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the complete review - poetry

The Boys who Stole the Funeral

by
Les Murray

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

A- : a strong, varied novel sequence

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "In its tendency to find the combination of its tale in a moment of visionary afflatus rather than in dramatic action, Boys is representative of the trepidation most poets have when confronting the rival aesthetic of the novel. The trade off, however, is considerable, for a poet's gifts can heighten the otherwise humdrum parts of the story." - Thomas M. Disch, Parnassus

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       A novel sequence, Les Murray's The Boys who Stole the Funeral is a story told in the form of 140 sonnets. Varying the form of the sonnets with regard to metre and rhyme Murray has created an impressive long poem, very different from his later Fredy Neptune (see our review).
       It begins as the story of Kevin Stace Forbutt and Cameron Reeby who kidnap the body of their friend Clarence Dunn in order to give him a proper burial in the outback where he came from. Their mission is a success of sorts, though the consequences are greater than they expected, and the reactions to their undertaking are also varied. The police also finally find the two, leading to a tragic showdown.
       Murray uses the sonnet form to good effect: it is a superior craftsman who is at work here. (Against this Vikram Seth's novel in sonnets, The Golden Gate, for example, seems laughably amateurish.) There is also a message behind the poem, as it veers into the visionary and moral -- which might not appeal to all.
       Well worth reading, it is a powerful story, powerfully related, by a man in complete control of the language. Recommended.

       Petty complaint du jour: in our Farrar Straus Giroux edition (1991) sonnet 11 includes the line: "it was after the ulrike meinhoff memorial lecture". It should, of course, be ulrike meinhof -- one "f", not two. Maybe as a terrorist Ulrike doesn't deserve much respect, but surely readers of this work do.
       So we wonder once again: does anybody edit these books ? Are there still any editors or copy editors or proofreaders left in the publishing industry ? Does no one give a damn about this sort of thing any longer ?

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Links:

• The complete review's Les Murray page
• Les Murray site -- information, links, and poems
• Les Murray page, with brief biography, and bibliography

• The Biplane Houses
• Conscious and Verbal
• Fredy Neptune
• Killing the Black Dog
• Learning Human
• Poems the Size of Photographs
• The Quality of Sprawl
• Taller when Prone
• Translations from the Natural World

• See Index of Poetry at the complete review
• See Index of Australian literature at the complete review

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About the Author:

       Australian poet Les Murray was born in 1938. He has written numerous poetry collections, as well as two novels in verse.

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