Catherine De Saint Phalle

Like Philip Salom, Catherine de Saint Phalle writes novels that feature inner city Melbourne in all its eccentricity. Her memoir Poum & Alexandre was shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2017, but I discovered her fiction with The Sea and Us (2019, rel="nofollow" target="_top">see my review). It brought the story of Harold who stumbled into a rich and almost satisfying life when he came to live above a fish-and-chip shop called 'The Sea and Us' in Brunswick. 'Almost' satisfying, because Harold was in mourning for a failed relationship in Seoul where he had lived for 18 years and learned pottery.

Call Me Marlowe revisits The Sea and Us and brings us the next chapter in Harold's life. The identity issues that plagued him in The Sea and Us are sketched out more fully and once again a relationship failure sends him travelling in search of redemption, this time to Prague...

The first part of the story is peopled with familiar characters from the multicultural community of The Sea and Us. Harold's heritage is Czech and his landlady Verity is Irish. Their friend Ben is a Kiwi, and the manager of the pottery who is losing patience with Harold's unsold pots is Syn, who’s Nordic. But new characters emerge in unexpected ways which are not always welcome. Verity's Ex, a convicted rapist and murderer, is dying of cancer and wants to renew contact; and Marylou, a sex-worker who had fled Seoul for Harold's protection doesn't share Verity's openness to redemption. Feeling pressure to support Verity, she goes with Harold and Verity to visit Robert in hospital, and this sets a chain of events in motion. Her terrible nightmares return when this man's presence disturbs the equilibrium of their small community, and those nightmares are the catalyst for acts of betrayal which fracture the long-standing friendship with Harold.

And he runs away again, this time with an impulsive flight to Prague. There, by a series of not-very-convincing coincidences, he meets friends and relations who help him resolve his estrangement from his mother. It also helps him to come to terms with his obsession with stories he heard from the grandmother who brought him up after the family fled the Soviet regime. For Harold, being in Prague where history is embedded in the 'stumbling stones' that memorialise murdered Jews, the unexplained death of the hero Jan Masaryk is emblematic of a fundamental truth: sometimes, it just isn't possible to know the truth.

Trauma, and failed attempts to redress it, is a thread that runs through this novel.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/05/13/call-me-marlowe-2023-by-catherine-de-saint-p...… (meer)

The writing in this book is definitely unconventional in some ways. Part of that comes from the author's incorporation of three quite different cultural contexts. The story is in some ways about quintessential Australia - the setting in a Lygon Street Melbourne fish & chip shop, with the Brotherhood of St Laurence shop down the road strikes a chord with me. But the main character, Harold, has just come from South Korea, and that connection is really the main focus of the story. Harold has a Czech family background however, and his estranged relationship with his mother is another strong element. Most of the women in this story are treated very badly by the men who know them, and this is definitely not confined to the Australian culture, whose misogyny is well-known to me. Korean culture, of which I am almost totally ignorant, is brought into the story as Harold reflects on his three or four major relationships from the 18 years he spent there after walking out on his mother. Harold learnt pottery while in Korea (while having a sexual relationship with the pottery teacher's wife) and I think that pottery connection is important in a symbolic way that I didn't completely understand. In fact there were a number of things I didn't understand - and I don't think that's entirely my fault. Consider these two extracts:

p. 66
"...her pubic hair is serene, not like some I've seen that remind you of nests and marshes, or of some ring road around the city at night, wild and purring with cars - without peace, without real night, eating stars, eating destinations."

p. 80
"Sometimes I imagine her walking with Do-yun in the street, leaning in to him like a plant listening to Bach."

I ask myself "What do these comparisons add to the description? How does a plant listen to Bach?"… (meer)

Catherine de Saint Phalle is the author of five novels published in France, and in Australia, a novel called On Brunswick Ground (2015) and a memoir titled Poum & Alexandre (shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2017). Her new book The Sea and Us (2019) is also published by Transit Lounge, in a beautiful hardback edition with gorgeous Greek Island blue boards and cover art by John Durham for Design by Committee. I mention this because it's a pleasing sign of confidence in the book-as-object when publishers bring out titles in hardback; I think we have moved on from those depressing forecasts that the book was dead.

Anyway, the book has those Greek Island blue boards is because 'The Sea and Us' is the name of the fish-and-chip shop in Brunswick where a young man called Harold comes to live after a failed relationship in Seoul. The reasons for the breakup are not revealed until later in the novel, but it's clear that he is in a mess, psychologically. He comes across Verity's room for rent upstairs via Gumtree, and he takes it even though, in marked contrast to the pristine shop downstairs, it's filthy. And even though he's listless and at a bit of a loose end, the reader knows he is a man of some initiative because he transforms his grotty room with elbow grease and whitewash. Not paint, because it's whitewash that his mother always used, and though they've been estranged for a very long time, he still hears her voice in his head.

A loose community that's representative of multicultural Melbourne begins to form. Harold is of Czech heritage and Verity is Irish. In the charity shop, Harold meets Ben, who's a Kiwi, when he offers to help Ben lug the bed and mattress back to Verity's. An Asian woman with the rigid eccentricity of an English duchess runs the pottery with Syn, who's Nordic. Harold signs up there because he longs to make pots, the way he did in Seoul. This is the natural diversity of our city where people come together from all over the world to form new friendships and find a sense of belonging amid familiar suburban landmarks: a Bunnings, a Brotherhood of St Lawrence shop, and The Quarry Hotel.

Making pots is a consolation, but it comes with memories of betrayal in Seoul by his lover Ha-yoon and his teacher, the master potter Do-yun.

Flashbacks to Seoul also introduce a character called Maryann. She's a sex-worker, but Harold's longstanding friendship with her is based on affection and a shared love of books. She calls him Marlowe (and Philip, when she's cross) after the character in Raymond Chandler's noir fiction, and they emulate the dialogue of Chandler's hard-boiled characters. He looks out for her in case her clients are troublesome. but he's not her pimp. Leaving, as Harold has, leaves her vulnerable once again.

These estrangements accumulate.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/11/06/the-sea-and-us-by-catherine-de-saint-phalle/… (meer)

This short, lyrical book takes the murder of Jill Meagher as its jumping off point, exploring the ways in which the outpouring of public grief affects a handful of women living in Brunswick, all of whom have their own more personal grieving to work through. I really liked sections of this - de Saint Phalle sums up characters beautifully in short phrases - but there were moments when it all felt a bit too cutely interconnected for me. It's a lovely paean to my neighbourhood though - you can feel the author's affection for the suburb and its people on every page.… (meer)