Painting a bigger picture of a forgotten genius
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By Morag Fraser
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Gideon Haigh
Scribner, $39.99
How to frame the life of a paradoxical historical character, particularly one who has almost slipped out of Australian public consciousness? Gideon Haigh notes in his first chapter of
The Brilliant Boy that “a recent documentary about Doc Evatt introduced him as ‘a little-known Australian’” and adds, “it may even be true”.
So how to go about the feat of resurrection? In this artful narrative, Haigh does it by focusing first on the particular – a private tragedy in a Jewish migrant family in Sydney, 1937 – and then adjusting his lens to capture the resonance of that tragedy in the extraordinary life, political experience and legal legacy of Herbert Vere Evatt. Haigh has narrative skill and the journalistic nous to make the story immediate and compelling.
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