David Malouf has died.

I stopped reading David Malouf simply because I had read everything he had written.

I lie. Not his poetry. It is a great failure of mine, I can only read poetry that I read at high school. Some lack of trust in myself. Some lack in myself. Some lack.

So, correction. I stopped reading David Malouf’s novels because he stopped writing them, and so I read other people. 8 books in 20 or so years. Then after The Conversations at Curlew Creek, some short story collections, instead of the novel I could expect every 3-4 years. Oh well.

Then after a break of more than a decade came Ransom. And I didn’t read it straight away. My eldest daughter will read a series of novels, watch TV series she loves, and she cannot bring herself to read or watch the last one. If she can explain why, she has not articulated it to me. Something about finality, about saying goodbye. Maybe the same for me. Malouf was 75 when Ransom was published, and I assumed (it seems correctly) it was the last of his novels.

I did read it eventually and thoroughly enjoyed it. I can’t write a book review to save my life so I won’t, especially since years have passed. Its not like it changed my life or there was something special waiting for me. I am not working up to some big reveal here. I can say, it was another very good book. Its just that I thought about this today, when I heard that he had died. I looked forward to his next work, and he was a writer whose hardcover books I would buy so I did not have to wait a year for the paperback, even when I did not have a lot of money.

And all my books are in storage now, otherwise I would go back, one by one, and read him again, his descriptions of Australias that have passed by, and worlds I never inhabited and will never see. I won’t do that now, but I hope to soon.