The Acolyte is a Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Thea Astley first published in 1972.
Contents
Plot summary
The novel is told in the first person by "the acolyte", Paul Vesper. The novel traces the career of a fictional Australian musician and composer named Jack Holberg. Beginning in obscurity as a piano player in "Grogbusters", a dreary little Southern Queensland town, the blind Holberg eventually gains international recognition as a composer. Vesper, who had met Holberg during his less renowned period, gives up an engineering career to serve the great man—in a sense, to become his eyes.
Setting
The central characters and the focus of the story move from humble beginnings in Grogbusters, to a cutting edge harbour development site in North Queensland, then back down south to a creative retreat developed by Holberg in the Gold Coast hinterland.
Characters
In the lush coastal hinterland, a complex triadic relationship develops between Vesper, Holberg and Holberg's passive wife Hilda, into which are also drawn others, mainly Hilda's sister Ilsa, Ilsa's husband, her son Jamie, and Holberg's aunt Sadie. Around this core family group - which Vesper is very much a part of - gather numerous society buffs, media critics, and "sycophantic" fans, all fatuously devoted to the unseeing genius of Holberg as he creates his music.
Themes
Astley deeply explores interpersonal relationships and psychologies of the main characters with an intensity that is heightened by her thickly layered use of vocabulary. It is relieved however by humorous notes, including the ironic, almost caustic, descriptions of fans, media personalities and aspects of entertainment culture. Holberg's own blind blunders, and the antics of particular characters such as Aunt Sadie, as well as frequent references to alcohol consumption add further comic touches.
The absurdities of modern culture are a frequent topic. For example when, looking over the town of "Glitterlights" (the Gold Coast in the early 1970s), Vesper describes how: "the lights behind us break out along the tops of the buildings like hair dye".
Astley acidly puts the foibles and failings of human nature, and their potential impacts in relationship, under a microscope, observing the decline in mental health of those characters who devote themselves completely to the service of Holberg. This - due to his egotism, insensitivity, and cruelty - ultimately proves to be at their own expense.
As she has often done, Astley exposes sexual infidelities with a great sense of both tongue-in-cheek and matter-of-fact, bringing these out of the closet into a glaringly bright spotlight.
A further major focus for Astley is the creative, sometimes zany and uniquely adapted, use of considerable vocabulary, and terminology (the latter mainly from the world of music). This helps to develop Vesper's narrative and colourful descriptions, in a way that can be extremely witty, yet introspective and revelatory, permitting a view into the complex inner workings of characters, as observed through Vesper's eyes. The language, while embracing the modern, is also poetic and beautiful at times, especially some evocations of nature, such as: "...a kingfisher left its jet-flight blue streak across the loquat trees".