- This is thoroughly absorbing debut novel by Diana Reid, a graduate in philosophy from Sydney university. She brings a subtle and incisive voice to her characters' experiences of residential college life.
- The colleges are Fairfax and St Thomas’, women only and men only (presumably Women's College and St Paul's in real life, bastions of privilege, most residents having graduated from Sydney's elite private schools). Eve is 20 years old and Michaela 18. Their circle of friends include Emily, Claudia, the delightful Portia ('wait, what?'), and Luke, Nick and Balthazar. There is not a working or even middle class person in sight, the closest being the narrator Michaela, who went to a Catholic school in Canberra, and whose mother is a teacher. (This ambience resonated with me, having attended a Sydney University residential college myself, International House).
- The students' interactions are conveyed in intricate detail. It's constant parties, facile drinking games, sexual encounters and humiliations, and betrayals. Eve becomes aware that Michaela and Nick had sex while very drunk and she raises the issue of consent with her. They argue about it and the nature of casual sex, whether it’s ‘meaningless’. The memory of a raped and murdered student on campus, years previously, lingers. And a tragedy awaits them now.
- This argument becomes the core of the novel. Eve is a highly confident and articulate feminist and social critic. She has the intelligence, bravery and linguistic armoury to be a mover and a shaker. Although she 'dislikes Germaine Greer', that's precisely who she reminds the reader of. She becomes an outspoken and media savvy journalist and author after graduating in Cultural Studies. Although she has a tendency to steal other women's personal stories and present them as her own.
- Michaela, on the other hand, is more restrained and reflective, and describes herself as 'a cocktail of personalities'. She unfortunately becomes involved with her professor, Paul Rosen, who has 'a reputation'. He's twice her age and they have frequent sex in his house, at great risk to his career. Eve becomes aware of it, and once again the political versus personal contest emerges. It's a common dialectic in any community or society.
- Reid has an incredible ability to dissect intimate relationships with surgical precision and nuance. The contrast between Eve’s perspective and Michaela’s is clearly presented but there is never any over-dramatisation. Eve may be ‘objectively’ right, and Michaela too self-absorbed and personal, lacking the conceptual framework to articulate what is so evident to Eve, that elite colleges are noxious places. Although Michaela does at the end register that the privileged college boys are ‘morally impoverished’. Which of course does not deter them from achieving their career goals in our corporate, professional and political realms.
- Reid has an incredible ability to dissect intimate relationships with surgical precision and nuance. The contrast between Eve’s perspective and Michaela’s is clearly presented but there is never any over-dramatisation. Eve may be ‘objectively’ right, and Michaela too self-absorbed and personal, lacking the conceptual framework to articulate what is so evident to Eve, that elite colleges are noxious places. Although Michaela does at the end register that the privileged college boys are ‘morally impoverished’. Which of course does not deter them from achieving their career goals in our corporate, professional and political realms.
- I enjoyed this wonderful novel immensely. The characters are bursting with life. Five stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment