Fly Away Peter
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Fly Away Peter is a 1982 novella by Australian author David Malouf. One edition has a cover illustration by Mike Hollands.
[edit] Plot summary
Fly Away Peter is a war novel set mainly on the Queensland Gold Coast in 1914. Three people: Jim Saddler, a simple country boy, Ashley Crowther, a wealthy property owner recently returned from England, and Imogen Harcourt, a British wildlife photographer, are brought together by their love for birds in this world of sandpipers, ibises and kingfishers. Life there is peaceful, and lived from moment to moment.
Jim, a gentle and softly-spoken youth who has a natural love and respect for the native birds, finds his life becoming stressful as the overwhelming pressure to enlist in WWI. The novel takes a sudden turn when it leaves the paradisaical Australian landscape and moves to the hellish war trenches of Southern France, where Jim makes close friends with a brave and friendly man named Clancy who perishes in Jim's sight. Jim seems to be detached, scared and not living. Battle after battle, he sees men fall and is confronted with the harsh reality of war.
Fly Away Peter won The Age Book of the Year award in 1982, and is often studied at senior level in Australian high-schools.
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