KEY POINTS:
There's a certain style associated with many Victoria University Press novels, and this book has elements of it: lucid, pared-back writing, and a certain emotional distance from and between the characters. If you like that sort of thing, you'll love Louise Wareham Leonards second novel, Miss Me a Lot Of.
Much of the story takes place one summer by a lake in New York State, in two palatial houses inhabited by wealthy families with nubile (or not quite) daughters, and fathers with wandering eyes.
Holly is the daughter of a charismatic, philandering banker and a New Zealand mother who has put small-town Wanganui behind her to focus on vintage wallpaper. G (this must be Holly's way of identifying him) is an Italian importer whose wife is a wannabe artist and interior designer with more money than taste.
Holly and G flirt with each other, not overtly, but the two are often seen down at the lake at midday. One of G's daughters, 14-year-old Elsa, helps Holly's father with some office work, and develops a desperate and intense teenage crush on him.
What unfolds is a series of uncomfortable but probably quite realistic scenes of the two families interactions: jovial and neighbourly on the surface, but with dark undertows of secret attractions. The characters are all caught up with their own self-centred fantasies, most of which are never realised.
There's a lot of dialogue, which encapsulates the misunderstandings and things left unsaid. For all the talk, the characters are vague in their communication. The writing is simple, flowing, and occasionally poetic: "The moon was draped on to the lake like a kind of voyeur, up close to us and bright, spreading."
Holly goes on to have various affairs. Because of her beauty, she finds it easy to attract men, but they don't seem to see beyond her looks - or perhaps she doesn't show them - so her relationships are unsuitable and unsatisfying.
She is influenced by what others want from her - like many women - and by what her father says. To an extent she drifts along with it, never plumbing her own depths. She doesnt appear to know what she wants out of life or relationships, and she doesnt really let people in - including the reader.
Perhaps this disconnection and distance is partly the point of this novel, but it makes for an arm's-length read. Despite the good writing, I finished feeling flat and unsympathetic towards the characters.
- Philippa Jamieson is a Dunedin reviewer.
* Victoria University Press $30
