Call of the wild

Andrew McGahan's novels have always divided readers, andhis new one will do the same, writes Jane Sullivan. ANDREW McGahan likes to go out on a limb. But even for him, theambitions he had for his latest novel were extreme. No dialogue. Nohuman characters. Just weather. He's always been a weather junkie. Growing up on a small farm inthe wheat belt of Queensland, he watched thunderstorms movingacross the plains in a way you can't see in the city. And forfarmers, all that water was good news: ''Every time it rains, youjust go 'Yee ha'.'' Advertisement: Story continues below A few times, he's gone out with another weather enthusiast,trying to get photographs of storms and lightning. And he's alwaysbeen a big reader of ''earth stuff, weather stuff'': the science ofdramatic weather and cataclysmic natural events. ''There's something quite primal about it, the drama offundamental forces battling around the planet,'' he says withboyish glee. But he wasn't after the disasterfilm scenario ofmankind struggling against natural upheavals. He wanted to indulgein the upheavals for their own sake. So in Wonders of a Godless World, we're buffeted by vividdescriptions of an erupting volcano, a landslide, an asphyxiatinggas rising from a lake, a freak storm condition where thetemperature rises to above 60 degrees. And pushing things to theirlogical conclusion, we dive to the earth's core and fly likeSuperman out into the cosmos to contemplate a truly apocalypticfinale that could mean the end of our planet. There's some precedent for this. In McGahan's autobiographicalnovel 1988, his hero gets a job observing the weather atCape Don in Arnhem Land, and survives a cyclone. Undergroundstarts with another cyclone and presents us with a nuclear bombdropped on Canberra. The Miles Franklinwinning The WhiteEarth begins with a scene in which a boy sits on the Queenslandwheat plains and thinks he sees the mushroom cloud of a nuclearexplosion. Could it be that McGahan just loves big bangs? We're a long way from cataclysm, sitting in Rosetta Stone AllenUnwin'sEast Melbourne office. Outside there's gentle drizzle. McGahan is atall, broad man with sandy hair and pale skin who looks as if he'dscorch in sun. He's friendly and curious and his body language isall go: he talks rapidly, staccato, his fingers drum on the table.Perhaps this is what one critic has called ''his intellectualrestlessness''. But he's really a passive sort of person, he says. All theheroes of his books, so vastly different in subject and style, arepassive and very reluctant to act. ''I struggle with books wherethe hero is intensely resourceful and can do stuff. I'm notdynamic, I can just drift around doing nothing for days.'' Thishappens when he's writing first drafts, though he's more focused bythe editing stage. Fortunately for the reader, while he's abandoned dialogue inWonders of a Godless World, he couldn't abandon characters,though he says they're scarcely human. His hero, a young womanliving in a mental institution, known only as the Orphan, is forcedto be passive: she can't speak, can't understand what others say,can't remember names. And the second main character, a patient withburns known only as the Foreigner, is even more passive: he can'tspeak or move. In some mysterious way, these two communicate. Theyhear each other's voices in their heads. What ensues is a cosmicjourney of discovery, ecstasy and horror. When you talk to McGahan about Wonders, he's veryresistant to explanations and interpretations.

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