Patrick White has a distinct manner of prose phrasing, or voice, which, combined with his psychological insight, produces some exquisite (or downright peculiar) metaphors. These figurative observations are like minor epiphanies that, individually and collectively, reveal subtle truths about the lives of his characters, the society they live in, and, in a more general sense, mankind.

His characters in Voss, his award-winning 1957 novel, tend to speak in a stylized way that conveys the poetry of what they intended to say, not necessarily how they acually said something. Consider this exchange and the scene White renders around it:

‘I am seeking for a Mr Judd,’ said Voss, to whom alone, of all those present, he himself was not strange.
‘Ah,’ said the woman, stirring. ‘This is his place. But he is not here.’
‘He will come, though.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, yes.’
She was standing in front of a house, or hut, of bleached slabs, that melted into the live trunks of the surrounding trees. The interstices of the slab hut had been daubed with a yellow clay, but this, too, had weathered, and formed part of a natural disguise. Only smoke gave some sign of human occupation, drifting out of the chimney, always taking fresh shaps.
‘You are his wife, perhaps?’ suggested Voss.
The woman, who was bending a twig, waited for it to snap, and said:
‘Yes.’
Thus she realized time was passing.

Despite its rather racy-sounding subject of exploration and romance, Voss is a slow-burning study in human behavior: passive acquiescence to the status quo, defiant charges against nature, the futile search for transcendence. The critics are right. Even if Voss were his only novel, White would still be among the great twentieth-century authors.