaire Lou Molloy,
heir to one of Irish-America's biggest
fortunes.
On board also are Guilia Famcse
and her father, a nobleman of the
Vatican close to the Pope and last
male in a line of Roman Catholic
dignitaries going back ccnturies.
The rest of the ship's company
comprise an engineer, Giorgios Had
jidakis, very close to the owner, two
deckhands who ashore pursue a liv
ing as ballet dancers, a chef and fi
nally Lconorc Pritchard, on board
officially as a sort of housekeeper
and female companion to Guilia.
Others join the ship's company as
the plot develops; and a complicated
one it is.
Cavanagh duly falls-in love with
Guilia and sleeps with' her.
Molloy, who is betrothed to Gui
lia, stays at arm's length and finds
solace with Lconorc, who also on
occasion, shares Cavanagh's bed. It
all sounds like a proper mess and so
it is.
But all that is only part of the
story.
Molloy is pursuing ccrtain busi
ness interests and also becomes in
volved in some clandestine
operations of the CIA which indi
rectly cause a murderous attack on'
the ship's engineer while he is
ashore, which eventually results in
the engineer's death.
It also causes Molloy's temporary
abscncc from his yacht for some
time, which leaves Cavanagh in
charge.
Guilia finds that she is just as
much in love with Cavanagh as he is
with her but decides to respect her
family's deal with Molloy and go
ahead with the marriage.
Cavanagh ends his duty with the
yacht, returns home, becomes a suc
cessful international lawyer and
makes a satisfactory marriage.
Then, after a lapse of 40 years, he
is summoned to Guilia's side again,
ostensibly on a legal visit, to learn
that Molloy is dead and to make
another surprising discovery.
This all might sound rather melo
dramatic, but West is such a superb
story-teller, such a master of the lan
guage, that the credibility of the talc
is maintained from start to finish.
And this reviewer, at least, hopes
that Morris West will change his
mind and treat us to more of the
same.
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