Bluebird

I read Malcolm Knox’s Bluebird quite slowly. Reading slowly was partly because it is a big book (485 pages) and – if I am being honest – 2022 seemed to be a tough year and I was often nodding off quickly when I read in the evenings. Let’s say that this is more of a Gates problem than a Knox one. 

The book is set in a beachside suburb called Bluebird Beach. It’s near to Ocean City, but far away enough to be able to see its smoggy horizon. Bluebird is “OC’s last secret, the land that public transport forgot” (p.4). Geographically it doesn’t really work with actual Sydney suburbs, but it feels like Palm Beach, perhaps located across Broken Bay about where Killcare sits. The Bluebird folk are down-to-earth types but every house in the suburb is suddenly worth a bomb, and this means change is in the air, and Gordon (our main guy) isn’t happy. He lives is The Lodge, and he sees it as his "mission" to preserve its integrity:

The community, like the newspaper and the old Bluebird Literary Institute (now an organic food store), like Bluebird High School and the post office and the police station, had been submerged beneath the Ponzi scheme of real estate tumbling down the headlands. The lodge was the last remnant of what Gordon considered civilisation (p.23).

The corrupting aspect of rising property prices is suggested by “Ponzi scheme” – and on a personal level, it means family squabbles, power struggles, and envy. Some rise in the world through no effort of their own -- in this case why not sit back and let the money do the work? The problem with a set of semi-retirees is that they tend to live in the past. Knox expresses this beautifully in terms of an “aesthetic forgiveness” which means that “Old Bluebirders … still saw the youthful beauty, the prime of life, buried under the wrinkles and sun damage and double chins” (p.22).

If Bluebird is the foundation of the novel then the character of Gordon Grimes is its other essential element. Grimes's life is falling down around him. His parents, ex-wife, child, relatives and mates, all hang around Grimes like a man who would be heroic if only that were possible. Not only is Gordon only halfway there, but his mates are drop-outs who have moved back with their parents, who surf like teenagers (or don’t surf, but reserve the right to do so). Gordon’s ex-wife Kelly has strength – though she cheated on Gordon with one of Gordon’s mates. Lou, Gordon’s goddaughter, is a no-nonsense lesbian who everyone likes. In her Guardian review, Zoya Patel, writes: “With its complex and unique female characters, Bluebird avoids wallowing in an exploration of the wronged Aussie bloke, and instead becomes a rumination on human connection.”

Deep in Gordon’s past is the tragedy of his older brother’s death in a childhood blowhole accident, with the truth kept hidden for years but obviously eating away at Gordon. The story here is artfully foreshadowed and then finally revealed in a way that is both moving and poignant.

Elsewhere, Knox allows his satirical eye to reveal social attitudes that are (one hopes) dying but belong to a generation, along with a lingo that is worth capturing on the page before it is redeveloped and gentrified along with the suburbs. Here’s an example, with Kelly having been exposed to casual racism her whole life (just as Gordon has carried his brother’s death – a fact that stays no matter the circumstance). The point of view in this extract is Kelly’s, as she thinks of “the others” and how they view Dog (Gordon’s mate, and Kelly’s temporary affair):

Life in this little reality refuge had to go on, that was the important thing with those people; nothing changed even when – particularly when – everything changed. Their collective genius was for transmuting everything into nothing. As far as they were concerned, Dog was getting up their notices because he was the irritating prick they knew, not because he’d rooted Gordon’s missus, who was a curry-munching up-herself filthy rich daddy’s girl, so what did it matter (p.185).

Yes, Malcolm Knox captures something essential here in this long novel: the beach suburb, the man and his mates and his screwed-up family, something exaggerated but also typical. If you don’t know characters like this in your life, or among your extended acquaintances, you are either living under a rock or you live in a paradise like Bluebird beach, and don’t recognise what’s in front of your nose.