Robert Hillman

While it may not be a novel’s main purpose, certainly one of its pleasures can lie in how it witnesses the history of the form itself. All novels reveal something of the genealogy from which they emerge, their debt to past traditions and ways of storytelling. Rather as is the case with families, sometimes the further back you go the more striking the resemblance becomes.

Robert Hillman’s Joyful is most immediately a nineteenth-century novel, a detailed work that portrays an entire, sealed world of complex and ultimately connected storylines. The cultural setting is realised in a wonderfully rich Victorian style. Extended studies of social manners, quotes from journals and letters, and the aligning of characters with their passions for books, poetry and music, clothing, all produce a social world that is not only vivid but also ripe for commentary and debate. In this way, the work can stand as a tribute to the likes of Trollope and Hardy, and the combination of the personal and political that they perfected.

The heart of this book is an account of one year in the life of its author. In 1963, at the age of fifteen, Robert Hillman left his hometown of Eildon, in Victoria, and took a position as a junior in the ladies’ shoe department of the Myer Emporium in Melbourne. He didn’t last long. Before he knew it, he had booked a passage on a ship to Ceylon. He had a dream, not a plan. The dream was of a soft landing on an idyllic island of perfect women who would tend to his every need and desire. It was a dream of Eden, of a world before the Flood. In this case, the image is apposite. In 1954 Eildon had been submerged by the waters of a new dam. This project had brought Americans and money to the town; once they departed, the new Eildon was a shiny but emotionally threadbare place. The world after the flood was a punishing place for young Robert. He wanted to return to paradise.