some remarks on Susan Varga's novel, Headlong (with reference to The Spare Room)

Susan Varga, Headlong. University of Western Australia Press, 2009. Review copy provided.

Recently Helen Garner was criticised by some for using her outstanding novel, The Spare Room, to describe the brutal reality of dealing with anger and grief while caring, for daring to approach that side of caring that we like to pretend doesn't exist: she was criticised for being truthful about that within fiction, for refusing to make her fiction about caring 'pretty enough', and for being honest about her real-life sources.

Susan Varga is successful at invoking that kind of brutal reality purely through the immediacy of detail she provides and the speed with which it is accumulated. Sometimes she moves too quickly to the next stage without giving enough attention to 'inscaping' the force of those details. Things move so fast in the first half of the book that it is difficult to pause for a minute and absorb the horrifying rapidity with which Julia, recently widowed, succumbs to the grip of incapacitating, severe depression.

On page 73, therefore, I could not quite keep up with her daughter Kati as she baldly states her belief that she will soon assist Julia to die. Some of that necessary detail is filled in at a completely different pace in part two of the book, giving it a structure that swings open and shut from the middle like an artist's handmade book.

I can't think of a precedent for such a structure and it seemed risky to me, making this book provoking in two ways; one is listening endlessly to people seeking answers to life and death questions throughout, while also asking, can Varga pull this challenge off?and flipping back to the beginning chapters while reading the second half.

It's worth reading Headlong just to see how she figures that out, but also this book is very compelling simply for the portrayal of the frightening collapse of Julia after her husband's death.

The second half of the book almost didn't work for me, occasionally sounding so immediate and raw, so like a real journal, that one wonders if it is fiction. This is a deliberate fictional choice, perhaps, but had a slippery effect that was sometimes jarring.

I think the answer to why HG's last work is a success as fiction may lie in comparison with this book. The happy and admirable fault with The Spare Room does not lie simply within the work and the questions it asks us to consider, but with the author's inability to silence herself, meekly, in a suitably feminine fashion, about her sources.

If Varga had a real-life source for this story, she has chosen to protect it, although I believe a prototype for Julia can be found in her memoir, Heddy and Me (which regrettably I have not read). And as another reviewer has noted, she also protects Kati by marginalising her within the narrative, by appearing to allow Julia to dominate.

(In response to that reviewer I would answer, though, that it is Kati who has the last words, a whole half-book of them.) In the process, she has presented us with something so harrowing that it is hard not to wonder if there is some truth in it.

Most readers will be happy enough to overlook this rather useful proximity to the terrors of real life, and be grateful for Varga's gripping and poignant account of a suffering family, as well as for the brilliance with which Garner's work shines by comparison. The Spare Room is the work of a master, but Varga's second novel does not suffer for being placed in such company.

One short quotation from the second half of Headlong puts to flight all those who enter both books looking for something idealistic about life and death. It's the crushing gears of the machinery of emotional survival we're hearing about here:
'...Dr. Clark is too nice, too gentle. She doesn't touch on the untidy cruelty of grief, or its occasional beauty. Nor the sheer grind of it.'

The only problem I had with this book was with suspending my disbelief that someone would not inform their sibling overseas that their mother was hellbent on killing herself.

That is something it was hard to understand, both times I read this book, perhaps the giveaway that it must indeed be fiction. But if I agreed with everything Varga had done here, I doubt she'd have done the job she set out to do: to ask, as indeed I think Garner does about a different issue, "What then must we do?' Yes, Headlong is that kind of a book.

There's a lot of wisdom in this book, and it is only preachy once, a mere slip on page 151 which mars an almost perfect reflective moment. Kati, addressing us as 'readers' of her journal, says:

'If, as my life moves towards its end, and I can no longer work and if Gill should, God forbid, die before me and I lose my friends one way or another, I will only have what is inside me. And when I look inside, I see that many of my inner rooms are sparsely furnished or empty.

That's the work ahead. It's work Julia didn't do, to her great cost at the end of her life.'
Perhaps not very smoothly put, but nonetheless very wise.

Note: This is the last book review I'll be putting up for a while - I'm taking a break from this, and probably from general blogging as well. Things will be slower, anyway.
I have some remarks on the book reviewing I've done here to try to put together for a longer piece of writing - I've been watching the stats attached to each review I post, as well as where they sit in search results, mainly to test the contentions of others that reviews on blogs are ranked higher in Google results than other sources. We'll see where that ends up.

In the meantime, remember there are plenty of other places to visit in the right column in that blogroll, and please drop me a line if you come across something fun in your blog travels, at genevievetucker@gmail.com.

Comments

[ThirdCat]

I'm sorry to hear you'll be blogging less.

[genevieve]

The life is in flux, TC. I did it to myself, I had a large family when I was young and foolish. Thanks for noting the remark though.

I am getting a bit peeved by how much I don't know at the moment - I doubt I'll end up any better informed in the near future, but at least the itch will have been scratched. More reading of books for my edification (until they all explode into e-readers) with less pretence that I know what they are about.
There is such a growing stable of valuable Australian blogs now that it's easy enough for me to take some time out to do that :-)
look at this constellation over at James Bradley's blog last week, phew:
http://cityoftongues.com/2009/06/04/literary-bloodsport-part-2/
Between Meanjin, Overland, ALR, James, Angela at LiteraryMinded, Matilda and (note) Estelle at 3000 Books, someone I only rediscovered recently, and Sars et cetera, we're all doing a great job here, as Jim Carrey would say.

But you know what these things are like, some of us keep saying we'll stop and we are the most awful liars.

[Estelle]

Looking forward to your thoughts on reviewing. I'm thinking about doing a little bit of print reviewing, and James' post (& the comments) have been very interesting. I'm still letting my opinions percolate, so I won't bore you with any half-baked philosophies, but I'll keep my RSS reader eye on you!

[memeweaver]

Beautiful review, Genevieve. I'm sorry to learn I won't be able to read more of them for a time. Hope the family stuff works out ok. I know exactly what you mean about feeling peeved by how much you don't know. Can relate to that completely. I guess it's a much more honest and constructive position to be in than someone who claims knowledge without the wisdom to see that there might be other, less dogmatic interpretations of literature and fresher, more insightful and empathic approaches. Looking forward to your return one day hopefully soon.

[lisa]

My rss will be a sadder place with your blog popping up on it less. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on reviewing...