Little Sister (Vintage 2012) by Julian Novitz

 

Little Sister is not a recent release but I saw it at the library and because I don’t know a great deal about Novitz , I thought I would check it out.  And part of the mission of this blog is for me to get around to reading the things I should have read.  Novitz has previously published a short story collection, My Real Life and Other Stories (2004), and a novel Holocaust Tours (2006).  He doesn’t appear to be around the NZ literary scene lately, his NZ Book Council profile doesn’t even list his latest novel.  Little Sister revolves around Shane, Will and Eileen who attend High School together and form an intense friendship.  The novel gives each friend a turn at relating their perspective about their relationship, and about events that revolve around and lead up to the death of Eileen’s father.
 

There are lots of literary allusions in the book.  Shane is interested in the Canterbury Tales and Le Morte d’Arthur that his teacher, Mr N, talks about in English class, in particular Arthur and his sword Excalibur.  The sword represents a masculine power while the sheath represents the feminine: “The sexual imagery, Mr N said, should not be lost on us here.”   Such is Shane’s enthusiasm for all things medieval that Shane joins Eileen at Medieval Faires, and even buys himself a replica sword.  Initially, Shane just keeps the sword in his room, then he starts posing with it in front of the mirror, and then he starts to take it out with him.  Eventually, he loses the sword’s sheath as his relationship with Eileen intensifies.

 While Shane enjoys medieval literature, Will tells Eileen that he wants to be a writer when he leaves school, though it’s a lie, he hasn’t written a thing except school exercises but he finds some satisfaction in the identification as a writer.  Will’s narrative takes place in a police cell where he is waiting to tell his side of the story to the detectives.  Will imagines himself in a cop/detective story as he rehearses his story in his head.

 Eileen, as seen through Shane and Will’s eyes, is complicated.  She was initially dating Will but then moves onto Shane while insisting that the three of them still remain friends and hang out at Will’s flat in town.  Eileen seems manipulative, and is a girl that other girls don’t like.  She relates a history of sexual abuse, and there are questions as to whether she is fabricating other elements of her life, such as the fact that she has a younger sister that neither Will nor Shane have ever seen.

Readers hear Eileen’s perspective ten years after high school when she is living in Melbourne and teaching theatre classes.  At the university a girl is following Eileen and someone who refers to herself as Eileen’s sister is calling her flat.  The essence of the novel is for the reader to decide whether Eileen’s sister exists, and whether Eileen is a victim or femme fatale in her father’s death.  At one point Eileen discusses her boyfriend’s detective novels, saying that his female characters are, “all absent somehow.  Either they’re physically absent, like the detective’s ex-wife or the damsel’s-in-distress, or they’re emotionally absent, like the ruthless femmes fatales you wheel out as plot devices, always with their scheming plans but no internal lives.  Absent women all the time."   It is up to readers to decide whether and/or how Eileen is absent in the novel.

The narrative is a mystery, of sorts, even though we know who did it early on in the book.  This relates to another literary reference in the novel.  Eileen is fixated with Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral and notes that there “is no mystery to the murder in the cathedral: it is performed right there, in front of our eyes, on the stage.”  In Eliot’s play Thomas Becket, a priest, is willing to die for his faith.  Becket is presented with four tempters who question whether he wants to die for his faith or whether he desires to become a martyr.  When the priest has been killed by the four knights, they each come forward and present their justifications for the killing.  Novitz has followed Eliot’s structure for his novel in presenting four justifications for Eileen’s dad’s death (Mr N gets the last word).  Eliot’s play calls on the audience to act as detectives, as readers of Novitz’s novel are, and the characters are portrayed through their individual moral crises.

I initially thought that perhaps there are just too many literary references in Novitz’s novel, but the inclusions are all explained within the text so I didn’t feel like an outsider trying to grapple with specialist knowledge about medieval literature, or Eliot.  And, a lot of the action does take place in an English class so the inclusion does make sense.  The novel successfully portrays the intensity of friendships that can form in high school, and how those relationships affect the rest of your life.

In the Memorial Room by Janet Frame (Text Publishing 2013)

 

Janet Frame’s novel, written in 1974 and released this year, is about writer Harry Gill who has been awarded the Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship in Menton where New Zealand poet Margaret Rose Hurndell wrote four of her works.  Harry travels to Menton and is greeted by literary hangers-on who had some connection to Hurndell and wish to keep her memory alive through the Fellowship.  Harry’s welcoming committee suggest that he write in the Memorial Room which is a shrine to Hurndell.  However, Harry prefers not to because he feels like the memorial room is a grave that keeps Hurndell’s death alive rather than her work. 

The literary hangers-on want a piece of Harry, each of them offers to house him during his stay.  At one point, Harry notes that writers have a sense of nothingness which enables them to accommodate characters in their mind: “To this you reply that it is he [the writer] who must enter the minds of his characters?  Certainly, but where shall he house them while he enters their minds.”   By playing on the words ‘house’ and ‘accommodate’ it seems that the literary groupies want to enter the mind of the writer, rather than allowing the writer to house his characters. 

Harry’s relationship with the local literary community is shown to threaten Harry’s perception and inhibit his ability to write.  Harry worries about his sight while on the Fellowship, he fears he is going progressively blind, and then wakes up one morning and discovers he is deaf.  The doctor tells Harry that, “in the company of certain people, you are on the point of vanishing”, and then later tells him that his physical afflictions will only last the duration of his Fellowship.  The attention Harry receives while on the Fellowship threatens to render him invisible.

While the book satirises literary groupies, the image of the writer is also poked with a big stick.  Michael, the son of one of the Fellowship founders, looks more like a writer than Harry does and is talked about as a young Hemingway.  Even at the function to celebrate Harry as the next Fellowship recipient it is Michael who is photographed and shakes hands with the mayor rather than Harry.  Michael is the mimicry of a writer that appears to be the ‘real’ thing, but Harry doubts whether Michael’s appearance matches his talent.

 Language is also a prominent theme in the novel, as you would expect from Frame.  Harry relates the story of an Englishman in Menton who vowed to speak “only in nouns and verbs” and “All references to emotion were excluded because they could not be described accurately.”  Harry notes that because the Englishman’s speech and writing lacked abstract words “’truth’ was excluded in the search for the truth.”  Language is shown to have the potential to hide and reveal reality, or at least an individual’s subjective perspective of reality.

The book is funny, not in a snorting laughter way, but it is a satire with an edge of irony.  If Katherine Mansfield, which of course the Menton Fellowship in Frame’s book refers to, is the Grandmother of New Zealand fiction, Janet is potentially the mother.  Perhaps releasing the book after her death means that Frame can poke fun at the way writers are remembered, how they are memorialised, and how as readers and literary groupies we try and house writers in our collective imaginations. 

The Fall of Light by Sarah Laing (Vintage 2013)

 

Rudy, the lead character in Sarah Laing’s novel, is an architect whose wife and kids have left him because of his workaholic habits.  Despite the long hours his business is not being awarded new projects because Rudy is struggling to execute what he considers are his clients conservative proposals; he wants to design signature buildings to make a name for himself.  When the clients decline Rudy’s extravagant designs he makes models of the structures in his studio.  On top of all this, Rudy comes off his Vespa and the accident nearly kills him.

 

The extravagance of the buildings he designs seems to relate to Rudy’s fantasy life, a dreamscape he has retreated to because his real life is quickly unravelling.  Everything has become about surfaces, about how they look, rather than being practical spaces for people to live and work in.  Like in Pip Adam’s book, the buildings (or in this case model buildings) seem to act as a projection of the self, how Rudy would like to present himself to the world. 

 

As Rudy slowly recovers from his accident he hangs out with his childhood friend Greg, and meets his neighbour Laura who is pregnant.  Laura got kicked out of her restrictive life with the Brethren when she was 16 because she had a child out of wedlock, a child she was made to give up.  Laura’s story triggers an emotional response from Rudy because he was adopted, but up until his accident he had not seriously entertained contacting his birth parents.  His relationship with Laura gives Rudy an insight into what it is like for a mother who has to give up her child.  Throughout the novel Rudy gradually confronts his adoption, feelings of abandonment, and his need to belong.

 

While the narrative is unfolding, amongst the words there are illustrations that don’t merely reflect the action but are part of the story.  The drawings show Rudy’s dreams which are pertinent to the story and project his subconscious.  It is a very clever way of showing the subconscious thoughts in a first person narrative where the character is not initially expressive about his feelings.  It is a unique feature and one that blends in seamlessly with the text without seeming like gimmick. 

 

What is nice about the narrative is how it shows how people come into your life when you need them.  Okay, I know the novel is constructed, but I like the characterisation of Laura and her openness, and how willing she is to help Rudy, and how in turn he helps her when her child is born.  Laura and Rudy are such contrasting characters, Laura is a hippy and Rudy is a middle-class snob, but they have fundamental issues in common, that of adoption and abandonment, they come together and in some ways they are a mother and son who adopt each other.  I like how they make a community, and how they both have a sense of belonging.

 

Usually when I read a story to review, certain parts of the book will trigger a response in me and I start thinking of things to write for the review.  I didn’t with this book.   I initially thought that Rudy was a bit of a wanker, to be frank, but he loses his wankerism and becomes likeable as the narrative progresses and he starts to share more of his feelings.  The illustrations are also initially thought provoking but ultimately explained in the text.  As much as I enjoyed the relationships in the novel, and having a front row seat to Rudy’s midlife crisis, it’s not a novel I can imagine having an impassioned argument about.  Perhaps it’s because everything is explained in the narrative, there are no silences to deliberate. 

The Virgin & the Whale by Carl Nixon (Vintage 2013)

 

Nixon’s third novel interweaves three narrative strands.  The first is the narrator/author commenting on the mechanics of storytelling, the second concentrates on Elizabeth - a nurse who has returned to New Zealand from the War (WW1) with a child in tow but minus her husband who is missing presumed dead.  Elizabeth is employed by Mrs Blackwell, a member of one of the ‘first’ families to settle in Mansfield (aka Christchurch), to look after her husband who has returned from the front without his memory.  The final narrative strand is the story that Elizabeth tells her son Jack to explain the absence of his father.  While the action unfolds between Elizabeth and the Blackwells, the novel is also about the power of storytelling.
 

Nixon explains at the beginning of the novel that he has been given the story of Elizabeth from a member of the public.  Although Nixon was initially sceptical about taking on the story, he does, and the novel is the final result.  Nixon notes that it took some time to find a suitable narrative voice and structure for the book which I think has resulted in Nixon showing explicitly the problems with how to present a story as a strand of the novel.  Readers will either find this approach either endearing or annoying.  As a dabbling writer and literary student I could see the technique as a post-modern but all the while thinking, yeah I know that the construction of story is artificial, that not all historical facts are available, and that the author is choosing what to include and what to leave out in order to persuade readers to continue the narrative (bear in mind though that I am currently researching a historical novel and the issues that Nixon has faced I am also facing).  While it is interesting to see the thought process of a writer it did make me wonder if the novel could have worked as a creative non-fiction piece where the known facts of the family could be presented along with Nixon’s motivation and perspective on writing a family story, and the ethical and moral obligations this creates for the writer.
 

The only draw-back from the inclusion of the self-conscious reflection on the nature of storytelling is that I felt the two strong female characters were under developed.  I never really felt like I got inside Elizabeth’s head.  Sure, I knew that her husband was presumed dead, and that she had the care of her child with the help of her parents, and was now nursing a man with no memory, and while I could imagine what she was going through, I felt her character development skimmed across the surface.  I wanted more.  I felt the same about Mrs Blackwell who is a strong woman, perhaps more through class than gumption, but I wanted more access to her thoughts.  The fact that I wanted more could be attributed to Nixon’s skill at characterisation however I feel he could have expanded the characters to give them more depth.
 

About half-way through the book mental health services are consulted about Mr Blackwell’s care.  The psychiatrist says, “Medication is the main weapon in the modern psychiatrist’s arsenal.  We would have to experiment but I am confident that the new barbiturates will keep your husband’s mood swings in check” (143).  From my own research on the history of mental health services, specifically at Seacliff Mental Hospital (which was just outside of Dunedin) from the 1920s until the mid-1940s I’m left wondering about the historical accuracy of the doctor’s statement.  The post war periods were very important for changing the medical fraternity’s attitude to mental health.  As increasing numbers of people suffered from shell shock, and recovered from it, mental illness went from being perceived as incurable to being potentially curable.  The treatments available though were limited, such as: therapeutic conversation which included suggestions and persuasion for self-cure, hypnosis, seclusion and restraints, plus psycho-analysis and psychathenics for the more difficult patients.  While calomel salts and paraldehyde (which is a barbiturate) were used at Seacliff for sedation at night, medication only became popular treatments for mental illness from the late 1940s to 1950s in New Zealand.  There were experiments with malarial serums, insulin coma therapy and cardiazol shock treatment before ECT and drugs came along.  I’m basing my information on Susan Fennell’s essay “Psychiatry in New Zealand 1912-1948” and my understanding is that there were no effective drugs to be prescribed that could treat patients in the period that Nixon is writing about.  While my research has been based on Seacliff, Nixon is writing about Sunnyside where different experiments may have taken place and where different doctors may have had different attitudes to drugs than those at Seacliff.  Truby King, who was the Medical Superintendent at Seacliff from 1889-1920, was suspicious of drugs and Freud but from my research I don’t believe in 1920 that “Medication is the main weapon in the modern psychiatrist’s arsenal,” experimentation maybe, but no drugs were available to treat psychiatric patients.  Of course, the statement by the doctor in Nixon’s novel also reflects the (misplaced) confidence of the psychiatrist at Sunnyside, and how willing doctors of the period were to experiment on patients.

 While I have had a few misgivings about the novel, I did find Elizabeth an interesting woman and the development of her relationship with Mr Blackwell is fascinating to watch, I just would have liked more of it.  In some ways the narrative reminded me of the new Australian TV series A Place to Call Home in its premise (rich family and a new nurse on the scene), so if you enjoy that show I would give the book a try (Nixon’s book is certainly more imaginative than the TV show).  I do see the quandary for Nixon in telling this story – emphasis on the love story would make it too soppy, whereas the literary emphasis can alienate it from some audiences – in the end he has tried to do both which may please neither. 

The Last Days of the National Costume by Anne Kennedy (Allen & Unwin 2013)

 

The theme of deconstruction seems to be prevalent in the NZ books I’ve been reading lately.  Sarkies and Jones both had elements of deconstruction, last week it was Pip Adam’s buildings and this week it’s Anne Kennedy’s frock.  Not just any old frock, Kennedy’s main character GoGo is mending an Irish dancing dress while thinking about Derrida (amongst other things).  The frock, transported from Ireland, and ripped and repaired in New Zealand, is a symbol of postcolonial (de)construction.

            The novel is set during the 1998 blackout in Auckland.  I wasn’t in New Zealand at the time of the blackout - I was living in London, attending Riverdance, and wondering whether I had inherited dancing genes from an Irish ancestor because I never know what to do with my arms while dancing  - in other words, I was on my big OE (de)constructing my national identity.  So I was oblivious to the blackout in our biggest city.  Kennedy describes living in Auckland without electricity and the effect it has on the city, and the individuals in it.  Everyday chores are cumbersome because of the lack of power, but within this lack there is a latent potential.  As GoGo’s husband, Art, walks home on the first day of the blackout he is taken by the wonder of the city without power.  This wonder is explored throughout the novel by GoGo as she hand sews an Irish dancing dress while listening to its owner tell the story of the dress’s journey to New Zealand. 

            While GoGo mends clothes from their villa in Auckland, her husband Art is studying for his PhD in Settler Literary Ephemera.  There is quite a bit of literary academic discourse throughout the novel related to Derrida (GoGo and Art first meet attending a Derrida Down Under speaking tour) and other postcolonial theorists.  While I’m not familiar with all the theorists I think mentioning them so explicitly points to the idea of (de)constructing national identity, as well as asking what constitutes settler culture.  At one point GoGo attends a party where other people are wearing examples of national costumes and GoGo realises that she has no such garment to wear.

            Class is also a prevalent theme in the novel.  Art and GoGo are what I would call middle class boho chic; twenty-somethings who are asset poor but educationally rich and dabbling in socialism.  While they don’t appear to have a lavish lifestyle, Art’s parents are well to-do and there is an understanding that Art will inherit a rather comfortable sum one day.  They also live rent free (courtesy of Art’s parents), and GoGo’s sewing brings in an income but not one they have to rely on.  While GoGo pronounces that she’s not materialist, she is doing quite nicely from her in-laws wealth.  This contradiction is played out in the novel.

            Initially I struggled with GoGo’s characterisation.  At first I thought she was a lot older than her 26 years but I got over that relatively easily because the first person narration (which sometimes slides into second) builds an easy and intimate rapport with the reader.  GoGo’s viewpoint on materialism and education is initially naïve and I found that a bit annoying which is probably a reflection of my working class background where tertiary education was not a given, but I came to like GoGo as I watched her grow, and I believe Kennedy has presented GoGo’s views for them to be challenged. 

While I have been referencing the postcolonial, class and education aspects of the novel, it is also about relationships, what marriage is and what love means, and what you can get away with when the lights go out.

I’m Working on a Building (VUP 2013) by Pip Adam

This is the second novel I’ve read and reviewed within as many weeks that deals with earthquakes.  While Lloyd Jones’s novel dealt specifically with the Christchurch earthquakes, Adam’s novel imagines an earthquake in Wellington.  What both Jones’s and Adam’s novels have in common is that the earthquake, or deconstruction in general, acts as a catalyst to question identity and what it is based on. 

 

Adam’s first book Everything We Hoped For was a collection of short stories that was awarded the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award.  I’m Working on a Building is her first novel.  The main character is Catherine, an engineer who is good at her job but not so good with people.  Catherine is not particularly likeable, she is distant and aloof, but as the narrative goes on - or goes backwards as the narrative starts at the present and then moves back to Catherine’s youth - we learn more about her and though never completely warming to her, come to understand her better. 

The use of buildings, and Catherine’s ability to engineer, seems to act as an analogy for (de)constructing her identity.  Catherine’s friend Tansy imagines Catherine as a house that no one can enter, which suggests that Catherine’s identity is projected through buildings.  However, Catherine does not seem aware of this fact, instead she believes the buildings she works on are far more magical than human in their edifice, but the perspectives of other characters suggests that Catherine constitutes her identity through her work on an unconscious level.  This becomes problematic for Catherine when the building she is working on collapses in an earthquake.

Structure is a prominent feature in the novel, not only in the use of engineering and its discourse but also the structure of narrative.  The chapters in the novel focus on a particular building (or series of buildings) around the globe that Catherine has worked on or admires: Ryugyong Hotel, Plattenbauten, Rankine Brown, to name a few.  The use of the technical engineering language is convincing and because of the extensive research Adam’s has done about engineering (Adam’s completed the novel as part of a PhD) building geeks will enjoy the use of the discourse in fiction. 

From my perspective, as a non-engineering geek, it is not so much the engineering language that I engaged with but how Adam’s has transferred the idea of engineering structure onto narrative.  While the majority of the text is in third person focalised through Catherine, we also have other characters’ perspectives about Catherine through first and second person narration.  Using all these tools in the narrative box (remembering that the narrative goes back rather than forward) suggests that Adam’s is taking a leaf out of the engineering book and is trying to construct something new while exposing the beams of narrative.  It could also suggest, through the use of the ‘I’ the ‘we’ the ‘she’ of narrative perspective, that showing the unified self/character in a novel is a fiction.  I could be over thinking it perhaps, but Adam’s book has made me think and question what she’s doing throughout – this is not a bad thing – it’s good to get your readers thinking, to challenge their ideas about story and how it could/should be constructed.  Readers of this book will not be observers to the unfolding action, but an active participant in ideas about structure. 

 

A History of Silence: A Memoir by Lloyd Jones (Penguin 2013)

 

My eldest sister once quipped after over-hearing someone blame Mother Nature for the Christchurch earthquakes, “it’s always a bloody woman’s fault.”  This snippet of conversation came back to me while I was reading Jones’s memoir which uses the series of Christchurch earthquakes as an analogy for the discovery and consequent rocking of his family’s foundations.  The land Christchurch was built on was originally a swap  - Jones suggests this fact was silenced, indeed forgotten, as the city and its inhabitants got on with life, until, as we know, the earthquakes brought forth liquefaction from the depths of the swamp back into Christchurch streets.  The reason why my sister’s quip came back to me is because the maternal line of Jones’s family history was most heavily silenced, and in engineering Christchurch for settlement Mother Nature had been to.  While I am not suggesting Jones blames his mother or grandmother, or indeed Mother Nature, the women’s silence about their past has had a profound effect on him, and in the memoir he seeks to give them a voice at a time when Mother Nature has been directing hers at Christchurch. 

            The memoir is told in an almost stream of consciousness way but with better punctuation.  One recollection leads to another and another and so on, therefore, the structure is not linear, readers move from the present to the past as Jones’s seeks to uncover his Grandparents on his mother and father’s side.  This style of narrative is engaging and I found at times I wanted to enter into the conversation where I found similarities with my own family history, which adds to the satisfaction of the reading experience.  Throughout Jones’s personal recollections and discoveries, the landscape enters.  Readers are taken from Christchurch post the September 2010 and February 2011 quakes, to Wales, around Petone and Wellington, and to a farm down south.  The land is shown to move, to meld, to hide and uncover, much as Jones’s family history does throughout the narrative. 

            While I acknowledge the landscape as a central motif in Jones’s memoir I feel a bit ambivalent about the inclusion of the Christchurch earthquakes, and by someone not from Christchurch or having had direct experience of the quakes.  The ethical concern of whose story it is to tell comes into play, as it does when delving into family history when a writer ends up speaking for members of their family who cannot answer back.  But then at no time does Jones suggest that he had direct experience of the quakes, rather he records his perspective and observations as an outsider.

In some ways, Jones is also an outsider to his family’s narrative.  While he lives in the same house as his parents, he knows little of their background or how previous life experiences have shaped them.  At times he acknowledges that imagination fills the gap between what he has heard and what official documents reveal.  Jones has a history of pushing the boundaries of narrative perspective, some critics slammed his adoption of a female perspective in Hand Me Down World and Biografi pushed the boundaries of fact and fiction.  Jones takes risks with narrative - he tries new perspectives, which always means his work is thought provoking and has the potential to be contentious.

            In some ways the memoir reminded me of Jones’s novel The Book of Fame (2000) which recounts the journey of The Originals rugby team to the United Kingdom in 1905.  That novel is about belonging, feeling a sense of self, and of course, in both the memoir and the novel there is a historical element which weaves together fact and imagination.  While The Book of Fame is about a team of heroes who help forge the identity of a new nation, Jones’s memoir is about forging the identity of a family in a new country, while still seeing elements of the self in the old one.  While The Book of Fame has poetic elements, the poetic is a little stretched at times in the memoir, but what both novels show is that the past never leaves us.

            Jones came to speak to the class when I attended the IIML.   As he spoke, outside, down one of those steep pedestrian walkways that link The Terrace to the city, a two storey wooden villa was burning.  The grey and black smoke was immense.  Thankfully the house was abandoned; years ago it had been set alight by a jilter lover whose girlfriend perished in the flames.  On reflection, it now seems appropriate that Jones spoke to the class on the same day as the fire because what I especially liked about Jones’s book are his descriptions of Wellington and the surroundings areas.  In my mind I could walk in the suburbs he mentioned, and see not only the physical landscape but imagine the emotional and historical connections to place.  The memoir shows that much like family history, the land is like a palimpsest that is continually written on over and over.