A big, bold and hauntingly beautiful story that captures a defining moment in Australia’s history. Everywhere he looked he saw what Utzon saw. The drama of harbour and horizon, and at night, the star-clotted sky. It held the shape of the possible, of a promise made and waiting to be kept … In 1965 as Danish architect Jørn Utzon’s striking vision for the Sydney Opera House transforms the … House transforms the skyline and unleashes a storm of controversy, the shadow of the Vietnam War and a deadly lottery threaten to tear the country apart.
Journalist Pearl Keogh, exiled to the women’s pages after being photographed at an anti-war protest, is desperate to find her two missing brothers and save them from the draft. Axel Lindquist, a visionary young glass artist from Sweden, is obsessed with creating a unique work that will do justice to Utzon’s towering masterpiece.
In this big, bold and hauntingly beautiful portrait of art and life, Shell captures a world on the brink of seismic change through the eyes of two unforgettable characters caught in the eye of the storm.
And reminds us why taking a side matters.
Praise for Shell
‘Kristina Olsson is such a graceful, wise and perceptive writer. The woman’s massive heart is one big literary taproot feeding all of us answers about the Australian condition’ Trent Dalton, bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe
‘A luminous look at a city at a time of change, a time when the building of the Sydney Opera House was a reach for greatness.’ The New York Times
‘Olsson’s writing is beautiful, captivating, and is enough in itself to recommend this book … Her descriptions are vivid, evocative.’ New York Journal of Books
‘A classic in the making.’ Australian Financial Review
‘A shimmering love letter to Sydney, with the husk of the emerging Opera House its beating heart … Required reading.’ Australian Women’s Weekly
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‘Shell’ is one of those stories whose imagery sank into me while it made me think: about what it is to ‘be Australian’ and about key events in our twentieth century past. At times, the broken sentences and half finished thoughts annoyed me, but they captured a character’s groping, like swimming towards a bright patch of light far away, towards understanding.
The images are beautiful and subtly connected, with glass, water and shells predominating. I found myself wanting to visit the Opera House to see if Axel’s work really was there. The ‘big reveal’ of his designs occurs near the end, linked to protests about the Vietnam War, created by a man from a country (Sweden) which, despite being ‘neutral’ found a way to help free the Germans’ prisoners as WW2 drew to a close. There are numerous parallels – of people and events. As for water: Axel came from a land that was mainly water. The way light transforms in and on glass, his explorations of the Harbour and the beaches – this desperate search to capture the quality of light and water and the relationship between Utzon’s incredible design and the ancient land on which it was being built – were fascinating.
Ollsson also explored attitudes of the times, searching for the reason why Utzon’s brilliant creation was mocked in a version of ‘the cultural cringe’:
‘It wasn’t that they didn’t understand beauty. But there was a sense of being embarrassed by it, that it was an indulgence. The practical was held in such esteem. It made them too polite.’
I love the way Jorn Utzon’s role as master creator is explored:
‘Australians appeared to have no myths of their own, no stories to pass down. He’d read about the myths of indigenous people, the notion of a Dreaming and the intricate stories it comprised. He wondered if Utzon knew these legends, their history in this place. Had he known anything of Aboriginal people when he designed his building? As he sat down and drew shapes that could turn a place sacred? Turn its people poetic: their eyes to a harbour newly revealed by the building, its depths and colours new to them, and surprising. Perhaps that was what the architect was doing here: creating a kind of Dreaming, a shape and structure that would explain these people to themselves. Perhaps the building was just that: a secular bible, a Rosetta stone, a treaty. A story to be handed down. If people would bother to look. If they’d bother to see.’
Which leads into musing about how and why our population clings the coastline:
‘But in this country, he saw, it was a kind of sport to belittle those with vision, to treat art with disdain. He wasn’t sure what benefit it brought, but it was something to do with this flattening out, this shuffle towards sameness, to a life lived on the surface, without any depth. Was that why people clung so hard to the edges of the country, their backs to its beating red heart? Were they afraid to look in, to hear the old stories, to see what was inscribed on their own hearts and land?’
The Vietnam War divided people and got me thinking. When I was teaching, I used to make this point to my students that Olsson makes:
‘They were 18 and 19 then, not old enough to vote. To get a passport, buy a house or a beer. But they could be forced into army fatigues . . . Given a gun to kill boys just like them, boys they didn’t know, had never seen.’
Ollsson touched on attitudes to Sweden’s neutrality in WW2, which served to highlight the complexity of wars on foreign soil. So much to think about. I dreamed vividly the night I finished reading it.
On balance, I’m very glad I read it.
A poignant historical novel that infuses the turmoil of the sixties; the Vietnam War movement, the building of the Sydney Opera House and the lives of two professionals. Pearl, an ambitious reporter and Axel, a professional glass-blower, new too Australia from Sweden who are thrown together by their commonalities and their differences.
It’s a crazy time for them both as they deal with their haunts of the past, their hopes for the future while trying too make sense of it all….. whether together or apart.
Along with the fictitious characters weavable stories, you will be left with more knowledge than you thought possible from this novels historical standpoint of Australia during this particular time period.
It is exquisite in its descriptions of art pertaining to every day occurrences that play out much like poetry.
The characters are likeable and the story interesting, however, I found it to be a tad deflated in spots but it kept my interest none the less.
An effective, enjoyable read.
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