A Fringe of Leaves

by Patrick White

Book Overview

Paperback edition of a novel by the Australian winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, first published in 1976. It tells of an English woman who is captured by Aborigines after a voyage to Australia ends in shipwreck. In the experiences that follow, she discovers human savagery and her own sensuality. It has some basis in the true story of Eliza Fraser, who was shipwrecked off Queensland in 1836.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670330736
• ISBN13: 9780670330737
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Viking
• Length: 405 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Love! Hate! Survival!

What riper themes for a 'historical' novel? Patrick White's "A Fringe of Leaves" is exactly that, a historical romance set in Australia in the 1830s, when much of the country was as yet unconquered by its English and Irish settlers, a good number of whom were convicts. Fringe was first published in 1976, but in many ways it reads as a late-Victorian novel. There's a tremendous amount of Thomas Hardy about it, in subject matter, in narrative structure, and in its bitter-to-bittersweet outlook on humankind. The central tale of romance, between a strong-bodied young woman and a bookish older man, has echoes of George Eliot's Middlemarch -- intentional, I think -- and the survival tale that emerges as the second half of the novel, after a shipwreck, reminds me inexorably of Joseph Conrad. Then, when the heroine is 'adopted' unwillingly into non-European culture, I can't help thinking of E. M. Forster's "Passage to India". Forster's and White's uneasy attitudes toward erotic encounters are of a kind. But Patrick White was his own man as a writer, and had his own very recognizable narrative voice. He mixed crisply evocative scenic descriptions with almost parenthetical wit and irony. His persistent tone of surly superciliousness toward his own characters,his creatures of imagination, may require a breaking-in period for many readers. I was strongly 'put off' by it when I read "Voss", my first encounter with White. However, in "Fringe of Leaves" the author created a compelling female character, Ellen Roxburgh, of more persuasive reality than almost any other heroine in fiction portrayed by authors of any gender persuasion. Mrs. Roxburgh is the survivor, and the horrors she survives would seem impossible except that they are utterly true to history, very similar to the accounts of the sufferings of the real-life American Captain James Riley, a shipwreck castaway enslaved by Bedouins in the Sahara in the early 1800s. As I've already suggested, this is a novel with two halves -- the first a story of love and guilt among the Anglophone settlers, and the second a grueling narrative of captivity and escape -- but the two halves are jointed together masterfully by a shipwreck scene worthy of Conrad or Melville. And then there's an ending... the most unexpected, puzzling, ironic ending/non-ending one could ask for, the kind of ending that first makes you want to heave the book into the surf but then compels you to acknowledge it as the only thing plausible. This is a "page-turner", whatever other impression of difficult earnestness I may have suggested. It would be possible, for a less compulsively analytic reader, to 'go with the flow' of passions and pangs, and to read "A Fringe of Leaves" as a flaming romance. Whatever sort of reader you are, give it a shot! It's perhaps the best 19th Century novel written in our lifetimes.

The Genius that is Patrick White

Mrs Roxburgh and her husband set sail for England from Austrailia. The Bristol Maid is shipwrecked and she is taken prisoner by cannibilistic aborigines... On one level this is a first rate adventure story of love, betrayal, capture and escape. But such is the power of Patrick White-and as with his other great works-this is also a brilliant exploration of man-the beast-and the nature he is bound by. White appals the reader with the manner in which the aboriginals enslave and treat Ellen Roxburgh,but deftly illustrates that no matter what cultural angle we take or live by,they are all just a veneer over our true savage selves. If the aboriginal customs and rites that guide their lives shock civilized sensibilities,what so about civilization that has enslaved men and women in a brutal penal colony,stringing up the bodies of captured bolters 'as a warning to the rest'?. Yes its covered up with aesthetics and manners,but it is still as savage as any 'primitive' culture. This is a truly great piece of work. White writes in meticulous detail, so vivid that it conjures pictures in the mind that forever will remind you of the story. It is impossible to say what serves as Whites masterpiece as his great novels-'Voss' 'Tree of Man' 'Riders in the Chariot' 'Solid Mandala' and 'A Fringe of Leaves' are all so superbly of a high standard that maybe only his collected works in one volume could be considered as such. A true nobel writer.

Do Not Read About The Plot Until Later: One of White's Better Novels

There is a touch of the chaos in Fringe of Leaves. It is not boring and it is one of White's better novels. It has a good story and I will not reveal the plot beyond what the publisher reveals on the book jacket. I have read three of White's novels: the present work, the Tree of Man, and Voss. The present novel, is more complex than Voss, and unlike Voss here the author manages to breath some life into the characters. It has a good plot that reminds one a bit of Jane Eyre, but with quite a different setting. It is set in England in the middle of the 19th century. It is about a young woman from Cornwall who marries a wealthy gentleman. They go to Australia and are caught in a ship wreck off the coast of Queensland after visiting the husband's brother in Tasmania. White uses stream of consciousness in a mild form which seems a bit novel after reading Voss. But the thing that grabs your attention is his use of structure. He introduces the protagonist, Ellen, by having two ladies describe her for about 20 pages. The two women ride in a horse drawn carriage chatting about Ellen. You, as the reader, realize that White will be creative in what will follow in the story. After that we move the present scene in the story. But Ellen has these flashbacks to fill in the story of her life over most of the first half. Patrick White gained fame as the Australian Nobel prize winner in literature and as a person with a prickly or difficult personality. He was educated at Cambridge but settled and wrote in Australia after World War II. He wrote about a dozen novels and a biography. This is a good novel and it deserves 5 stars. After a dozen pages or so it becomes clear to the reader why White is famous: he has an unusual style and he is a gifted writer. There is no question about his writing ability. We see great writing ability in Voss and that skill is present in The Tree of Man and in the present novel. Overall, I thought it was a good book and an interesting read and an interesting book to read if you are interested in the works of Patrick White.

Timeless Portrait of Humanity and Cross-Culturalism

Read any review of Patrick White?s A Fringe of Leaves and you will expect it to be an exciting tale. One that includes adventures on the sea, a frightening shipwreck, and deaths of important characters; a tale of enslavement by the wild and savage Australian aborigines, sex, and cannibalism; a tale of the heroic rescue of a damsel in distress by an escaped convict. But if you are expecting this adventurous and daring plot, you may turn away disappointed. You may read halfway through the book and not encounter more than one or two of the events mentioned in the reviews. What is it, then, that makes A Fringe a five-star read? Why do many readers across the globe claim it to be one of Patrick White?s most brilliant works? This is not, in fact, merely a story of adventure and excitement. It?s a mission of humanity. Ellen Roxburgh is the image of any individual with conflicting views of life within herself. This is not a story of rescue, but one of survival. It reminds us all of our own personal inner struggles and how much we have been able to overcome. It is a reminder that the loss of innocence in every child is the first step in that child?s becoming an adult. A Fringe is also an anthem of cross-culturalism that sings true today in America, though it was set in 19th century Australia. Living here, we have all acquired or developed a certain social standard unfamiliar to our infant natures. From living among many legions of immigrants, or even from traveling abroad, we know what it is to subscribe to other social standards. A Fringe explores the effects of such an initiation in Ellen Roxburgh?s character. This initiation is exhibited as the cause of her internal conflict of social behaviors. She began as a Cornish farmer?s daughter, and then developed a façade of proper civilized mannerisms when she married her aristocratic husband. She initiated another set of social standards when she was forced to live among the aborigines. White?s moving depiction of this struggle will inspire and comfort the patient reader. Patrick White?s A Fringe of Leaves may not satisfy an impatient adventurer. But it surpasses its acclaim of literary merit in its brilliant demonstration of timeless humanity and cross-cultural issues.

Upon unknown shores cast

Patrick White writes like a castaway from the Victorian era. His novels are long and full of real characters and the society and civilization of which they are a part and from which they come is equally real. Each character possesses a fully developed history, and the story as a whole progress from one point to another. And in the process people are changed by the experience. If that sounds old fashioned to you, well, it is old fashioned but those are values that some readers miss and for those readers these novels. I don't want to make White sound too antiquated though for his themes are very contemporary ,or timeless, as his themes are those that don't go out of style. This is my favorite of his novels. In A Fringe of Leaves(c.1973) White tells a shipwreck story upon the shores of an as yet uncolonised Australia. The characters who survive the shipwreck are then captured by Aborigines and must adapt to a lifestyle quite unlike the one left behind in fair old England. White uses this tale to examine civilization first by showing his characters in it and then by showing his characters as they appear stripped of it.....in only a fringe of leaves. The examination is quite a thorough and engaging one. The novel feels Victorian partly because it is set in that time (or before) but it only retains the best of that periods use of the form. White himself is Australian(and one who has won many awards, Nobel included, and to many he is the best they have so far produced) and so his study of England is tinged with an insight reserved for the ousider or in his case the postcolonial. The shipwreck portion of the book is only about 150 pages or so near the end of a 500 page plus novel. It takes patience to get to the exciting part of the story but once you are there you will want to read that section more than once. In those blindingly intense pages the characters cling to but a few delicate and sacred strands of belief to keep the savage world from totally adopting them. The aftermath portion of the book is equally interesting.