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Rating: 
Summary: Astonshing. Unforgettable.
Review: Riders in the Chariot is a supreme work of art. At least a dozen times, I found White's writing so moving and beautiful that I had to put the book down and reflect on what I'd just read. All too rarely has a book prodded me to deeply examine my own life and priorities -- this book is one of them. Riders in the Chariot provides a reaffirmation for the jaded 21st century reader: humilty over arrogance, beauty over ugliness, good over evil.
Rating:
Summary: Astonshing. Unforgettable.
Review: Riders in the Chariot is a supreme work of art. At least a dozen times, I found White's writing so moving and beautiful that I had to put the book down and reflect on what I'd just read. All too rarely has a book prodded me to deeply examine my own life and priorities -- this book is one of them. Riders in the Chariot provides a reaffirmation for the jaded 21st century reader: humilty over arrogance, beauty over ugliness, good over evil.
Rating:
Summary: Epic scope and mystical significance.
Review: This deceptively complex and tension-filled Australian novel begins as the straightforward story of Mary Hare, a strange, half-mad spinster who lives in Xanadu, a crumbling "pleasure dome," with the busybody Mrs. Jolley, a servant she fears. At various times in her meanderings, Mary meets a kind laundress named Mrs. Godbold, who lives in a shed with her nine children; Alf Dubbo, an often-drunk aborigine artist; and Mordecai Himmelfarb, a Jewish concentration camp survivor who has emigrated to Australia and now works in a machine shop.
In succeeding sections, in which these characters overlap, their intricate interior lives are developed in colorful, memorable detail, and the reader quickly sees that each is a lonely survivor of some traumatic experience which has made him/her question the nature of good and evil. Each hopes to unravel some of the mysteries at the center of the universe. Remarkably, all of them have experienced the same apocalyptic vision of a chariot being drawn by four horses galloping into a shimmering future.
In the hands of a lesser writer, the characters, their daily lives, and their vision of the chariot might have been presented in a sentimental or romantic way, or even been used to illustrate the author's religious views. But White's view of the chariot and its importance is far subtler--and more enigmatic--than that, and its role in the lives of these characters is both unsentimental and haunting. Tantalizing parallels between the vision of the chariot and the mysteries of Revelations, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the Seven Seals, along with Biblical warnings about blood, fire, and destruction will keep a symbol-hunter totally engaged. At the same time, more literal readers will find the stories and characters so firmly grounded in the reality of 1960's Australia, that they are captivating in their own right and may be taken, and thoroughly enjoyed, at face value.
This is a huge novel, an old-fashioned saga of fascinating characters living their lives the best way they can, while wrestling with issues of epic significance. The author's primary concern with telling a good story never falters, despite the overlay of mysticism, and the leisurely pace and fully realized dramatic action make this a totally fulfilling reading experience. Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: world masterpiece
Review: This is certainly one of the great masterpieces of world literature. There were occasionally some Australian slang or particular terms that I didn't understand but it did not detract from my immense enjoyment, and ultimate catharsis I derived from reading this novel. The character of Himmelfarb will be with me forever, and the other 4 major characters were equally vivid, unique, and profound.
Rating:
Summary: world masterpiece
Review: This is certainly one of the great masterpieces of world literature. There were occasionally some Australian slang or particular terms that I didn't understand but it did not detract from my immense enjoyment, and ultimate catharsis I derived from reading this novel. The character of Himmelfarb will be with me forever, and the other 4 major characters were equally vivid, unique, and profound.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth the Effort
Review: Yeah, he's Australian, and a Nobel Laureate to boot, two immediate strikes against any serious literary interest. His prose is so thick it could be used to reinforce concrete. His characters run the gamut from the Symbolic to the Deeply Symbolic, and have a tendency to climb onto soapboxes at the drop of a digger hat (often to ludicrous effect, as at the end of "Voss", where the 19th-century characters turn their backs on the business at hand--the death of a noted explorer--to spend the final pages on a 20th-century-style debate concerning the Status of Australian Literature). It often seems as if he went out of his way to adapt only the worst traits of his master, Dostoevsky, while tossing all the worthwhile ones. But there's something to Patrick White, and this novel is where it all came together for him. Anthony Burgess, unlike the Nobel committee, didn't select this as one of his 99 great novels simply to shoehorn an Aussie onto the list, and there's a touch of the Burgessian in this novel's sprawl and reach. The characters, especially Alf Dubbo and Mrs. Godbold, stand well apart from whatever it is they're supposed to Represent. Although it occasionally falls to the level of a morality play, the story gains power as it progresses--one of the chief benefits of writing at this length. And though the climax, embodied in the murder of the Holocaust survivor Mordecai Himmelfarb, has its flaws (the author of "Days of Cain" can tell you that subtlety is the chief requirement for dealing with the Holocaust--the subject is simply too vast to handle otherwise), the conclusion is satisfying on all levels, with no (well, very little) last-minute thumping of the lectern on the author's part. In fact, the final pages are rapier-sharp examples of a writer hitting exactly what he was aiming at--the final fate of the vicious Miss Hare and Mrs. Jolley is as harrowing a portrayal of damnation as anything this side of Charles Williams. In the end we're left with a pure rendering of the quiet power of human decency, and the lovely image of that chariot in which we all wish to ride--the one that leaves its tracks in the salmon clouds of sunset.
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