Australian Gospel

  

I think I heard Lech Blaine interviewed by Richard Fidler on Radio National's Conversations and was intrigued by his extraordinary family story. Now having read Australian Gospel, I don't know how he could have compressed the saga into one hour-long interview. Essentially, Lech's parents fostered a gang of other children, including two brothers and a sister, the children of Michael and Mary Shelley (just two of the names they went by, in long and confusing lives). The Shelleys never accepted that their children should have been removed from their care, and engaged in a campaign of harassment, death threats, stalking, attempted abductions and relentless hate mail over several decades. The children regarded themselves as the family of Tom and Lenore Blaine, and never wanted to return to the Shelleys, but this made no difference to the Shelleys' attitude.

Michael Shelley went through various incarnations as a preacher, drug addict and anti-drug campaigner, and he and Mary travelled all over the world (it's not clear how they managed to pay for this travel, as neither of them ever seems to have held gainful employment, or not for long). Mary Shelley suffered from mental illness and spent time in various hospitals (they both also spent time in prison). Tracing their movements across the country and the world, and in and out of institutions, makes the reader's head spin. Lech Blaine's writing style is deliberately succinct and elliptical, which keeps the narrative speeding along; he says that he chose a novelistic approach as a way of handling this mass of bewildering and confronting material, and the life stories of so many (real) people, including himself. (Lech was named after Lech Walesa, the Polish labour activist hero.)

Australian Gospel is a fascinating and disturbing story, but ultimately it's a tale of the triumph of love and persistence over delusion and narcissism.