Hollowness

At the end of the 1960s, young David and Helen emigrate to Australia as Ten Pound Poms. They attempt to settle, but Helen is unhappily pregnant and wants a termination. She must return to England to have this done and comes back to Sydney after a long recuperation. Meanwhile, David is finding a liking for Australian life that is excitingly shaking off social conservatism; he makes friends and lives a self-gratifying existence. Helen finds no happiness with either David or Australia and they divorce, whereupon she travels to England for good. David expands his life of a 1970s bachelor, mirroring his adopted country’s coming of age, socially and sexually. This comes to a peremptory halt, however, and David finds himself chasing deliverance of a more traditional kind in the country of his birth and in the German Democratic Republic.

Hollowness refers to both falling out with one’s adopted country and reconciling the senses of siege and fulfilment in the marriage condition.

These are the years 1969 to 1979. In this short novel the author takes the reader on a whirlwind journey alongside the lives of these young people, drawing on his own knowledge of living down under for thirty-five years.