Sydney: Knopf, 2011 ISBN 9781742753881
I've now completed my journey through the peripatetic life of Edith Campbell Berry, Cold Light being the final part of The Edith Trilogy (Grand Days and Dark Palace being the other two). Cold Light details the final part of Edith's life: she has returned to Australia with her husband Ambrose, who is working for the British High Commission. She is without a position after the dissolution of The League of Nations, but has hopes of working for the Department of External Affairs. Instead she gets offered a lowly job with the commission that is building Canberra, which, in her usual Edith way, she turns into something much bigger than it should be. She has reconnected with her brother who is an organizer for the Communist Party of Australia, and develops a friendship with his partner, Janice. This part of the novel revolves around the push to ban the Communist Party, the Petrov Affair, and the Soviet secret speech where Khrushchev denounced Stalin's Cult of Personality.
Edith falls for Richard, a public servant she had met at a dinner at the Lodge, and leaves Ambrose (who then leaves Australia) to marry him. He has two sons, and Edith has dreams of being a wife and mother, dreams which are soon shattered, as they reject her and the marriage becomes loveless.
In her work life Edith becomes a special advisor to the PM (Menzies) on nuclear policy. In true Edith fashion, she is full of grand ideas, some of which she manages to get up as policy (she also finally manages to get Lake Burley Griffin filled with water!). Then Gough Whitlam appoints her special envoy and she attends an IAEA conference with Richard, with whom she wishes to have a dalliance, although he never follows through with action, despite mutual flirting. It is in Lebanon, on a tour with him after the conference, where she meets her end during a militia ambush.
Cold Light runs through a lot of Australian post-war history, and Edith gets to hob-nob with many people from the cultural and political milieu of the time, whether as partner of Ambrose, or through her brother's communist connections, or through her own socialising. The book also has longueurs where Edith reflects on her life, her affairs, or on the state of world politics, and whether we as a species deserve to live a good life.
Where interludes of this type in the previous two books did have some interest, in Cold Light they seem less interesting or believable (it may be that because I know more about the history of the times that Edith is living through in this book that I feel some of the explication is overly simplistic). Her reflections on her love life now that she's well into middle-age also seem out-of-place; I felt that a woman of her age and experience would know more about herself than Moorhouse lets her know.
Unlike the first two books, where I just read and read, I found myself having to push through some sections of this volume; the writing just didn't grab me as much. I also found that the devices that drove the story along had far less felicity than they should have. Richard's wife dying in a car crash, the speed with which Edith got rid of Ambrose and took up with Richard, the shunting off of both her brother (expelled from the Party and off to Sydney) and her step-sons (off to boarding school) were clunky and more obvious than they needed to be.
Where the first two novels of the trilogy were full of adventure and high hopes, Cold Light sees the diminution of both Edith's hopes and capabilities, but also I think of Moorhouse's ability to keep the writing up to the high standard of the first two books. There is something here, but it is less that what has come before.
That stated, The Edith Trilogy is a fascinating story of our times, and also the creation of an intriguing literary character. It will be interesting to see if these books will stand the test of time - they are certainly what Moorhouse will be remembered for.
Cheers for now, from
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