by Adrian D’Ambra
Something greatly to be hoped is that the 2018 publication of Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell’s ‘Half the Perfect World’ by Monash University Publishing might lead to the reissue of Charmian Clift’s island memoirs ‘Mermaid Singing’ and ‘Peel Me a Lotus’. Some thirty years ago I bought a copy of ‘Peel Me a Lotus’ along with the Meredith Trilogy by George Johnston, all four volumes published in Australia then by Flamingo/Fontana. I suppose I bought them because I had read the first of the Meredith volumes, ‘My Brother Jack’ fifteen years earlier at school but not only did I not re-read it, neither did I read ‘Clean Straw for Nothing’, ‘A Cartload of Clay’ or ‘Peel Me a Lotus’. ‘Half the Perfect World’ has prompted me to rectify this shortcoming. Whilst Johnston’s coming of age narrative about David Meredith may have appealed to earlier generations of serious readers on the basis of its literary earnestness, having just read ‘Peel Me a Lotus’ for the first time I can tell you that the lightness of touch and deftness of descriptive atmosphere of Clift’s memoir of their first year on Hydra have weathered the decades since the late-1950s very well indeed. Her ability to characterise without caricature sets her apart from both Johnston and Durrell.
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