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Longlisted for the Australian Political Book of the Year Award.
Chosen as a 'Book of the Year' in The Australian, The Australian Financial Review and The Australian Book Review.
In a quiet Sydney street in 1937, a seven year-old immigrant boy drowned in a ditch that had filled with rain after being left unfenced by council workers. How the law should deal with the trauma of the family's loss was one of the most complex and controversial cases to reach Australia's High Court, where it seized the imagination of its youngest and cleverest member.
These days, 'Doc' Evatt is remembered mainly as the hapless and divisive opposition leader during the long ascendancy of his great rival Sir Robert Menzies. Yet long before we spoke of 'public intellectuals', Evatt was one: a dashing advocate, an inspired jurist, an outspoken opinion maker, one of our first popular historians and the nation's foremost champion of modern art. Through Evatt's innovative and empathic decision in Chester v the Council of Waverley Municipality, which argued for the law to acknowledge inner suffering as it did physical injury, Gideon Haigh rediscovers the most brilliant Australian of his day, a patriot with a vision of his country charting its own path and being its own example – the same attitude he brought to being the only Australian president of the UN General Assembly, and instrumental in the foundation of Israel.
A feat of remarkable historical perception, deep research and masterful storytelling, The Brilliant Boy confirms Gideon Haigh as one of our finest writers of non-fiction. It shows Australia in a rare light, as a genuinely clever country prepared to contest big ideas and face the future confidently.
'Gideon Haigh has always been an exquisite wordsmith, and he proves here that he is also an intuitive historian and acute biographer with a masterful control of the broad sweep and telling detail' AFR Books of the Year
'Here is a master craftsman delivering one of his most finely honed works. Meticulous in its research, humane in its storytelling, The Brilliant Boy is Gideon Haigh at his lush, luminous best. Haigh shines a light on person, place and era with the sheer force of his intellect and the generosity of his words. The Brilliant Boy is simply a brilliant book.' Clare Wright, Stella-Prize winning author of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka
'Gideon Haigh has a nose for Australian stories that light up the past from new angles, and he tells this one with verve, grace and lightly worn erudition. I couldn't put it down.' Judith Brett, The Saturday Paper
'An absolutely remarkable, moving and elegant re-reading of the early life of an extraordinary Australian. Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's finest writers and thinkers ... mesmerizing ... one of the best Australian biographies I have read for a long time.' Michael McKernan, Canberra Times
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 6, 2021 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781760856137
- File size: 306934 KB
- Duration: 10:39:26
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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May 11, 2021
If Herbert Vere 'Doc' Evatt is thought of at all today, it’s usually in terms of his nearly decade-long failure as Labor leader to combat Menzies’ conservative stranglehold. Gideon Haigh has largely excised these years from this partial history and instead, with his matchless instinct for a great story, frames Evatt’s life against that of a case he was involved in as a High Court judge, the accidental death of nine-year-old Maxie Chester. In this way, Haigh gives shape to Evatt’s polymathic life while exposing some egregious aspects of Australia’s recent history. It’s hard to believe now, but in the 1930s water-filled trenches could be dug in suburban streets and then left for young children to drown in—and the chief justice of the High Court could claim the sudden death of a child produces no 'consequence of more than a temporary nature' in the heartbroken parent. Evatt, a highly empathetic man, fought back in his legal judgements against the general callousness of the day, helping set the scene for progressive governments to come and the more humane society in which we live today. Haigh’s carefully researched and highly detailed history paints a picture of a loving husband, a devoted father and an idiosyncratic genius. Evatt lived well but, neither an investor nor a saver, he wasn’t driven by personal financial aggrandisement and, as the youngest ever judge in the High Court, he turned his back on a pension by retiring. Haigh also brings into clear focus the hidden heroes with whom Evatt closely worked, such as politician Abram Landa—and there’s much else besides. Anyone with an interest in Australian history and the law will find a great deal to engage with here. Julia Taylor worked in trade publishing for many years.
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