Death and sex make a good read

I THINK UNLESS A JOURNEY is bumpy and uncomfortable you haven’t really travelled far from home. In his latest book, Three dog night, Goldsworthy sure does “good travel” according to my requirements. In this lyrical, and strangely suspenseful, novel we accompany three doctors who travel — literally into the desert, and figuratively into the untidy and impolite world of death and erotica — to a place that unnerves, but surely tantalises, us all. The title refers to the number of dogs you need to sleep with in the desert at night to keep warm.

Martin, the protagonist psychiatrist, has a head full of Latin names and is obsessively in love with his impenetrably beautiful but physically flawed wife, Lucy. She is also a psychiatrist and a specialist in pain management. Lucy is a “trophy wife” and Martin is bringing her home to Adelaide (think churches and zoo murders) to show her off. He is particularly keen to introduce her to his oldest friend Felix, a grumpy old surgeon, who years ago turned his back on the Establishment and went bush to work with the Aboriginals, being initiated into the Japalarri people along the way. Felix is dying of hepatitis-related hepatoma that he contracted from a young boy who died as a result of his drunkenness. He is tormented by the boy’s death and seeks penance (or is it pain relief) from his friend’s subsequent agony. He also wants to travel into the desert to find a place to die, a sinkhole that is a special place for his Dreaming. In one last unbearable stretch of friendship he wants company. Martin and Lucy, armed with morphine, oxygen and a disappearing mask of propriety, accompany him on his journey, and nothing is the same again.

Goldsworthy, in a book where too much metaphor is barely enough, has written a worthy and enthralling travel manual, peering under masks into the murky realms of the “id” below. Fortunately, he has done so with forgiveness.

Christine HampshireGeneral Practitioner Balmain, NSW