Our last book of the year was local author Nell Pierce’s The Australian/Vogel award winning novel, A place near Eden. The novel is told in the voice of Matilda (Tilly), who looks back at what had happened between her, her foster brother, Sem, and Celeste, in their teen years and then a few years later in early adulthood when, after spending some time together, Sem disappears and Tilly is implicated. The focus of the book is the time Tilly and Celeste spend at the place near Eden, when they are around 19 and 21, and what happens there.
We were, overall, more mixed about this book than for many this year, but it did engender a lively discussion. After spending some time enjoying the company of our host’s two young grand-daughters visiting from France, we settled down to business, starting with our …
First impressions
- Loved its exploration of how truth can be manipulated or twisted – of versions and perspectives, facts and truths – in personal lives, in law, and in art, but found the tone heavy-handed and unremitting with no respite.
- Found it tedious but it had some beautiful insights, and self-understanding.
- Thought it well-written, and didn’t hate it, but the characters were abysmal/appalling; thought it a very cerebral (as in, most of it took place in the head) novel.
- Quite enjoyed it, but didn’t love it.
- Found it too repetitive, but was intrigued by how she played with sequence in the novel. Found it a bit obfuscating but thought the mother was really interesting, and would have liked more family story. Could identify with Tilly’s uncertainty, but the book didn’t always carry her along.
- Had mixed feelings until the death/disappearance occurred, so found it OK overall.
- Found it very disappointing, and a big “let-down”. Wanted to like it because she likes Eden, but the book failed. The unreliable narrator was too “muddled up” so she couldn’t get tell who the characters really were. Would have liked more sense of place.
- Agreed with the group’s general impression, adding that the ending effectively followed the book’s arc, so it worked well.
- Finds this sort of mixed response to be a common Vogel experience. Would also have liked more sense of place, but did like the exploration of a person being easily manipulated.
Discussion
Our discussion ranged back and forth over several aspects of the book …
We talked about the narrator, Tilly and her friend Celeste. Tilly is a couple of years younger than Celeste, less confident and more naive, so at one level the book is a coming-of-age story. We thought both Tilly and Celeste were somewhat lost souls. They both wanted different mothers to the ones they had, though we appreciated that the mothers were interesting women who did not want to be the conventional domestic wife-and-mother. Celeste’s mother was an artist, while Tilly’s mother had a hippie tendency and was interested in the bush. Both had chosen artistic lives.
There was some disagreement in our group concerning Tilly’s mother. Some saw her as “appalling”, a poor mother who rented out her daughter’s room, for example, when they needed money, meaning Tilly had to sleep on the sofa. Others of us saw her as flawed but as showing her true generous nature at the end. We realised we were seeing her through Tilly’s eyes, and at the beginning they were the eyes of a teenager!
We tried to tease out the meaning of various things that happened. For example, Tilly talks about Celeste reading conspiracy books, but giving them up when Sem returns, full of his own conspiracy theories. What did this all mean?
We discussed what happened of course. Some felt Celeste was responsible, and was laying it on Tilly, while others didn’t. Are we readers being invited to consider what happened or is Pierce conveying the idea that some things will never be known. At one point in the book, the idea is expressed that everyone has a view on what happened, that they think, in fact, they know what happened – but is Pierce’s point that we can’t know if we are not involved?
The whole novel is about manipulation, about the slipperiness of truth, about who you can or can’t trust. Tilly sets us up to doubt Celeste, but then, at times she undermines that too wondering if she herself is misreading Celeste. Overall though Tilly comes across as a vulnerable person. One of us described her as “a bit off the planet”.
Then there is the question of Peter, Tilly’s one-time boyfriend and documentary filmmaker. How much did he care about her, and how much was he using her to make a name for himself? Tilly’s father too seems to manipulate things to have Tilly questioning her relationship with Sem when they were young. Or, does he? What did happen? Interestingly, we didn’t talk a lot about Sem.
Tilly herself lies – and admits it – to Peter and to the police. This brought us to Peter’s documentary about Sem’s disappearance. Pierce spends much time discussing the practice and power of documentary making. Peter tells the story, three ways – the lost boy, revenge, and the manipulated girl. But, each version is manipulated. The question with documentary films is, what are you documenting? That affects the approach taken. Meanwhile, Tilly wonders is there truth in art? (“I thought in art there might be truth”, says Tilly.) There is, as we all know, a difference between truth and facts.
We also talked about the writing, starting with the title and its double meaning: the physical place and the idea of paradise, including the idea of being “near” it. One member suggested the book has a circular arc, and that this is mirrored in Tilly’s boat going in circles at the end (she does “one more loop with the boat”). We briefly discussed the dog at the end and what it might mean. And the sky, also at the end. At first Tilly sees the sky as reassuring, but then realises it can be “distant and empty”.
Several times, we returned to the idea of place and that there wasn’t the specificity that many would have liked. One suggested that the swimming pool scenes in the beginning felt more like a country town than a city. We also wondered when it was set. Little detail is provided that would date it, though we felt it was reasonably contemporary. That said, there is a lot of smoking in the novel. Some of us felt the mystery/anticipation aspect of the plot was too drawn out.
We also briefly touched on the fact that, as we discover some way into the novel, the “you” to whom Tilly addresses her story is Celeste’s still infant child. She wants to set the record straight, but it perhaps also indicates that she is looking to the future – albeit at one point in the novel she says “I’m in the place where things end”.
One member observed that first novels are often autobiographical, but that this didn’t seem to be so from what we knew of the author’s life. However, another member commented that it’s a very interior novel, that we are in Tilly’s head and that maybe many of Tilly’s thoughts and concerns, if not life, were well known to the author.
The end result was a discussion that didn’t come to many conclusions, and maybe that was exactly Nell Pierce’s point. Life isn’t neat.
Present: 9 members
Minerva Reads ACT 