Elizabeth Smither: The Sea Between Us

Reviewed by GORDON McLAUCHLAN

The Sea Between Us is a title with a moony, sentimental lilt to it, enough for me to expect a chore of a read. Instead, I found a novel as satisfying as anything I've read in a long time. Elizabeth Smither is another of the fine, professional writers who are giving substance to our literature.

This filigree of interconnecting relationships among a cast of more than a dozen characters is my kind of unsentimental realism. No skittish flights of fancy, no glittering maxims, no verbal cartwheels, just quiet, beautifully wrought prose about how more than a dozen people manage their lives, their friendships and, if they are lucky, their loves.

As any publisher's marketing manager will tell you, the title of a book must not be a matter of whim or an idle affection for a phrase by an author. It is part of a book's brand, its packaging, along with the cover design. For this reason it is the point of much discussion and many an argument between publisher and author.

I remember a few years ago I gulped when I picked up Judith White's Across the Dreaming Night, expecting the worst from an even worse title, and finding, then as well, an excellent, mature novel.

Three of four sisters in The Sea Between Us - the inseparable "little core at the centre" of a Tasmanian family of 12 children - are sent to Melbourne to go into service. That accounts for Emma, Irene and Ada. Maud stays behind.

Emma marries badly and has Billy. Irene marries a New Zealander, and comes reluctantly across the Tasman to live, has two daughters, one of them Minnie. Ada fades away from the author's attention.

Maud marries Bruce and is described as "conjugal", so in love with her husband that although her only child, Harriet, is well cared for, even indulged, she is never loved. Both the parents die young and Harriet, quiet but nicely independent, moves to Melbourne.

So the most closely observed characters evolve from the first generation to Harriet, and Harriet's closest friend, Rosa, and then on to the contemporary young people, Billy and Minnie. Harriet marries flatmate Garth without thinking too much about it, or seeming to expect much from it. Sometimes, as in real life, the "loves" are no more exciting than tepid, comfortable relationships that may or may not evolve into something special.

What Smither describes so well is the drift of lives, how so many people, especially women, are launched into a current taking them in a certain direction, making most of the decisions they make illusory. The men in this novel generally tend to trouble others, the women trouble themselves. But perhaps that's to oversimplify. Smither is no stereotyper but a careful observer and explicator of motive and intent.

Significantly, the two women, Rosa and Minnie, who grab life by the lapels and tell it what they want, are the two who remain unattached, except for their friendships with other women. Minnie, for example, tries to go with the flow:

"[Adam] took Minnie's hand and pulled it into his jacket pocket. Now she felt manacled and, because her hips were female, out of step. But it is the woman's nature to adapt, she told herself, as she walked with a slightly dragging step." She may have told herself to adapt, but not convincingly enough.

Later, before Adam finds someone more pliant, Minnie "lay on the farthest side of the bed with her back turned resolutely to the door. She knew Adam would come and she would be unable to avoid him: the bed was too small. And in spite of his antediluvian beliefs he was a good lover. As if love had to be won each time, each encounter ... We are all alone, she thought, and tears ran down her eyeliner and made a black smudge on the pillow."

But don't feel sorry for her, or for Rosa, who lives even more dangerously. They are their own people and you feel their strength and the satisfactions it gives them.

What exasperates me is I can hear people in book clubs describing this as "a women's book", helped by the title, because it's more about the people than the events. In fact, it's a novel full of careful observations and subtle insights and characters who live on in your head. I have the feeling men are becoming desensitised by the unreal, frenetic action so many demand in their fiction.

Penguin, $27.95