Emily Perkins: The New Girl

By STEPHANIE MISKELL*

Acclaimed New Zealand writer Emily Perkins has a reputation for producing clear-eyed reflections on the uncertainties and unresolvability of life through the experiences of flawed or damaged characters. Her new novel, The New Girl, is in this tradition, being a "coming of age, betrayal of innocence story". (Perkins in a recent interview.)

It tells the story of the summer that marks the transition from childhood to adulthood in the lives of three teenage girls. They live in an uninspiring, featureless small town, oppressed both by the relentless heat and its own inward-looking narrowness. The town is populated with a cast of disaffected youth and disappointed adults leading "lives not lived".

If the teenagers represent the potential inherent in the beginning of life's journey, then the adults provide a depressing indication of their likely destinations. One teenager is pregnant, mirroring the experience of Julia's mother a generation earlier. Ways out are suggested: suicide, alcohol, abandoned marriages. Julia, the central focus in the novel, pins her hopes on a brighter future: university in the city.

Into this nowhere place comes a sophisticated, attractive, young academic, Miranda. She offers self-awareness classes at the local community centre to the town's bored youth. A saviour or a user? She appears to be a breath of fresh air in the claustrophobic confines of the town, but her motives and modus operandi are more than a little suspect.

Julia learns the painful truth - that she cannot rely on the transforming powers of either the golden city or her new, charismatic mentor.

The novel's lyrically promising and ambiguous ending suggests that she will find the strength and inspiration she needs from within herself.

I have some reservations about The New Girl. It's not clear when or where the novel is set, not even the country. (I assumed New Zealand, but we don't have racoons.) The nowhere/everywhere setting is likely a deliberate reflection of the barrenness/ubiquity of the situation. However, I found the uncertainty a distraction.

The premise for Miranda's presence in the town is thin. I can't imagine how she could get away with some of the activities she offers in her classes. I wished some of the secondary characters were given room to develop. So much is hinted at. Emotionally, the novel is quite arid. Apart from the bond between Julia and her mother, the relationships all seem to lack any real warmth or humour.

Perkins is rightly hailed as a skilled and insightful writer, a chronicler of her generation. This novel will add to her growing reputation for precise prose and difficult themes, but I doubt it will stand among her best work in the times to come.

THE NEW GIRL

By Emily Perkins

Picador $34.95


* Stephanie Miskell teaches English at Northcote College.