The body in the clouds A novel

Review by New York Times Review

the Australian writer Ashley Hay's second novel, "The Railwayman's Wife," was a contender for her country's premier literary prize, the Miles Franklin award. Which may explain why her exquisite first novel, "The Body in the Clouds," is finally being published in the United States. At its center are three men, seen in three different eras of the history of Sydney, whose lives are joined and changed by witnessing the same miracle: a man falling from the clouds into the sparkling harbor yet surviving, "marvelously alive." Dawes is an 18th-century astronomer, fresh off the first ships to settle Sydney, when he hears something "almost thunderous" hit the water. In 1930, Ted is a teenager, marveling at the partly constructed Sydney Harbour Bridge, when he sees the event he's dreamed: "Everything fluttered down to silence, Ted felt the dog's hackles stiffen under his hand, felt his own frame freeze to tautness. Someone was falling; someone was falling off the bridge." Dan is an Australian banker living a half-life in contemporary London when, in a nightmare, he imagines himself "falling suddenly, falling down through the air towards the water, a man's voice yelling from below, 'Get yourself straight, get yourself straight, lad.' " What if, Hay wonders, "something singular, unexpected, happened in some particularly malleable place, maybe it couldn't help but leave a trace - or alert you to its coming." This magic realist device forms the core of a rich, meditative novel that explores the connectivity of people living in the same geographical space across the distance of time. Through a series of satisfying, recurrent metaphors - repetitions of images, phrases, objects and dreams - Hay weaves her characters' stories closer, offering an allegory for the commonality of human experience. Her deft touch means that these connections are never forced; rather, they give the book the feel of memory, of a half-waking dream. Foremost in these metaphors for interconnectivity is the bridge itself: a sketched possibility for Dawes, an exhilarating construction job for Ted and a beautiful structure dominating Sydney's skyline and Dan's homesick dreams. The bridge is, in essence, a major character - as it is for any "Sydneysider" - and Hay celebrates the city's grand connective tissue, the sense of continuity through history the bridge represents. Crucially, it prompts Hay's meditations on narrative perspective, on witnessing time and space in different ways. Dramatized in the man's fall through the centuries - and more broadly through her characters' shared interest in comets, flight and stars - the conceit of viewing from above is used to represent the authorial omniscience that lets her look down through time and find the uniting essence of a place. That artistic intention is spoken aloud toward the end of the novel: "I was trying to work out how we must really look, smeared across time and space .... What traces we must leave"; "You're looking for overlaps, coincidences, aren't you, love? Bits of time between now and then that are the same?... Just keep going down through the layers and you'll find intersections." Hay finds those intersections in her engagement with intricate metaphors, aligned so neatly through three narratives that they combine to give the novel shape and structure, to generate resonant climaxes as each character finds a sense of connection, self and home in the patch of land around the bridge. These grander literary concepts are conveyed in Hay's elegant prose, which draws warm and textured portraits as it celebrates the web of human stories woven around this harbor - from the first aboriginal inhabitants through the early British settlers and on into the tumult of modern urban life. Within that sprawl, Hay discovers beauty. JAMES MCNAMARA reviews for The Washington Post, The Spectator, The Australian Book Review and other publications.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 10, 2017]

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Review by Booklist Review

At first glance, William, Ted, and Dan couldn't be much more different from one another. William Dawes is a British astronomer, sent to Australia in the 1700s to survey a new continent full of mystery, danger, and discovery. Ted Parker is a hearty young bridge worker, overjoyed to have reliable work in the lean times of the 1930s. Dan Kopak is an expatriate banker, hoping that a trip back to his hometown will relieve some of his modern-day wanderlust. The men's stories wend and wind around the uncharted wilderness and bustling modern metropolis of Sydney, dipping into tragedies and soaring above dreams, connecting each of them to something bigger than themselves. Author Hay returns with her second novel after the runaway success of The Railwayman's Wife (2016), her talent in blending historical detail with thought-provoking fiction on full display. Fans of Alex Rosenberg's historical fiction and Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See (2014) will enjoy Hay's intertwined stories, driving pace, poetic prose, and buoyant message. Exploring unbreakable connections across time and space, this is a sweeping, introspective, and transformative novel.--Turza, Stephanie Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Library Journal Review

The themes of discovery, dreams, and destiny are represented in three story lines in this sophomore effort from Hay (after The Railwayman's Wife). An astronomer in the 1700s, a bridge worker in the 1930s, and a drifter traveling from England back to Australia all witnessed a man falling from the sky and surviving. Each person is awestruck by progress and exploration, by humanity's steady striving to reach new heights. This prominent motif is symbolized as the characters, all of whom do a lot of internal contemplation, ascend Ferris wheels, bridges, and planes. Hay's writing is profusely poetical and lavishly descriptive, and her pace floats along leisurely. Verdict Stylistically similar to Annie Dillard and Marilynne Robinson, Hay weaves three gossamer plot threads into a delicately airy, translucent whole in which the ideas outweigh story and character development. All the better for transcending the human state and turning a gaze up toward the clouds.-Sonia Reppe, Stickney-Forest View P.L., IL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

In this intriguing second novel, three men from different centuries spend portions of their lives near a piece of land overlooking Sydney Harbor.William Dawes, an English astronomer in the 1780s, sails to Australia to document the stars and study the new species of flora and fauna. Ted Parker, a bridge worker in the 1930s, witnesses the miraculous rescue of a man who falls off a bridge into Sydney Harbor. In the present day, banker Dan Kopek flies from London back to his childhood home in Sydney as the man he calls Gramps nears death. Despite living in different times, there is an indefinable, curious connection among the three men. There are rich characters and relationships in each man's story; there are experiences of love and loss, of desires fulfilled...or not. Throughout, there's a slippery feeling that time and place are not fixed in linear fashion but rather stacked from the top downfuture on top of present on top of pastand the men can see down to the past and up to the future through tiny gaps in the clouds. William, Ted, and Dan are left to wonder at the sense that they are just missing something out of the corners of their eyes. Hay (The Railwayman's Wife, 2016, etc.) meanders a bit, pulling readers along with the promise that there will be a connection made. And there is. This skillfully written tale weaves back and forth between characters, revealing a hint of the connection of humanity through the ages. A finely woven tapestry of poetic language and subtle symbols, intertwined dreams, hopes, and visions, and a sense of seeing through cracksperhaps to an eternity where time is no more and all is known. Thought-provoking. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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The Body in the Clouds Into the Blue FROM ABOVE, from some angles, it looked like a dance. There were men, machines, and great lengths of steel, and they moved in together, taking hold of each other and fanning out in a particular series of steps and gestures. The painters swept their grey brushes across red surfaces. The cookers tossed the bright sparks of hot rivets across the air in underarm arcs. The boilermakers bent to the force of their air guns, rivets pounding into holes, and sprang back with the release of each one. The riggers stepped wide across the structure's frame, trailing a web of fixtures and sure points behind them. From above, from some angles, it looked like a waltz, and a man might count sometimes in his head to keep his mind on the width of the steel cord on which he stood, on the kick of the air gun on which he leaned, on the strength of the join created by each hot point of metal. To keep his mind off how far he stood above the earth's surface. One, two, three; one, two, three--there was a rhythm to it, and a grace. They were dancing a bridge into being, counting it out across the air. Halfway through a day; brace, two, three; punch, two, three; ease, two, three; bend, two, three; and it was coming up to midday. It was one way to keep your concentration. Here was the rivet, into the hole, a mate holding it in position, the gun ready, the rivet fixed, the job marked off. And again. Brace, punch, ease, bend--the triple beat beneath each action tapped itself out through your feet into the steel sometimes, and other times it faded under the percussive noise of the rest of the site. Perhaps that was all that happened; perhaps there was a great surge of staccato from another part of the bridge and he lost his place in the rhythm. Lost his beat, lost his time. Because although he bent easily, certain of what he was doing, when he went to straighten up, his feet were no longer where they should have been, his back was no longer against the cable of rope the riggers had strung into place. When he straightened up, he was in the air, the sky above him, heavy with steel clouds, the water below, an inky blue. He was falling towards the harbor--one, two, three. And it was the strangest thing. Time seemed to stutter, the curl of his somersault stretched into elegance, and then the short sharp line of his plunge cut into the water. The space too, between the sky and the small push and pull of the waves: you could almost hear its emptiness ringing, vast and elastic. On the piece of land he liked best, the land near the bridge's southeastern footprint, Ted Parker looked up from patting the foreman's dog and saw--so fast, it was extraordinary--a man turn half a somersault and drop down, down, down into the blue. The surprise of witnessing it, of turning at just the right time, of catching it, and then his head jarred back, following the water's splash almost up to the point where the fall had begun. All around, men were diving in--from the northern side, from the barge where Ted should have been working, from the southern side where he stood. In they went, and down, and here was the fallen man, coming up between their splashing and diving. The top of his head broke through the water and the miracle of it: he was alive. Along the site, men had stopped and turned, staring and waiting. On the water, people bunched at the bow rails of ferries and boats; a flutter of white caught Ted's eye and was a woman's white-gloved hands coming up to her mouth, dropping down to clutch the rail, coming up to her mouth again. He could almost hear her gasp. And it seemed that he could see clear across the neck of the harbor too, and into the fellow's eyes--so blue; Ted was sure he could see them--blue and clear and wide, as if they'd seen a different world of time and place. He thought: What is this? He thought: What is happening here? And he felt his chest tighten in a strange knot of exhilaration, and wonder, and something oddly calm--like satisfaction, like familiarity. At his knee, he felt the butt of a furry head as the dog he'd been patting pushed hard against him. "You're all right, Jacko," he said, turning the softness of its ears between his fingers. "Just a bit of a slip somewhere." Excerpted from The Body in the Clouds: A Novel by Ashley Hay All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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