AustLit

Set on the Greek island of Lesbos, where the author had lived for a number of years, Head of Orpheus Singing tells of the ex-patriot Australian and the simple life of the islanders, to whom the book is dedicated.

In Robert Dessaix's 2001 novel, Corfu : A Novel, his protagonist reflects on Berwick's novel, published some thirty years previous:

It appears to be about a middle-aged Australian widower who comes to Molyvos to teach English, becomes the inseparable friend of a teenage peanut-vendor called Euripides and thenm when Euripides and his weeping mother move to Australia, gets married to a tedius, clinging woman he feels no passion for (a student of his from Australia called Claire – a pretty but watery name) and settles down on Molyvos forever. He has a few ricocheting sorts of encounters with a clutch of other characters – a retired headmistress, the police, assorted foreigners – but basically that seems to be the story. Not for a moment, of course, did I ever think that that was what the book was about, so I quickly read it twice.

Pain certainly drips. Little by little, page by page everyone drops away…. So it's about loss and the kind of inner grace you need to bear it. It's about contentment, even though life's most precious gift – friendship - slowly seeps away. Everyone grows smaller and then disappears. This is the nub of it – friendship in its many guises.