April 25, 2009
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
Oh, first person narrators, ever so cunning and manipulative. How luring are their points of view, and how they sway us from the very first sentence, because after all, they’re doing the telling. As Helen, the narrator of Helen Garner’s novel The Spare Room begins, “First, in my spare room, I swivelled the bed on to a north-south axis. Isn’t that supposed to align the sleeper with the planet’s positive energy flow, or something?” Stepping away, we can see that she’s taking great care to appear to take care, but she also has no idea what she’s doing.
Helen is preparing her spare room for her friend Nicola’s arrival. Nicola has been suffering from terminal cancer for a long time, flitting from one experimental treatment to another with no signs of improvement, and she’s arriving in Melbourne now to stay with Helen for three weeks whilst undergoing another round of treatment at a clinic there.
At first, Helen is happy to host her old friend, and while certainly shocked by her decline and appalled by the side-effects of the treatment she receives, she is willing to go out of her way to be helpful, to release her inner-nurse. She makes soups, changes the sheets, transports Nicola to and from the clinic. Behind Nicola’s back, however, she notes considerable frustrations, primarily with Nicola’s inability to accept her fate. Helen remembers her own sister’s death from cancer: “She accepted her death sentence quietly, without mutiny; perhaps, we thought in awe, she even welcomed it. She laid down her gun. She let us cherish her. We nursed her.”
What Nicola requires of those around her, however, will not be so easy. What she demands of Helen, in addition to the nursing and the hosting that she seems to take for granted, is that Helen believe she will eventually recover, that the treatment will start working and by the middle of next week, she’ll be rid of the cancer. Which Helen is unwilling to do or even just incapable of doing, the futility of Nicola’s struggle staring her straight down in the face.
As the days go by, Helen becomes more and more frustrated by Nicola’s forced insouciance, her smiles, her inability to face the truth. She is also exhausted by the effort of caring for her friend, and by the isolation of the caregiver role. She is soon unable to humour Nicola anymore, to accommodate her need for planetary alignment, and she breaks, forcing her friend to see the reality that this cancer is going to kill her.
It’s a complicated climax, this moment, when we’re relieved that Helen has finally out and said it, and yet it’s discomforting to be feel our sympathy is with Helen, who has just proven herself to be an utter bully, who is behaving in ways most of us wouldn’t like to admit we’re capable of. It’s disquieting to identify with a character acting in a way that is so unsympathetic, but she is the narrative voice, and she’s so blunt and honest. It’s perfectly understandable. You’ll find yourself wanting to wring poor Nicola’s neck.
This is a perfect novel. It’s also quite short, but I’ve written this much, and I could go on and on (but I won’t). Because there is substance, layers and layers of. At its root about friendship, which Garner refers to here as a “long conversation”. As well as family, and belonging, and imposition, understanding, and proprietorship of each other and ourselves. Garner’s narrator fascinating to consider, her motivations, what her words and actions reveal. This novel is quiet in its force, and enormous for the space it gives to ponder.
April 25, 2009
My fiction in Room
I am very happy to announce that my story “What Noise Can Carry” appears in issue 32.1 of Room Magazine, which is out now. Not sure if it’s in the shops yet, but my copy appeared in the post today. The issue is gorgeous, and I was excited to see that it also contains work by Lorna Crozier and Patricia Young, as well as a review of Jennica Harper’s What It Feels Like For a Girl. It is very nice to be a part of something so good.
April 24, 2009
Finite Time
I’ve written a post over at the Descant blog about reading with finite time. How does one choose what to fill that time with?
April 22, 2009
Further excitement
My new issue of The New Quarterly has finally arrived! Honestly, never has there ever been an issue of a lit. journal I’ve so wanted to devour– Elizabeth Hay interviewed, Rebecca Rosenblum on Sassy, even Kim Jernigan’s Editor’s Letter is delightful. And speaking of Rosenblums, this particular one has been nominated for a National Magazine Award for her story “Linh Lai” (published in TNQ). I was also excited to see my favourite poet Jennica Harper up for a poetry award. Further excitement: Margaret Atwood’s Adopt a Word to Create a Story story has been revealed. It’s called “Persiflage in the Library” and it’s very cute (read it here).
April 22, 2009
Short
Lately I’ve been short on bloggish thoughts, too busy, I suppose, shining light on and playing music to my lower abdomen, as well as lying face-down with my shoulders on the floor and my bottom in the air. And ever-seeking the next piece of cake, which is usually around the corner anyway. These things all take time. I’ve also been reading good books, finishing up a number of writing projects, sitting tall in straight-backed chairs, and taking far too many baths. With pleasure. There are good things going on though, as you can see by the “forthcoming” projects listed in my sidebar, and fun things will be occurring here in weeks to come (including a new interview, and coverage of a bookish road trip to take place this weekend). Now must go and run another bath. Thank you for your patience.
April 18, 2009
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
Certain novels might not immediately appeal to me, aren’t exactly “my kind of book”, but then upon hearing nothing about one but exemplary praise, I really can’t help but read it. Which was the case with Steven Galloway’s novel The Cellist of Sarajevo, nominated for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize, finalist for the 2009 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, a Globe & Mail Best Book, and praised by many book lovers I hold in esteem.
This book could be classified as historical fiction, if you consider the early 1990s history. Though “historical fiction” also reads as a kind of slight, and one that is not intended here. The label is a slight, if only because so many works in the genre do the “fiction” part of the equation so very badly. History is the point, the facts are, and the reader comes away quite gratified, feeling as though they could pass an exam at school.
But facts are not the point of fiction, and in particularly not the point are lessons to be learned. If you want a lesson, read a textbook, but we turn to fiction for something more nuanced than that, more complex, and not to come away with certainty. Certainty, anyway, is some kind of illusion.
I didn’t come away from The Cellist of Sarajevo with an understanding of the conflict at its heart. I didn’t get a sense of the politics involved, the history even, of who was good and who was bad. These aren’t details I’d look for in a novel anyway, and Galloway has no desire to deal with them, or with with the perspective of the military commander who says, “I will tell you the reality of Sarajevo. There is us, and there is them. Everyone, and I mean everyone, falls into one of these two groups. I hope you know where you stand.”
But as readers we aren’t told where any of the characters stand, and that we can’t even tell makes clear Galloway’s point– that such distinctions are meaningless. People are people, and the reality of their lives in a war zone is remarkable for reasons beyond which side their affinities lie. The quotidian details are what we take away here, and they’re powerful in their general nature– that these are the kind of lives being lived each day in places all over the world. The struggle of a man to cross the city and fetch water for his family, another man who has sent his family to safety and is attempting to get to work, the task given to a sniper called Arrow. She is to protect the cellist who has been playing the same adagio every day in honour of the 22 people killed below his window, hit by shelling while standing in a lineup for bread.
The stories of these people, of these individual lives, are what fiction is made for. To quietly and without great sensation (for this is daily life after all) demonstrate what such days and lives are like, the implications of living under terror– to cross a street where you know that snipers are aimed, and whether or not you’re hit, they’ve got a hold on you. Even when nothing happens, characters are seized by the knowledge that an explosion is always imminent. Such details as that all the women have grey hair now, because no more do they have access to dye, or what it is to see an overweight person, what that means when resources are so limited for everyone.
This novel is also the story of the streets, the story of a city ravaged by war and rendered unrecognizable. How the characters reconstruct the city in their memories, these places they’ve always known. The devastation obliterates lives, but not the lives of those still living, and it becomes these citizens’ struggle to resist losing their humanity. Galloway shows the magnitude of this struggle, but also the power retained by those who succeed. That civilization is everywhere and forever always a work in progress.
April 18, 2009
It's Useful to Have a Duck by Isol
It’s Useful to Have a Duck by Isol is one of the best things I’ve come across lately, and not just because ducks are my second-favourite animal (after elephants). Here is a book that is two stories in one, accordion-style, one half the story of a boy and his duck and the various ways he uses it. As a hat, to dry his ears, and after the bath is almost drained, the duck plugs up the hole. A familiar-enough tale, but then turn the book around to read It’s Useful to Have a Boy, the same story but from the duck’s perspective. This duck is not a hat, but uses the boy’s head to see the view, he uses the boy’s ear to wax his bill, and the little duck is not a plug, but is instead seated comfortably in his sleeping hole.
What a delightful book, whose simple drawings will appeal to children, whose story is playful nonsense, who takes such advantage of its bookish form to contort into something quite wonderful. These two mirror stories rendering the “playful nonsense” so much more than that, offering a lesson on perspective that seems miraculous dawning on the adult reader. A child probably would only catch this lesson in glimpses, but how remarkable is any book with depths still to be plumbed.
April 15, 2009
Any day now
For about seven months, people liked to tell me, “You don’t look pregnant,” which I found deeply irritating and kind of perplexing to address. I don’t think I’d want to go back to that one, but neither am I too fond of the current comment, which is, “Any day now!” Because, well, no. Though perhaps in about forty days now, though probably more. My baby bump has ceased to be cute, and I am beginning to look into the mirror with considerable fright, and who knows what the effect will be forty days from now. I could also do with fewer strangers telling me I look “heavy” in the shower at the gym.
Nevertheless, I am excited. Our very good friends had a little girl two weeks ago, which served to make the connection clear, that pregnancy is a means to a miraculous end, for I often forget it’s not an end in itself. And our baby is moving around all the time, so that I feel like I’m getting to know it. Though yesterday I also got to know that baby is lying sideways, so we have to do everything possible during the next two weeks to get that baby upside down. I vote for turning somersaults in the pool, and hope it does the trick.
The biggest news, however, is that the baby’s blanket is done. I started knitting it back in November, before I could acknowledge the baby in any other way, out of fear that wanting too much was unlucky. It’s only been very recently that I’ve been able to start preparing, and indeed now the baby’s nursery is ready(ish). But in November, all I could do was knit, which made me feel that at least I was preparing in some way. The blanket coming together perfectly, with no mistakes, which is previously been unheard of in a project by me. The blanket is beautiful, so soft and warm, and I can’t wait to meet the little person who will be wrapped inside it.
April 14, 2009
On the new Drabble
Margaret Drabble’s new “semi-memoir” The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History With Jigsaws is out in Britain now. I’ve ordered a copy, as the North American edition isn’t out until the fall, and I’m not sure just how much time I’ll have for reading then. Right now, you can listen to her reading from it on The Guardian Podcast. In reference to the book, Drabble on occupation and overcoming depression: “We all tackle it in our own ways. I have long been a believer in the therapeutic powers of nature, and had faith that a good, long walk outdoors would always do me good. It might not cure me, but it would do me good.” She also claims to have quit writing fiction for fear of repeating herself, which is not so surprising if you examine her oeuvre, and how she has challenged the novel to be something different every time. Perhaps she thinks she’s exhausted the possibilities? But reviews of the new book have been favourable. I liked this from The Telegraph: “What a puzzle: Margaret Drabble’s memoir cum history of the jigsaw cum paean to her rather dull aunt shouldn’t really work. But somehow, in the end, it seduces.”
Incidentally, Drabble’s feud with sister A.S. Byatt is reported to have stemmed from a dispute surrounding– what else?– a tea set.
