Feast by Emily Grady (who also won the Vogel for her debut novel) similarly invites a post-#MeToo reappraisal of sex,consent and power. But its exquisitely paced revelations are calculatedly opaque,rewarding active reading. In this way,form mirrors content:the novel warns against complacency and critiques the moral defence of not knowing.
Cold,beautiful film star Alison and “oblivious”,“slippery” musician Patrick are used to being admired and waited on,even in the isolated Scottish mansion where Alison’s mother died an “excruciatingly slow” death. “Both their appetites are enormous and they eat and drink with gusto,” observes Patrick’s “penetrating” daughter Neve,who’s spending her “gap year” from Australia with them. She notices,too,how they leave everyday detritus – dirty dishes,a stinking butchered rabbit,Alison’s secret positive pregnancy test – in their wake.
The characters snoop on and evade each other,looking for evidence of secret selves and hiding their own. They rifle through bins and suitcases,make secret films. Neve lies in her own diary,in case it’s read.
Vivid detail and unsettling undercurrents accrue to sketch character and build an ominous mood,from the opening pages to Neve’s climactic 18th birthday party,attended from Australia by her immaculately ordinary mother,Shannon. As the occasion looms,Alison’s grief is gradually revealed as something darker and more complex. So,too,is Patrick’s relationship with Shannon.
Gretchen Shirm was named aSydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist for her debut fiction,the short-story collectionHaving Cried Wolf.The Crying Room,her metafictional second novel,is a return to her roots:it’s told in linked stories that explore three generations of one family.
It’s not until the fourth story,set in a creative-writing class,that we realise the book we’re reading was written by one of its characters,Monica. The daughter of brittle,hypercritical Allison,she was informally adopted by her emotionally attuned aunt Susie when she was 12. Susie and Allison’s mother,Bernie,reflects on her own upbringing’s conflation of love and cruelty.
Shirm,a stunning writer,is also psychologically astute,particularly about the complexities of inheritance and the effort required to swim against the tide of how you were parented. But what’s most impressive is the way she uses her form to echo the book’s themes of self-creation.
Monica’s creation of the novel we’re reading parallels the process of conscious self-creation undertaken by Monica and Susie,as they rewire themselves. Which is itself emphasised by Allison’s stasis,furiously stuck in her mother’s patterns.
After Monica is introduced,we’re conscious the stories’ contrasting perspectives are all filtered through her own – they reflect her attempts to see the world through the eyes of the significant women in her life.
This is emphasised in a stunning,particularly savage story about Susie’s wedding,narrated by an envious “Allison”,who appears to deliberately burn her sister’s wedding dress. The text is entirely crossed out,accompanied by an author’s note asking to delete the story from the published collection. While the format makes it literally hard to read,it infuses the story with a haunting pathos:we’re reminded of the author’s internal conflict with every word.
Taken together,these three novels offer a wide-ranging interrogation of toxic societal norms and how they infect us,from #MeToo exploitation of power imbalance to inheriting an inability to be kind.
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