Women Writers Challenge - What is Left Over After and Sea Dog Hotel

Jung called it Synchronicity - where two causally unrelated things come together through meaning. In Art and Literature synchronicity happens all the time, and this time, at the start of my reading challenge. This is where I (along with many other active bloggers on writing) have made the commitment to read and review (a personally set goal of) a number books by Australian women writers this year. I'm reading ten and reviewing six.

I'm not sure if this counts as one, or two, reviews, but I'm posting these together because of an important thematic commonality shared by both novels, What is Left Over After, and Sea Dog Hotel. That is, both novels explore aspects of the mother daughter relationship where roles are reversed. The child is placed in a position where she is (at times) the default mother, required to take responsibility, and the mother is, at least part of the time, in the role of child.

It would be easy for a writer to tackle this subject matter in a way that creates a binary, a hardened point of view polarising ideas of right and wrong, either demonising the mother for not picking up her responsibilities or allowing a label of one or another form of mental illness to stand as a closed explanation for what occurs. It is equally tempting to cast the daughter as victim. To their great credit, neither of these writers does. The relationship between mother and daughter, the subtle exploration of these complex relationships, is undertaken with sensitivity and care in these otherwise very different novels.

Natasha Lester's debut novel What is Left Over After won the TAG Hungerford Award for an unpublished manuscript in 2008, which is no mean feat. I am not at all surprised. I found her writing to be accomplished, subtle, and emotionally sensitive. Natasha has since produced another critically well-received novel If I Should Lose You which I am looking forward to reading later in the year.

What is Left over After traces backwards and forwards through the life of Gaelle (Ellie) in a voyage of self-discovery after her baby daughter Aurora is stillborn. Much of the novel juxtaposes the relationship between Gaelle and her troubled mother, told as a story interwoven with magical stories of princesses and fantastical creatures that Gaelle's mother told to her as a child. Gaelle's muse, and witness, is a thirteen year old girl, Selena, who is befriended by Gaelle in Siesta Park, a tiny seaside holiday village in South-Western Australia. Gaelle has run away from her husband and friends in the months following the death of her baby daughter, and its self-destructive aftermath. I won't go into any more detail for fear of giving out spoilers.

The telling of Gaelle's story opens up spaces that cause us to consider both the saving grace and dangers of storytelling; its ability to transform, reveal deep truths, and act as a salve, but also how, if overused, it can seduce away from authenticity and closeness, making it difficult to know what is or isn't real, and difficult to engage in the moment; the grounded joys of the everyday. This is implied in Gaelle's case where her attempts to get at the truth are continually frustrated. Her mother uses story to avoid telling Gaelle (and perhaps admitting to herself) what she is doing with her life.

Playwright and novelist Marlish Glorie's first novel The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street was published through Fremantle Press. Marlish made the decision to self-publish Sea Dog Hotel as an e-book. The work and care that has gone into this new novel is self-evident. The story is primarily concerned with a mother-daughter relationship (Ruth and her daughter Grace). Young Grace feels responsible for taking care of her vulnerable mother but also wants to break away from her and return to a more stable existence, a door that now seems closed to her, as her much loved father has passed away and the family house has been sold. After the death of Grace's father Mother and daughter have wandered from place to place, never settling because of Ruth's apparent inability to do so, and when the story opens they are on their way to a tiny inland town in Western Australia, to a hotel ironically decorated on an ocean theme, hence Sea Dog Hotel. Ruth has bought the hotel, sight unseen, from the Internet.

As the story unfolds, we learn more about Ruth and her daughter, the story of the town and its inhabitants, and each becomes a catalyst for growth and change in the other.

Marlish Glorie's experience as a playwright comes to the fore as she explores these various characters and deftly employs dialogue in the vernacular, and  in the process bringing in that laconic country humour and stoicism that seems peculiar to people in Australian country towns. It is a warm and thought-provoking book, and well worth the incredibly reasonable e-book price which you can check out at Amazon.