Candida Baker: The Hidden

By ELSPETH SANDYS

I am going to start my review of this impressive but flawed novel by the Australian writer Candida Baker by talking about Lord of the Rings. Not that the two works have anything in common, but something struck me as I sat through the three hours of the acclaimed movie which is apposite to Candida Baker (the "acclaimed" author of two previous novels).

In every meeting between author and reader, film-maker and audience, artist and viewer, some kind of magical exchange has to take place for the work to have succeeded, at least for that particular person.

Sitting watching the spectacle of Lord of the Rings, I realised its magic wasn't working for me. This is partly because I dislike allegory, and Tolkein's story is on one level an allegory. But it's also because I'm bored by special effects, and the movie relies to a large extent on the impact on the audience of those admittedly impressive effects.

More significantly, though, I had things on my mind: serious, worrying things which the movie did nothing to dislodge. So I was, apart from a few brief moments, more or less unmoved.

The same things could be said of my reaction to The Hidden. Set in both Australia and England, it deals with themes that interest me greatly: the power of the past, and the role of memory in shaping the present.

But the character around whom these themes are played out is so narcissistic, the supporting characters in the novel only live and breathe in relation to her. They have no separate identity, and so the story remains tightly within the frame (the word is apt as Caroline, the protagonist, is a photographer) the author has drawn around it.

That said, there is much about the book that is memorable: the descriptions of the Australian Outback; the depiction of the agony suffered when truth, for whatever reason, is repressed; the use of the language of photography (though this is sometimes overdone) to keep the focus of the story tight.

Caroline teaches photography in what I assume to be an Oxford polytechnic. She has a 20-year-old son, Harry, who in the course of the story moves out to live with his girlfriend. What is going on for Caroline in the present of this story is that she is sorting through photographs, taken on an assignment in Australia 20 years ago, for a forthcoming exhibition.

She is also writing the story of what happened at that time to explain to Harry who his father is, and why she has lied about him for 20 years.

The Australian scenes are marvellous, but I never quite believed the story I was being told - a story of betrayal and murder, which I admit had me eagerly turning the pages.

The problem for me was that I didn't believe in the character of Paul, Caroline's husband for a brief, action-packed time; and I didn't believe in Jim, who befriends and then betrays her.

So the magic didn't quite work for me. Which doesn't mean I can't recommend the novel because, just as Lord of the Rings is pure magic for most of the people who see it, so this novel will, I'm sure, convince many readers who don't carry my particular baggage. The language is simple and vivid - this is an easy book to read - and the photos which accompany the text are stark and haunting.

Now that I have read The Hidden, I will be looking out for Candida Baker's other novels (Women and Horses; The Powerful Owl), hoping that when I read them the magic will work for me.

Knopf

$26.95