 First edition | |
| Author | Thea Astley |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Angus and Robertson |
Publication date | 1972 |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 158pp |
| ISBN | 0207124221 |
| Preceded by | A Boat Load of Home Folk |
| Followed by | A Kindness Cup |
The Acolyte is a Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Thea Astley first published in 1972. [1]
The novel is told in the first person by "the acolyte", Paul Vesper. The novel traces the career of a fictional Australian musician and composer named Jack Holberg. Beginning in obscurity as a piano player in "Grogbusters", a dreary little Southern Queensland town, the blind Holberg eventually gains international recognition as a composer. Vesper, who had met Holberg during his less renowned period, gives up an engineering career to serve the great man—in a sense, to become his eyes.
The central characters and the focus of the story move from humble beginnings in Grogbusters, to a cutting edge harbour development site in North Queensland, then back down south to a creative retreat developed by Holberg in the Gold Coast hinterland.
In the lush coastal hinterland, a complex triadic relationship develops between Vesper, Holberg and Holberg's passive wife Hilda, into which are also drawn others, mainly Hilda's sister Ilsa, Ilsa's husband, her son Jamie, and Holberg's aunt Sadie. Around this core family group - which Vesper is very much a part of - gather numerous society buffs, media critics, and "sycophantic" fans, all fatuously devoted to the unseeing genius of Holberg as he creates his music.
In an interview noted in The Canberra Times, Astley stated that she wrote the book partly in answer to Patrick White's The Vivisector . "Why write only about the great, changing Christ figures?" she asked a Sydney journalist. "Why not write about the other people who share their lives?" [2]
After the novel had been republished in the US in 1988 Kirkus Reviews wasn't overly impressed: "In The Acolyte (1972), a failed engineer and two German sisters devote themselves, body and soul, to the whims of an egotistical blind composer. The author uses great care in dissecting the minutest variations in their orgies of self-sacrifice, but she neglects to show what it is that draws them to destruction. All three are willing doormats from the start. As a result, there is a good deal of truth in Astley's observations but very little interest. Nor are matters helped any by an ostentatiously prickly style." [3]
Writing in an overview of Astley's work in 2010 Megha Trivedi stated: "The novel carries human element of love, the frustration of Paul Vesper and his brutal reaction against the selfishness of Holberg. The Acolyte highlights the never ending personal, spiritual and artistic desires of human beings." [4]
Toni Jordan, writing in The Guardian in 2019, sees The Acolyte as being "about art...genius...fear...self-consciousness and the folly of pomposity", and she celebrates "the sheer vivacity of the language", and aspects of the plot that are "darkly hilarious and cutting". [5]
Lisa Hill, in ANZ Lit Lovers, in 2009 describes the novel as "witty, intelligent", "a treasure", but also "bitter and cynical" and "wickedly funny", with "moments of poignant empathy for...disability". [6]
After its original publication by Angus and Robertson in 1972, [7] the novel was published as follows:
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