tasmanian_bibliophile's review
4.0
‘I am waiting for this visitor so that I can tell my story and die.’
Victoria Morrell is an old woman with a rich past. Victoria was once an artist, living and working in Paris, where she knew the artists of the Surrealist movement. But now Victoria lives a reclusive life in Hampstead, London. She is dying.
Anna Griffin is the young woman who has been commissioned to write Victoria’s biography. She later remembers how she was so distracted when she set out for her first meeting with Anna that she forgot to take her umbrella and was soaked by rain.
Victoria wonders what to tell Anna and how:
‘How can she speak her own life when so much exists as unspeakable images, wound filmic and narcissistic in this old, old head?’
She’d prefer to bring Anna into her time than made to feel old by recounting her past.
The women discover that they both lived in the same mining town in Australia. This particularly pleases Victoria, and this new intimacy enables both women to recount their stories. But does writing a biography require a greater level of detachment? How similar are their lives? Is there a point of connection, or (coincidental, surely) intersections?
‘There is a stringency to writing biography that Anna seems unable to observe.’
I had to read this novel slowly to try to do justice to the imagery in Ms Jones’s writing. I may reread it at some stage better prepared to linger within and explore the images. There are a number of different elements to this novel: the lives of Anna and Victoria, their experiences of family and of grief. This is one of those novels where the pleasure of reading is in the journey through the pages: the ending is less important. Or is it? My conclusion could well be different next time.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Victoria Morrell is an old woman with a rich past. Victoria was once an artist, living and working in Paris, where she knew the artists of the Surrealist movement. But now Victoria lives a reclusive life in Hampstead, London. She is dying.
Anna Griffin is the young woman who has been commissioned to write Victoria’s biography. She later remembers how she was so distracted when she set out for her first meeting with Anna that she forgot to take her umbrella and was soaked by rain.
Victoria wonders what to tell Anna and how:
‘How can she speak her own life when so much exists as unspeakable images, wound filmic and narcissistic in this old, old head?’
She’d prefer to bring Anna into her time than made to feel old by recounting her past.
The women discover that they both lived in the same mining town in Australia. This particularly pleases Victoria, and this new intimacy enables both women to recount their stories. But does writing a biography require a greater level of detachment? How similar are their lives? Is there a point of connection, or (coincidental, surely) intersections?
‘There is a stringency to writing biography that Anna seems unable to observe.’
I had to read this novel slowly to try to do justice to the imagery in Ms Jones’s writing. I may reread it at some stage better prepared to linger within and explore the images. There are a number of different elements to this novel: the lives of Anna and Victoria, their experiences of family and of grief. This is one of those novels where the pleasure of reading is in the journey through the pages: the ending is less important. Or is it? My conclusion could well be different next time.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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