Two sisters try to come to terms with their past and present in a debut novel by Australian writer Kalinda Ashton. Louise’s twin brother Jeremy died in a house fire when he was 10, and soon afterwards their mum left. Now, Louise is a recovering heroin addict but struggles with getting the rest of her life together – she has just lost her benefits and her social housing flat in Sydney. Her older sister Alice comes to the rescue, not for the first time, but is pondering her own problems – an unsatisfactory affair with a married man she doesn’t love, and a job in a school threatened with closure.
The story shifts between several viewpoints, the differentiations made clear by the use of different tenses and first, second and third person. Jeremy’s sections are in third person present tense and take the reader right up to the forthcoming tragedy (Jeremy’s death is mentioned in the first chapter). His story, one of loneliness and being bullied, is movingly written but I found this less satisfactory than the present day stories. I didn’t really want to be made to care about someone I knew would die.
Louise was held back at school, creating a rift with her more successful twin and removing his protector. She invented the Danger Game, a game of completing obligatory dares, and is still reckless and impulsive. Now she wants to look for their mum, believing that finding her would help her and Alice to make sense of their past and maybe move on from it. Her sections are in second person present tense, a style I’m very wary of but here it somehow works.
My favourite character though is Alice, not yet 30 but with a certain world weariness, reluctantly taking on various responsibilities, to Louise, to their dad (she is paying his rent) and to the pupils at the school where she teaches, many of them from poor immigrant families or with special needs. Her rationalisation for a relationship with the frankly creepy Jon, a married man, is that she was used to feeling unloved anyway when she met him. It has been going on for a while and is clearly not the first such unsatisfactory liaison she has had. When she learns that there are plans to close her school, she refuses to accept it as inevitable, and takes up a leading role in the campaign to keep it open, helping to bring together parents and teachers. As she is for once actively resisting fate, there is a little light in what is frequently a very bleak novel.
The portrait of the relationship between the sisters, and the way in which it changes again in the story, is carefully built and successfully built up.
Any Cop?: The distinct character portraits in the novel are memorable and convincing, and there is a message about the need for and value of resistance to change in hard times. What’s not to like?
Luci Davin
Bookmunch 