Eucalyptus, by Murray Bail

This 1998 novel won the 1999 Miles Franklin Award and the 1999 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.  It was recommended to me by a friend who had the luck to live in Australia for some time (as well as New Zealand), where the author is from and the book is set.  Eucalyptus is one of the largest species of trees and shrubs and originated mainly in Australia.  Specimens of various kinds are now found many places around the world and are even rather iconic, like those in California.  A man named Holland arrives in a small town some distance outside of Sidney.  There he buys a large piece of property which has been logged over by the former owners.  He begins to establish a virtual living museum of the various types of eucalyptus, large and small, rare and common, by planting young trees and shrubs around the denuded property.  Eventually he has over 500 varieties.  He also has a young daughter, Ellen, who over the years he is planting is herself growing into a remarkably lovely young woman.  As she approaches twenty, Holland decides that in order to marry her, a suitor must be able to correctly identify all of his eucalypts, rather like a fairy tale.  As contenders come and go from near and far, and most fail completely, it begins to look like no one is up to the challenge.  Then an older unprepossessing man named Mr. Cave arrives and begins to go walkabout on the property with Holland, discussing the trees and properly naming them.  Ellen at first is not too concerned, but as time goes by, begins to fear that Mr. Cave will be successful.  As Holland and Cave are slowly making their way around, she runs into a young man sleeping under one of the trees.  They also begin walking in different parts of her father's land and he begins to enchant her over the days with one after another story.  Like the marriage challenge, this is all rather like a fairy tale, or Scheherazade.  Who will win the fair princess?  A very literary and slow moving book which I suspect spoke more to my friend, who knew the landscape, than me.  I did enjoy it however, and you might too.  255 pp.