Rebekah Palmer: Rhythm

Reviewed by SIOBHAN HARVEY

Rebekah Palmer's novel Rhythm has a lot to live up to. Its predecessor, the critically acclaimed The Thirteenth Life of Frank Finnigan, was an enthralling tale about a biographer's attempt to write a candid book when his subject is economical with the truth. Honesty versus duplicity is also a theme close to Rhythm's heart. But, with its power to dumbfound and cleverly deceive, Palmer's second novel is an even better read.

For the most part, the novel appears to be a tempered tale of adultery. The participants in this menage-a-trois are husband Michael, wife Cara and interloper Adrian. A triptych of eloquence, each narrates their side to the story, their perception of the truth.

Adrian is a drummer with modish percussion band Pulse. He admits to regularly fixating upon married women and pursuing them until they are notches on his bed-post. However, his fascination with Cara is something different. "It's hard to know where that line between being in love and being obsessed starts and ends," he says, while precisely charting their liaison as if it were a symphony he's composing: the moment they meet, when she x-rays his fracture; the nights spent in cafes and clubs; his mistaken stalking of her double. In the process, the cadence of his infatuation shifts also, moving from the captivated to the predatory, increasingly objectifying her as prey whose every intimacy makes him salivate.

Psychotherapist Michael also offers an analysis of his relationship with Cara: from blind date, to marriage, to their drifting apart. With each word, though, it takes on the air of a case study: Cara his client, not his wife, his definitions of key events displaying as much manipulation and misogyny as Adrian.

Meanwhile, Cara is a hypocrite, despising her father for his past affairs. While simultaneously devoting herself to two men, two extremes — Michael's highbrow solidity and Adrian's artistic passion — she's also trying to find herself, find her rhythm. Increasingly, this compromised search gravitates towards music: towards Adrian, towards classical concerts, dancing and the ticking of her biological clock.

There's also a side-story, one that centres upon a patient called Vincent. So engrossed in unravelling twisted minds and increasingly unable to separate domesticity from work, Michael shirks his professional duty and comes to sympathise with Vincent's paranoia that his wife is also having an affair.

Collectively, this is an absorbing cast. They draw our attention, while seamlessly moving the plot forward. And this is important, because it enables Rhythm to be something out of the ordinary, lulling us into a false sense of security, making us unaware that appearance is deceptive, and that this isn't a story of betrayal but a thriller building up to its crescendo.

When the denouement dawns — a secret revealed with careful delay and precision by Palmer — we are struck by the fact that we've just read a story that has a very different tempo to the one we imagined. Awestruck and startled, we see that Rhythm's pages of infidelity and confession are offset by a medley of lies, betrayal and psychological torture. A powerful opus, it moves us in uncomfortable and dramatic ways to see the world in all its darkness as well as all its splendour.

* Siobhan Harvey is an Auckland writer and tutor.