In Short Fiction

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday December 13, 2008

Reviews by Kerryn Goldsworthy

HEART AND SOUL

By Maeve Binchy

Orion, 464pp, $35

Reading this novel is like eating lavishly buttered toast with golden syrup, a simile that comes irresistibly to mind because the book is awash with food and drink. The main characters are Irish cardiologists who have doughnuts and black pudding for breakfast and three red wines at Happy Hour, which sounds like the basis of a politically incorrect joke.

Maeve Binchy understands the genre of which she is queen - feel-good, populist, domestic fiction - very well; the six or seven plot strands are all connected and brought together at the end.

The hub of the action is the new heart clinic at St Brigid's Hospital in Dublin, which cardiologist Clara Casey has been appointed to run. One of the first people she employs is Ania, a Polish immigrant whose character illustrates the way that multiculturalism and the new Europe are playing out in Ireland.

As Clara gathers her team around her, the reader catches on that what Binchy has done here is provide a fantasy for most of her readers: a happy workplace.

PLAYING THE GAME

By Belle de Jour

Orion, 320pp, $32.99

The mysterious "Belle de Jour" may call herself a whore but I call her a shrewd businesswoman, although of course there can be a very large overlap for a clever and lucky few. After two books, a blog and a television show, the Belle de Jour franchise has expanded into fiction. This book calls itself a "novel", anyway.

The main event is Belle's decision to hang up her whips and crotchless knickers, a decision that coincides with her relationship break-up. She therefore morphs into Bridget Jones about halfway through the book, though it's hard to tell for sure. But the transition from tart lit to mere chick lit is a backward step; Belle was more interesting before she went out and got a real job.

For all that, this is an entertaining book, funnier than the Bridget Jones series, full of useful information. It's largely a pastiche of classic literature and other people's witticisms. However it's easy to forget, while you're reading this, what the lives of women who have sex for money are really like.

UNDER CONTROL

By Mark McNay

Canongate, 320pp, $27.95

Written at the place where the conventions of grunge meet those of social realism, this novel is not for the squeamish. Mark McNay is interested in difficult lives that have been wrecked from the outset by horrible childhoods.

Of these, the female character is the least interesting: Charlie is the stereotyped prostitute with a heart of gold. Her boyfriend, Gary, is much more convincing as a character - he is seriously mad, with narcissistic delusions and terrifying voices in his head. But the most unpleasant character in this cast of misfits is the social worker Nigel, whose personality turns out to be less simple and less nice than it initially appears.

Mark McNay's first novel, Fresh, was a success and that may be why his editor has given him a bit too much freedom with this one: the mundane, sometimes squalid details of depressed and underfunded everyday lives are laid on with a trowel, as are the garish and violent details of Gary's fantasy life. The plot is clearly moving towards disaster but it doesn't move fast enough.

PICK OF THE WEEK

COOEE

By Vivienne Kelly

Scribe, 320pp, $32.95

This is a skilfully written novel in which the main character and narrator Isabel Weaving tells her sad story in such a way as to demonstrate that, right to the end, she doesn't understand what kind of awful person she actually is. Her catch-cry is "It wasn't my fault". Even when she's old and bitter and has lost everything, Isabel remains narcissistic and self-deluded, blind to the effects of her behaviour and capable of breathtakingly casual cruelty towards people she doesn't care about.

This is dangerous ground for a writer; the challenge of an unpleasant first-person narrator is to keep the reader wanting to be around her. Vivienne Kelly does this by making Isabel intelligent and articulate and giving her an unusually interesting life: children, husbands, lovers, a distinguished profession in which she has inspired and inspiring skills and a shocking secret in her past. The character of Isabel also works because psychologically it's so astute and convincing; the worst in people's natures does tend to flower from the nasty soil of self-delusion, self-justification, self-indulgence or wilful blindness to the effect you are having on other people.

Isabel has alienated her son, Dominic, whom she adores (because he is so much like her) and has nothing but insults and dismissal for her daughter, Kate, who resembles her father and loves her mother unconditionally in spite of her constant belittlement and cruelty. Leaving her husband and children to run away with a rich and charming stranger, Isabel can see no wrong in her actions. And she never shows enough interest even in her beloved second husband to inquire into the source of his apparently bottomless wealth.

Without ever abandoning her love for her mother, Kate nonetheless has a very nasty surprise in store for her and this is the event on which the story turns. Kelly has done a wonderful job of maintaining a compelling narrative voice and adding a blackly funny element into the bargain.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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