A review by roguepingu
In the Garden of the Fugitives by Ceridwen Dovey
4.0
*To contextualise my viewpoint, I am writing this review off the back of having just attended an event where Ceridwen Dovey was interviewed about this very book, and that has certainly sharpened my own understanding of its contents.
In the Garden of the Fugitives is an epistolary novel juxtaposing two characters: Vita, an undergraduate student interested in filmmaking, and an older man, Royce, who funds her pursuits via a scholarship. The novel starts with Royce reaching out to Vita, after a long estrangement, and sharing with her his life story as he talks from his deathbed. She falls into step and reveals her own confessions in her letters.
I’ve bumped this rating up from three stars to four stars but it is entirely arbitrary because I am still at a loss to how I feel about this book and whether or not I should be assessing it at all. To an extent, this reluctance to judge is what I have experienced approaching other works - such as Cambodia’s Lament, a book of poetry written by Cambodian refugees reporting their own experiences. How can anyone cast a critical opinion on something so personal and say, “well ho hum you definitely could’ve written about your life-changing trauma with more Oxford commas and less extended metaphors.” Obviously, the content itself is untouchable when it is written as candid truth. While not to the same extreme, I have similar reservations while examining In the Garden of the Fugitives
It is clear to whoever has even glanced at Dovey’s Wikipedia page that the character of Vita has moments in her journey of self-discovery that have not wandered at all far from Dovey’s own life story. That said, as Dovey has explained herself, Vita is not purely autobiographical. “Write what you want to know,” advises Dovey, contesting the mainstream belief that writers should only write what they know. This third book of Dovey’s is certainly a third giant step in her development as a writer and the character of Vita is meta in the sense that it feels Dovey needed to write this character in order to move forward artistically. How can I bring myself to be judge on this process? It is perhaps best to let sleeping dogs lie.
My second hesitation derives from the ways in which I both liked and disliked this novel.
To its absolute credit, this book is a palimpsest of ideas and analysis. However - and here the emphasis is on me as a problematic reader, rather than anything reflecting on Dovey's work - there were so many personas of myself from which I approached this narrative:
1. Me as a survivor of high school and having to study Pompeii for my final year.
Much of Royce’s story is set in Pompeii where, as a young student, he has followed Kitty with tongue out and tail wagging to assist her with her archaeological ambitions. Although he has no archaeological background of his own, he does have puppy dog love and a wealthy estate. All this is well and good, and Dovey demonstrates her depth of research gracefully throughout the story, but I found that it was here that my feet began to drag. As with most things studied at high school, no matter how good the content is, by the end of the day every student loathes the subject matter which they are forced to study. That was my experience after having to write about Pompeii for all my year twelve ancient history exams. When Dovey was gently giving her readers appropriate geographical and historical context, I felt I was being dragged back to the classroom, and being told how to write about Fiorelli and Lazer in my HSC exams all over again. In fact, I was even approaching the novel as if I was marking an exam, thinking to myself, “Ah yes, well done Ceridwen, you get a mark for mentioning the Napoli Mafia, but you should really also mention the corrosive effects of pigeon poo on the ruins.” Needless to say, this unwanted blast to the past (graduation was less than three years ago and so still a little too close for comfort) did not enhance my reading experience, and this was through no fault of the writing itself.
2. Me as a survivor of high school and having to study the epistolary form for English.
See previous point. Let’s just say, I’m still scarred from Fay Weldon’s Letters to Alice which I stopped reading after thirteen pages and then proceeded to incrementally detest even further as we studied it at school. I’ve never been able to respect letter writing since. That said, I do think Dovey did a pretty darn good job considering that I am in never good humour for epistol-ing. The format of the letters served as an elegant seam between the two narrators so the stories were co-dependent while still revealing 3D characters, strong in their own right.
3. Me as a writer who is also coming to terms with her own voice.
Of course, Vita is not 100% autobiographical ("I hope not!" says Dovey in tonight's interview, describing Vita as very "creepy") but where the paths of Vita and Dovey do align is coming to terms with inserting themselves into their artistic creations. Dovey's first book was published at the age of 23. Blood Kin is crystalline - a work of political fiction that seems Orwellian, and is purposefully non-specific in its geographical and social setting. She includes nothing of her own persona and is careful that the gaze is never inward. This debut novel is in stark contrast to In the Garden of the Fugitives which is a metanarrative, unreservedly examining the creative process at an acutely personal and ethical level. Personally, as a writer, but specifically in regards to my poetical writing, I'm still at the very early stages of this development and this inversion towards the author hits close to home. Is this a good thing? In my opinion, yes. Admittedly, I am way too early in my creative pursuits to perhaps apply what I have gleaned from this novel to my own processes. Nevertheless, Vita's own struggle to discover what role she must play in her own creative productions is similar to my own difficulties in choosing to spend time writing poetry - which steeps me into a pool of guilt, as I have always considered my poetical writing as an excessively self-indulgent process- instead of focussing on my straightforward non-fiction political articles.
Honestly, it's this last reflection that caused me to bump up my review from three stars to four stars. During the first few pages of this book, I thought I was reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History but with a layer of self-aware white privilege. Such an assumption was too hasty and Dovey's book is a hell of a lot more than just a college coming-of-age story mixed with a romanticised obsession with the ancient world. During the interview I attended this evening, Dovey brought up the idea of "fiction as therapy" and I think this framework is what enriches the experience of reading this book. This is not the case of yet another author trying to weigh in on the Pompeii experience. This is not Fay Weldon being condescendingly didactic about telling you how to read or write. It is simply a novel reaching out to those who are unsettled. The aching flaws and openness of the characters are what makes them such exquisite examples of human ambivalence. In the Garden of the Fugitives is not an answer, it is a question. So reader, what do you want to know?
In the Garden of the Fugitives is an epistolary novel juxtaposing two characters: Vita, an undergraduate student interested in filmmaking, and an older man, Royce, who funds her pursuits via a scholarship. The novel starts with Royce reaching out to Vita, after a long estrangement, and sharing with her his life story as he talks from his deathbed. She falls into step and reveals her own confessions in her letters.
I’ve bumped this rating up from three stars to four stars but it is entirely arbitrary because I am still at a loss to how I feel about this book and whether or not I should be assessing it at all. To an extent, this reluctance to judge is what I have experienced approaching other works - such as Cambodia’s Lament, a book of poetry written by Cambodian refugees reporting their own experiences. How can anyone cast a critical opinion on something so personal and say, “well ho hum you definitely could’ve written about your life-changing trauma with more Oxford commas and less extended metaphors.” Obviously, the content itself is untouchable when it is written as candid truth. While not to the same extreme, I have similar reservations while examining In the Garden of the Fugitives
It is clear to whoever has even glanced at Dovey’s Wikipedia page that the character of Vita has moments in her journey of self-discovery that have not wandered at all far from Dovey’s own life story. That said, as Dovey has explained herself, Vita is not purely autobiographical. “Write what you want to know,” advises Dovey, contesting the mainstream belief that writers should only write what they know. This third book of Dovey’s is certainly a third giant step in her development as a writer and the character of Vita is meta in the sense that it feels Dovey needed to write this character in order to move forward artistically. How can I bring myself to be judge on this process? It is perhaps best to let sleeping dogs lie.
My second hesitation derives from the ways in which I both liked and disliked this novel.
To its absolute credit, this book is a palimpsest of ideas and analysis. However - and here the emphasis is on me as a problematic reader, rather than anything reflecting on Dovey's work - there were so many personas of myself from which I approached this narrative:
1. Me as a survivor of high school and having to study Pompeii for my final year.
Much of Royce’s story is set in Pompeii where, as a young student, he has followed Kitty with tongue out and tail wagging to assist her with her archaeological ambitions. Although he has no archaeological background of his own, he does have puppy dog love and a wealthy estate. All this is well and good, and Dovey demonstrates her depth of research gracefully throughout the story, but I found that it was here that my feet began to drag. As with most things studied at high school, no matter how good the content is, by the end of the day every student loathes the subject matter which they are forced to study. That was my experience after having to write about Pompeii for all my year twelve ancient history exams. When Dovey was gently giving her readers appropriate geographical and historical context, I felt I was being dragged back to the classroom, and being told how to write about Fiorelli and Lazer in my HSC exams all over again. In fact, I was even approaching the novel as if I was marking an exam, thinking to myself, “Ah yes, well done Ceridwen, you get a mark for mentioning the Napoli Mafia, but you should really also mention the corrosive effects of pigeon poo on the ruins.” Needless to say, this unwanted blast to the past (graduation was less than three years ago and so still a little too close for comfort) did not enhance my reading experience, and this was through no fault of the writing itself.
2. Me as a survivor of high school and having to study the epistolary form for English.
See previous point. Let’s just say, I’m still scarred from Fay Weldon’s Letters to Alice which I stopped reading after thirteen pages and then proceeded to incrementally detest even further as we studied it at school. I’ve never been able to respect letter writing since. That said, I do think Dovey did a pretty darn good job considering that I am in never good humour for epistol-ing. The format of the letters served as an elegant seam between the two narrators so the stories were co-dependent while still revealing 3D characters, strong in their own right.
3. Me as a writer who is also coming to terms with her own voice.
Of course, Vita is not 100% autobiographical ("I hope not!" says Dovey in tonight's interview, describing Vita as very "creepy") but where the paths of Vita and Dovey do align is coming to terms with inserting themselves into their artistic creations. Dovey's first book was published at the age of 23. Blood Kin is crystalline - a work of political fiction that seems Orwellian, and is purposefully non-specific in its geographical and social setting. She includes nothing of her own persona and is careful that the gaze is never inward. This debut novel is in stark contrast to In the Garden of the Fugitives which is a metanarrative, unreservedly examining the creative process at an acutely personal and ethical level. Personally, as a writer, but specifically in regards to my poetical writing, I'm still at the very early stages of this development and this inversion towards the author hits close to home. Is this a good thing? In my opinion, yes. Admittedly, I am way too early in my creative pursuits to perhaps apply what I have gleaned from this novel to my own processes. Nevertheless, Vita's own struggle to discover what role she must play in her own creative productions is similar to my own difficulties in choosing to spend time writing poetry - which steeps me into a pool of guilt, as I have always considered my poetical writing as an excessively self-indulgent process- instead of focussing on my straightforward non-fiction political articles.
Honestly, it's this last reflection that caused me to bump up my review from three stars to four stars. During the first few pages of this book, I thought I was reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History but with a layer of self-aware white privilege. Such an assumption was too hasty and Dovey's book is a hell of a lot more than just a college coming-of-age story mixed with a romanticised obsession with the ancient world. During the interview I attended this evening, Dovey brought up the idea of "fiction as therapy" and I think this framework is what enriches the experience of reading this book. This is not the case of yet another author trying to weigh in on the Pompeii experience. This is not Fay Weldon being condescendingly didactic about telling you how to read or write. It is simply a novel reaching out to those who are unsettled. The aching flaws and openness of the characters are what makes them such exquisite examples of human ambivalence. In the Garden of the Fugitives is not an answer, it is a question. So reader, what do you want to know?