Kangaroo

Kangaroo is an account of a visit to New South Wales by an English writer named Richard Lovat Somers and his German wife Harriet in the early 1920s. It was written in six and a half weeks during Lawrence and his wife Frieda's eleven week stay in the NSW coastal town of Thirroul in 1922. The novel includes a chapter ("Nightmare") describing the Somers' experiences in wartime St Ives, Cornwall, vivid descriptions of the Australian landscape, and Richard Somers' sceptical reflections on fringe politics in Sydney. Ultimately, after being initially somewhat drawn to the right-wing Digger movement led by Benjamin Cooley (aka 'Kangaroo') neither it nor the "great general emotion" of Kangaroo himself appeal to Somers. Similarly, Somers rejects the socialism of Willie Struthers, with its emphasis on "generalised love". In this, the novel reflects Lawrence's own response to World War I, as Somers opts "To be clear of love, and pity, and hate. To be alone from it all. To cut himself finally clear from the last encircling arm of the octopus humanity. To turn to the old dark gods, who had waited so long in the outer dark.