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Charmian Clift
Honour’s Mimic
Australian writers Charmian Clift and her husband, George Johnston, spent nine years on the Greek island of Hydra. Clift also lived alone on the wilder island of Kalymnos for nine months. It was here she found the inspiration for Honour’s Mimic, published in 1964 at the same time Johnston published Miles Franklin winner My Brother Jack. The republication of Honour’s Mimic is to be celebrated. Nadia Wheatley, who has for many years championed Clift’s work, provides a scholarly afterword.
The novel is a tumultuous tale of passion, expressed in a glorious trove of rich and poetic prose drenched in vivid colours: “They stepped out into the crushed crimson ball of the setting sun; into a torrent of running rose oils that poured off the shuddering spires of mountains retreating into night like herds of fleeing elephants.” Kathy is an Australian married to Irwin, an Englishman whose sister Milly is the wife of the powerful and wealthy Greek Demetrius. As part of her recovery from a car accident, which was in fact a suicide attempt, Kathy is staying with Milly and Demetrius on the island. Although she is a member of the island’s upper class, Kathy also mixes with the workers.
For seven months each year, the working men of the island sail to Africa, where they dive for sponges. Because the natural sponge trade is being overtaken by artificial products, they wish to migrate to Australia to dive for pearls. When this is refused, many of them seek sponsorship from individual Australians. Sponge-diver Fotis asks Kathy to sponsor him, but her request is denied. A cross-cultural, cross-class secret love develops between them.
The novel’s title refers to John Donne’s poem “The Sun Rising” and signifies the fact the lovers are bending the rules, not only of Greek morality but of the universe itself. Their “assignations” are raw, torrid, mythic. Gradually the scandalous truth spreads through the community. Kathy becomes aware “lying in the dried-out riverbed among the asphodel and the pale prickling grasses, a goat boy had seen them”. The result is that Demetrius, outraged and strongly attracted, rapes Kathy.
With the compelling flavour of a grotesque and shimmering fairytale that carries no consoling ending, Honour’s Mimic casts a potent spell.
New South, 272pp, $34.99
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 12, 2025 as "Charmian Clift".
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