- An astute, insightful novel with edgy, fresh prose that has heaps of muscle and grit. Its tone is jazzy and discordant. Reading it is like walking on hot coals, but it's exhilarating.
- There is a maturity to Leilani's 23 year old narrator, Edie, and she posseses a fierce intelligence. She's African American and due to a difficult upbringing she’s frustrated and needy, and tolerates the physical, sexual violence and seemingly playful asphyxiation by a controlling older white man Eric. Their sexual relationship is a danse macabre.
- Eric lives with his wife Rebecca in an upper middle class part of Jersey City. Rather strangely Edie is invited to stay in their house for a while to help them navigate the problematic terrain of parenting their adopted daughter Akila, a black, surly, difficult 13 year old. It’s an empty, meaningless lifestyle in the house, and there is little communication. Edie and Eric steal away for frequent, yet unsatisfying sex. Rebecca is aware of it.
- The family have their domestic rhythms, ordinary and vacuous. The newcomer Edie, as it turns out, is a rather enthusiastic painter and amateur photographer. She paints mundane stuff like Rebecca’s boots and her half-eaten Granny Smiths. She is obsessed with self portraits too, which always ‘fail’. One time she secretly photographs Eric and Rebecca’s lovemaking, peering into their bedroom: ‘the soundless rutting of husband and wife’. She plays computer games with Akila. Apart from helping her with her black hairstyles there is not much depth to their relationship.
- They all dress up for the annual Comic Con, like it’s a religious feast day. Contemporary pop culture rituals and music dominate their lives, if lives they genuinely are.
- Towards the end of her stay Edie finally sees Eric for what he is. ’I let myself be awed by his middling command of the wine list’. And she paints Rebecca, her best effort yet, their relationship having developed into something much more meaningful.
- Racism is a subterranean hum throughout this novel and it is powerful. It's there in all the interactions.
No comments:
Post a Comment