The Search

Trevor Griersor, a Scottish university lecturer, is spending a term in Canberra, lecturing on Scottish authors. One day a stranger phones, with garbled news of Trevor's brother Norman who vanished in Australia many years before, and has since, according to the caller, become an alcoholic and been in trouble with the police. Trevor feels overwhelmed with guilt, for having neglected his brother for so long. He imagines him penniless now, a down-and-out, drunk in the gutter; or perhaps even lying in a pauper's grave. He resolves that he must trace him, and travels to Sydney to begin his search. The search takes him to government offices, police stations, the Salvation Army, a squalid doss-house; and his experiences drive him into a state of panic. But why does he feel so compelled to search? As Douglas, that ambiguous Iago-like figure who first phoned him, now says, Norman won't be at all the younger brother of eighteen years ago; he'll be a stranger. If he's an alcoholic, he may...