Gifted, energetic ("The Twyborn Affair" is a 10th novel) and Nobel-belaureled, Australia's Patrick White is still no household word in literary America—but that could be about to change. His books hitherto have tended to focus on characters—among them a 19th-century explorer, family-builders obsessed with "the land," aging residents of Parranugli and Sarsaparilla, imaginary Australian suburbs—a shade removed from late 20th-century preoccupations along ...

If love is the core of reality, as Patrick White says it is at a key point in [The Twyborn Affair], then sex is its several masks, fitting perfectly only on the rarest occasions and more often disguising, distorting and demeaning love. The relationship between self and sex, and sex as a mode of access to reality, are two themes glossed and dramatized [here]…. The novel firmly establishes the differences between [the protagonist's various personas] while it keeps buoyant the necessary tension b...

The three narratives of [The Twyborn Affair] take place years and distances apart. Only inference, imagination, and Eddie's memories connect them. Yet they cling together with the intense reality—and counterbalancing romanticism—that authentic literature always asserts. In a précis White's novel is incredible. In total it's as believable as a nervous breakdown: a dazzlingly handsome, emotionally fractured young/middle-aged man does live as man/woman in The Twyborn&#...