For Eve, Nell’s absence feels like all her favourite books have had their pages scrubbed, and where there were once stories, and joy, and hope, there is now blank paper between the covers, and only the title pages are left to remind her that they once contained magic.
Twelve-year-old Eve arrives at Nell’s school, armed with new girl skills acquired after multiple moves. Nell watches from the sidelines, already resigned to friendlessness, admiring of Eve’s smart rebuttal of public humiliation. Eve’s mother is a party girl, raising her daughter alone; Nell is the daughter of wealthy parents more interested in their work than in her. Their friendship sees them through the usual high school bullying and taunting until another new girl arrives, leaving Eve out in the cold. Several year later, Eve’s at university, out and happily living with two gay men, when she opens the door to Nell. Despite their reconciliation, neither is honest with the other – Eve deeply wounded by Nell’s rejection at school, Nell wrestling with an internalised homophobia and her own desire – but when Eve proposes they raise a child together, Nell agrees. Theirs is to be an experiment in parenting, a way to show the world that there are other, better ways of bringing up a child than the apparent societal norm. Several years later, their funny, smart daughter is asking what happened to Nell, a question Eve struggles to answer.
Even though it was Bridget, that psychopath, who lit the match, Eve had been pouring the gasoline for more than a decade.
Gray’s novel opens with an unsent letter from Eve to Nell, an outpouring of guilt and sadness at her own behaviour, before flitting back and forth between the present and the past, beginning with their meeting in 2006. Gray’s social observation is acute – her portrayal of adolescent girls’ cruelty and their terror of being different is particularly excruciating. She lightens her novel with some enjoyable humour not least with their daughter’s precocity but it’s the often-torturous nature of the relationship between Eve and Nell that’s at its centre, complicated by unvoiced desire and deep wounds inflicted on both sides so that long buried hurt, shame, guilt and dishonesty threaten to outweigh love. Gray avoids a Hollywood ending but offers her readers a glimmer of hope to hang onto with another letter bookending this absorbing novel.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London 9781399636957 368 pages Hardback (Read via NetGalley)
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This sounds really well observed. The daughter sounds a great character!
She is! Choosing your own kind of family seems a popular theme in fiction this year – Bryan Washington did it in Palaver. More reflective of a modern reality.
Hmmm… I just finished listening to the audio of this book and really didn’t like it. I’ll post a short review at some stage but I just found the characters unbelievably self-centred. I couldn’t fathom how people could be so calculating and also lacking so much emotional intelligence at the same time!
I never read Green Dot (it might actually be in my TBR stack…) but am unlikely to after this one.
Ha! Perhaps I’m more cynical although neither fared very well in how they were raised. I enjoyed this one more than you but I don’t feel the urge to read Green Dot, either.
This plot sounds interesting, however after reading Green Dot I don’t think I will read this. The main character in the book I read was so selfish and self absorbed that she irritated me far more than she interested me.
It’s an interesting setup and I enjoyed it but I’ll be giving Green Dot a miss.
I liked Green Dot better than Heisey’s Really Good Actually, but it dragged a bit in the second half. This one sounds interesting, if not a little contrived, if it comes my way, I’d definitely give it a go.
That sounds like a good plan.
Oh, this DOES sound much more interesting than Green Dot! Thanks for alerting me to it as I would have assumed from the cover that it was just another disaster woman novel.
Absolutely agree about that cover which hadn’t been finalised when I picked it up on NetGalley otherwise I’d have passed it by. Hope you enjoy it!
Oh dear – worrying for the publishers that no cover was more attractive than that cover!
Indeed! It tells you little or nothing about the novel.
I’m intrigued by the hint you offer about the handling of the ending.
It’s not Hollywood neat but there’s talking!
Sounds interesting. Last Australian book I read was Theory and Practice, which I really enjoyed. I have Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip out from my local library, after months of waiting for it, so that’s on my hit-list next after I finish Coetzee’s Youth.
I’ve not got around to Theory and Practice yet despite enjoying previous novels by de Kretser. Glad to hear you liked it.