Review by Booklist Review
Booker Prize-winner Keneally (Crimes of the Father, 2017)) has had a decorated career fictionalizing historical material with a documentarian's eye; his latest novel may be his most personal. Protagonist Shelby Apple is a documentary filmmaker whose work has taken him to Vietnam, the Arctic and to the bottom of the ocean, but it is his investigation into the world of an Aboriginal man who lived in Pleistocene Australia, some 42,000 years ago, that most occupies his thoughts. The alternating chapters chart the life of the intriguing Learned Man, called Shade, as a counterpoint to Apple's life trajectory. The interwoven narratives share themes of family, storytelling, duty, mortality, and legacy. One can't help but note, too, the similarities between Apple and the author himself. Apple learns, as did Keneally, that he has esophageal cancer and both men had a brother die from cancer. Most importantly, both are storytellers seemingly reflecting on their life's work, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced . A poignant reminder that the rave at the close of day is one that echoes across the millennia.--Bill Kelly Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The inventive but disappointing 33rd novel from Keneally (Schindler's Ark) centers on the improbable but resonant parallels between an Australian documentary filmmaker and Learned Man, a 42,000-year-old predecessor of the Australian aborigines. After a prolific career, Shelby Apple is in his late 70s when he's diagnosed with esophageal cancer, causing him to reflect on his life. His first documentary was on aboriginal eye disease and, after winning an Academy Award for a film on the Vietnam War, he began working with Peter Jorgenson, a geomorphologist who first discovered the skeleton of Learned Man. As Apple ponders his legacy, he decides to renew an old petition to the Australian government to have Learned Man returned to his original resting place from museum storage. Apple's remembrances transport him to prehistoric Australia, and the narrative becomes interspersed with Learned Man's own exchanges as a clan elder. Learned Man mourns the loss of his son, cherishes his wife, and struggles to understand and perform his duties as a judge and punisher. While the intriguing premise allows Keneally to delve into themes of leaving a legacy and man's place within nature, unfortunately, both characters remain underdeveloped and Learned Man's narrative is delivered in dry prose. This won't go down as one of Keneally's better works. (Dec.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Prolific is an adjective that merely scratches the surface of this author (Crimes of the Father; Schindler's List), here presenting his 33rd novel. Set in Australia, it braids the story of a 40,000-year-old-human skeleton called Learned Man and a documentary filmmaker named Shelby Apple. (Note that the Australian edition of this book is titled Two Old Men Dying.) Apple, recently diagnosed with cancer, becomes obsessed with repatriating Learned Man's bones to their original location. His efforts are intertwined with narratives from the life of Learned Man, a tribal elder named Shade facing his own death. By looping these seemingly disparate narratives across time, Keneally meditates on the unchanged rhythm of human emotion from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epochs. Unfortunately, with the focus squarely on philosophical musings, this novel suffers from a wandering plot and a lack of character development. Keneally's language ranges from richly descriptive to captivating, but the structure of the book ultimately works against its readability. VERDICT Fans of Keneally's work will find some gems here, but they will have to dig for them. [See Prepub Alert, 5/20/19.]--Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A filmmaker and a prehistoric predecessor muse on humanity and mortality.Booker Prize-winning novelist Keneally (Crimes of the Father, 2017, etc.) tells the parallel tales of aging filmmaker Shelby Apple and Learned Man, an Australian mystic of 42,000 years ago. Both men confront serious problems. Apple has cancer, and Learned Man must interpret and enforce the sometimes-deadly justice of the gods. Keneally offers a few vivid scenes, such as the Vietnam battle that catapulted Apple to cinematic fame. Such moments are outweighed by the sometimes head-scratching interludes in which Learned Man describes his people's ways: "My first boy, not my Son Unnameable, was killed by a curse that overtook his mouth when he was still young and swelled his head to a dreadful size. Afterwards, our clan marched forth with spears to face the Parrot clan, and we contested them on the ground of war until a necessary measure of blood had been shed." Big topics are addressed: manhood, love, war, humanity's past and future, the meaning of life, the nature of death. (The book was released in Australia as Two Old Men Dying.) But Apple isn't engaging in his ponderings, and Learned Man's world befuddles as often as it intrigues. The women in both eras are strong but mostly serve as objects of men's affection or lustand those prehistoric sex scenes should maybe have been taken out back and buried. ("After she had healed my plant, demanding now and then that I not succumb yet and give her my sap too early, she eased herself backwards onto the fur and that great passage of hers was mine to go into. How we toiled.")Dedicated readers might excavate nuggets of wisdom, but most will wonder if the expedition was worth it. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
