The Sinkings

The Sinkings – Amanda Curtin       Published 2008 University of Western Australia Press

Part One – declaration of my own subjectivity as a reader

Sometimes I come to books late, and feel that in this I am somehow always lagging behind. As books are part of a marketplace, I get the feeling that there is the implication of a use-by date.  If I stumble upon a book in a timely manner, great! But as a rule I’ve tended to be slow to read and slow to respond, and because of this I must resist the urge that tells me not to respond at all, because what I am saying might be construed as old news.

I have to add that I am as interested in process as in product, and, for me, often the means is the end. It's the story within the story I like best. And what will remain six or twelve months down the track? That’s important in a book – that I can learn something new, or deepen my understanding of something old.

I wanted to preempt my ‘take’ on Amanda Curtin’s debut novel The Sinkings with this declaration–reviews inevitably involve a personal response to the work. Emotional connection is as important as intellectual connection in a novel, and our responses to the books we read are necessarily subjective and informed (often challenged) by our own  dearly held beliefs and values. The other thing that might be worth stating is that I am responding to this book about six months after reading it. From an objective point of view this book is beautifully crafted. Just as importantly, six months after reading The Sinkings, it continues to hold a place in my heart. I am not sure why, but there it is.

Part two – my take on the book

The Sinkings is set in two time periods, the nineteenth century and in contemporary times. When the dismembered human remains of a murder victim are discovered at the Sinkings near Albany, Western Australia in 1882, they are initially believed to be those of a woman. Subsequently they are identified as those of Little Jock, a former convict.

Willa Sampson is struggling with her own grief, and feelings of guilt associated with the loss of her child, who has gone away and ceased contact.  Her daughter Imogen was born with a mixed male and female chromosomal profile. Willa has been pressured by the well-intentioned medical personnel and her husband into making a quick decision with regard to her child’s gender identity, and into agreeing to surgery for the baby. This results in years of traumatising medical and surgical treatment, psychological distress, family and social distress, and in time, the departure of her adult child, and her husband.

Willa, now living alone with her cat, becomes obsessed with researching Little Jock’s story, which she first came across in an article in Past Lives ‘A strange case of murder and mutilation’ by George Sullivan twelve years earlier. Now that her daughter is gone she pursues this research relentlessly, possibly in the hope that it will offer up some sort of clue or answer to her beloved daughter’s story. Unlike her own child, Jock was born in an era when such surgical options were unavailable, when social expectations were different and gender roles were apparently more clearly delineated. Thus we have the engine of the story, and the reason for the obsessive dedication with which Willa pursues Little Jock’s story as she traces the documented fragments of his life back to Scotland, and ultimately Ireland, in her quest to understand possible alternatives that might have been available for her own child. And this is where the real story lies – in the gaps where research ends and Willa’s interpretation and emotional investment takes hold. For one thing, the quest for understanding identity (her own, her child’s, Little Jock’s) is never complete, and the more she digs, and the more details are uncovered, the more complex (less clear and further away) the picture becomes. It is the problem of essentialism, in pursuing a definative answer in attempting to tie down social reality  – there is an infinitely retreating destination. The more closely one looks, the more layers one sees. Ultimately it seems that it is only love that can be the enduring facet of this story, the story through-line, and acceptance – or more than that – celebration, of the unique human life – her own, her child’s, and that of the incredible person who was (Willa's) Little Jock.

Some novels carry a reader mostly along on the surface and give a great ride. I love novels like that. Others draw the reader in, and change something, although one is not always clear about what that is. I believe The Sinkings is one of those. I needed somewhere quiet to read this novel, to be absolutely alone with it. Once it caught me I couldn’t stop reading until the end. Then there was the inevitable feeling of loss when the book was finished. I think most readers understand what that is like. It is a breach that is not easily filled by just any other book.