This has pushed other books on my list further down, especially since I found myself strangely drawn into the story once I'd started reading. The writing style is unobtrusive and leaves the intrigue of the story itself to do the work. It does this in a self-contained way that suggests considerable restraint on the part of the author, quite a feat, given the content.
The House of Fiction is a memoir published last year by Fremantle Press, and concerns that part of Susan Swingler's life which involves the departure of her father when she was four years old, leaving her mother a single parent in England in1950. Her father was Leonard Jolley, head librarian of the University of Western Australia's library for many years, and husband to iconic and well-regarded Australian novelist, Elizabeth Jolley.
The book is an exploration of the mores of the time as much as anything else. The story ultimately reveals that Elizabeth (previously Monica) and Leonard were lovers while Leonard and Susan's mother Joyce were still together. The then Monica was a friend to both of them, nursed Leonard when he was in hospital with a flare-up of Rheumatoid Arthritis, and the two women (Leonard's wife and his secret lover) subsequently had Leonard's first daughters only five weeks apart. While this was hurtful and unorthodox behaviour, it was probably not a very uncommon story post World War II when the world had been torn apart, lost any innocence that it still might have had, and where the urge to procreate would have been strong.
The other aspect of the story was the secrecy that surrounded this, and continued to do so over many years - Joyce did not know that the woman Leonard had left her for was their friend Monica (Elizabeth Jolley) or that Monica's baby was fathered by Leonard, and Susan did not learn of this until she was 21. This was compounded by a further web of fabrications which left the people involved confused as to what could be believed, and angry at the deception.
This, while interesting, was not the most gripping part of the story for me. What impressed me was the exploration of the psychological aspects - how secrecy, half-truths, fictions disguised as reality, might shape the world of the developing child, causing a potential fracture in their understanding of reality and the ability to trust. In Susan's case there had been enough stability and love from her mother and maternal grandmother during these formative years to protect her from the potential damage of this behaviour. Even so, she alludes to these difficulties, and the hurt remained it seems, up to, and throughout, the writing of the book. This part of the story was courageously and thoroughly explored by the author.
The other thing that impressed me was the author's commitment to appraising the situation with as much honesty as she could - and the positioning of herself within the story, underlining the fact of its subjective nature, only added to this. To my mind, Elizabeth comes out of the story reasonably well in the circumstances - people are only human and sometimes they fall in love with people who already have other commitments, act on those emotions, and people get hurt. Good things come from that too - in this case, two more children. Elizabeth did, at least, try to provide some comfort for the child left behind across the ocean. There seemed to be some generosity in her actions as well as some arguably less generous impulses.
Not for the first time, this book made me reflect on the sacrificial nature of the confessional, or semi-confessional text - that the author exposes self for the sake of the story. I think this applies to the work of Elizabeth Jolley as it does to Susan Swingler. There is, in that, an impulse to explore a truth, the various ways in which humanity is expressed for better or worse.
I'm looking forward to reading this and to watching Australian Story before they take it off iview. It's an amazing story -- if someone wrote it as fiction, readers might have trouble suspending their disbelief!
ReplyDeleteHi Louise,
DeleteI thought the Australian Story was a good way of adding to the subtleties of the story. Because it is a memoir, I think it was relevant to see the author interviewed and get a sense of her feelings now of the whole thing. It didn't make me think badly of Elizabeth - if anything it made me more determined to do the belated thing (big confession) and actually read her books. I've neglected some areas of my reading, as you can see. Thanks for your thoughtful comment.