In any case, of the White novels I’ve read or sampled, this one, on a stylistic basis, is the least sophisticated, least like it has come from an alien brain. But my appreciation is based on more than that, because all of his novels are beautifully written and I’ve given up or abandoned a few over the last couple of weeks. Patrick White could write like a motherfucker, and that helps of course. So, as I come to write this review I guess I have to try to understand why I could finish this book and why I liked it, especially as it is not perfect, is not without its flaws. I’ve always chosen books meticulously, but when you spend longer weighing up the pros and cons of reading a bunch of books than you would actually spend reading them from cover-to-cover you know you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere, mentally.

I mean, reading in meant to be fun, right? I wasn’t having fun, quite the opposite. In reality, it is a little of all three.īefore I finished this book I was convinced that my reading days might be coming to an end.

On name alone, one anticipates that The Vivisector is either going to be great or fantastically ridiculous, or at least entertainingly bad. It is no surprise, in this regard, that White’s most popular, his most famous works, are Voss and The Vivisector.

No one wants to read a book called Tree of Man, just like no one wants to date a dude called Dicker. If there’s a title more suggestive of pretentious, worthy and dull I’ve yet to encounter it. Riders in the Chariot? Sounds like some made for TV film. I mention this because Patrick White was a man who clearly had problems with naming his novels indeed, his chosen titles seem almost designed to put you off, to make them seem as unappealing as possible. I think it is fair to say, then, that a name can colour how one sees a particular person or thing. According to the man himself people mercilessly took the piss, girls were embarrassed to date him, he couldn’t get a job, etc, and as a result he became so ultra-sensitive about it that he lost all confidence in himself. I once knew a man with the surname Dicker, and it nearly ruined his life. Well, the answer is quite a lot, as it happens.

The Vivisector by Patrick White