Jessie Tu, A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing.

 

- What an extraordinary and absorbing read this award winning novel is. In earthy, short, punchy sentences Tu takes us deep into a life, both professional and personal, lived on the edges. 

 - Jena Lin was a violin prodigy as a kid, an international celebrity, but had a nervous breakdown at the young age of 15. After a few years and now at university, she returns to playing but struggles to achieve maturity as an adult. Her supreme confidence as a professional musician with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra collides with her personal insecurity and sense of isolation and loneliness. She recognises her body is desired and treasured by random men. The hunger for some affirmation that only Mark can provide... He tells me he likes it when it hurts. I enjoy hurting him..writhing with some bottomless need...I want a man to degrade me. Maybe that’s the only way I can become a woman, because haven’t women always been degraded by powerful men? The men have their way with her. She rarely resists.

- Tu explores the social dynamics of the music and art communities in Sydney and New York, and brings vividly to life the stresses and strains on creative young people and their personal issues. Jena's own family circumstances, particularly her difficult relationship with her mother, are central to her own emotional instability.       

- The anxiety of auditioning and performance is so well captured. It's a very competitive and stressful process. An exchange with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra emerges as a possibility, and she’s being pressed to audition. 

- The novel is littered with references to famous composers, performers, artists and writers. A glorious celebration of culture. However Jena recognises that these spheres are dominated by old white men. If your art does not speak to them and their narrow set of experiences it will be lost in the universe of abandoned things, erased from history. 

- Finally, Tu takes us on a fabulous tour of New York - its bars, cafes, restaurants, performance venues, and lively streets: The city is always pulsating, floods of light and people and traffic...The stories are endless, and I never want to stop being inside its wilderness. Its temperament. Its density. Its cruelty.

- Jena's favourite movie is Frances Ha. She watches it over and over again (as do many people, including me!)