Review by New York Times Review
THERE'S NO RIGHT WAY to deal with cancer. But somehow, there seem like a million wrong ways, especially if you're a woman. When the NBC News correspondent Betty Rollin wrote her groundbreaking breast-cancer memoir, "First, You Cry," critics called her narcissistic for worrying about how her breasts would look post-mastectomy. The Vatican called assisted suicide "an absurdity" after Brittany Maynard chose to end her own life rather than succumb painfully to brain cancer When Nora Ephron died from pneumonia brought on by acute myeloid leukemia, the gossip writer Liz Smith called her a "control freak" for not telling friends that she was sick. It's not exactly news that women are often unfairly judged - sometimes by other women - for not putting their loved ones' needs before their own. But when you're talking about women who are terminally ill, the whole thing is just bizarre. Here they are, dying, and they're supposed to focus on how to make everyone else more comfortable? What a relief, then, to read two new funny, angry, feminist novels that give women with cancer the freedom to behave in the way that's right for them - even if that way is badly. In "Craving," written by the Dutch novelist Esther Gerritsen and translated by Michele Hutchison, Elisabeth de Wit reveals her illness to her daughter, Coco, "at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in the wrong clothes." She stops Coco as she's cycling down a busy road and "smiles like a person about to tell a joke" before blurting out the news. Elisabeth seems to have an inappropriate response for everything. In one scene, Coco tries to get closure from her dying mother about her childhood, when Elisabeth would lock her in a room for days while she cried. "Darling, you don't have to feel guilty about it," Elisabeth replies. "You couldn't help it!" Is this scene meant to be funny, or disturbing, or both? It takes work to figure out how to read "Craving," justas ittakes work to read Elisabeth herself, but that work is extremely rewarding. Gerritsen's stark prose leaves a lot of space for interpreting and reinterpreting Elisabeth's tone and motivations, which feels generous, both to the reader and to the characters. Coco's boyfriend, Hans, is quick to diagnose Elisabeth with autism. But when he asks if Elisabeth has trouble putting herself in others' shoes, Elisabeth suggests that Hans is the one with that problem. This feels like a warning to all the Hanses out there: Before you judge these characters, check your own empathy levels. "Craving" ends up offering some deep insights into the ways women process emotions - or fail to process them - during difficult times. Coco confuses love with hunger, and hunger with panic, leading her to a cycle of binge-eating and reckless sex as her mother gets weaker What Coco and her mother feel is always refracted through what others expect them to feel, as good mothers and daughters and women. "Elisabeth wants to help her daughter," Gerritsen writes. "She has to want to." It's hard to tell if Elisabeth understands the difference. Feeling responsible for other people's happiness makes it exhausting for Elisabeth to even communicate with her family. I don't know if I've ever read a novel that captures the emotional labor of peoplepleasing language quite so well. When Coco talks to Elisabeth about death, Elisabeth tries to brighten the mood with "light words" like "just a sec, a sandwich, abracadabra." There's a funny moment where Elisabeth notices that her husband, during drunken sex, speaks only in aaba rhyme schemes. Later he confesses to an affair, and she can't help internalizing the language he prefers, her shock and grief unfolding in an aaba scheme in her mind. Even as the book reaches its inevitable conclusion, Elisabeth talks to herself in painfully upbeat language, using phrases like whoops-a-daisy! as she approaches her own death. Droll and horrific and incredibly moving, the ending makes you feel the full weight of those "light words." In "The Bus on Thursday," a comedic horror novel by the Australian writer Shirley Barrett, the narrator is enraged by the burden of putting others at ease. From the moment Eleanor Mellett gets her first mammogram, she's criticized for not being "relaxed enough." By the time she's gone through a mastectomy and joined a support group, she's crafting furious blog posts about the pressure to remain optimistic: "If they are nudging you toward the scrapbooking table, then it is basically code for, 'You will die soon, so quick! Throw some photos in an album as a keepsake for your loved ones. Make sure you are smiling in these photos and have lots of hair. Decorate with butterfly stickers and inspirational quotes about dancing like nobody's watching, etc.' " The whole novel is written in what Eleanor calls "funny-angry" blog posts, which might be why the jacket copy pitches the book as " 'Bridget Jones' meets 'The Exorcist.' " But it's closer to a fun, campy Tim Burton movie. Hoping for a fresh start during recovery, Eleanor takes a job at a school in Talbingo, a remote Australian town with no cellphone reception (uh oh) where a beloved teacher has disappeared. Here, she encounters a friar who looks like a praying mantis, a vacuum cleaner salesman who's almost supernaturally attractive, a mysterious 1960s power station, a paranormal bus, and a severed hand that appears to have a life of its own. If that sounds surreal, well, so does the experience of having cancer. Barrett also works as a screenwriter and filmmaker, so it's no surprise that she's a masterly world-builder. As Talbingo becomes more and more vivid, Eleanor gets increasingly unhinged, to the point where she's actively testing the limits of our sympathy. One of the funniest moments finds her giving a graphic talk about death to children; one of the most unsettling ones involves a child, too, but it's probably best left unspoiled here. Throughout the book, you'll be forgiven for wondering if Eleanor is a survivor in the crazy-making world of cancer recovery - or if she's just crazy. There are no definitive answers in the sure-to-be-polarizing ending, which might leave some puzzled about the larger points that Barrett is trying to make. When I first finished "The Bus on Thursday," I threw it down in frustration, only to pick it back up and reread the final pages. Now, I wonder if the lack of some profound ending is deliberate. "This is the problem with having cancer: Everyone expects you to have mysteriously acquired some kind of wisdom out of the experience, and if you haven't, then it's a personal failing," Eleanor writes early in the book. Maybe Barrett doesn't owe us any revelations beyond this one: Don't trust a cancer novel that can be wrapped up neatly with butterfly stickers and inspirational quotes. Here they Eire, dying, and they're supposed to focus on how to make everyone else more comfortable? MELISSA MAERZ is a journalist whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Slate, Entertainment Weekly and The Los Angeles Times.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Thirtysomething Eleanor Mellett should be ecstatic to have survived breast cancer, but her nipple-less implants make her feel like a freak. On the advice of her doctors, she starts a blog, and her adventures take a turn when Eleanor impulsively accepts a job in remote Talbingo, a town barely big enough to have its own school and whose previous teacher, the beloved Miss Barker, disappeared suddenly and mysteriously. Though she tries, she cannot win over the strange students, and as the comparisons to Miss Barker increase, so do her inappropriate drinking and cursing and general educational incompetence. When Miss Barker's body is discovered in a slurry pond, Eleanor suspects the creepy Gregory, brother to her oldest student and who is very hot and with whom she has slept. The blog format makes for a quick read, and Eleanor's voice is frequently hilarious, even as her world turns crazy, then dangerous. Barrett's second novel, after Rush, Oh! (2016), delivers Bridget Jones in a Shirley Jackson town, a strange little tale that will delight readers of weird fiction.--Susan Maguire Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Australian author Barrett's frantically original and sometimes overwrought novel traces the breakdown of headstrong young Eleanor Mellett. The story begins with her in precarious balance, having just lost a breast to cancer surgery and angrily broken up with her long-term lover. She's offered a mid-term teaching job in the little Outback town of Talbingo, and it's such a beautiful, friendly place that she can hardly believe her luck. But how did the previous teacher vanish? And why did she have so many locks on her cottage door? And is Eleanor's new lover overly passionate or actually demonic? As Eleanor drinks too much, commits a series of grotesque blunders, and fights the paranoid suspicion that something is out to get her, readers begin to realize that not everything that's going wrong can be her fault: some malevolent force really must be playing pranks on her. Told in a series of blog posts (though at times the conceit is hard to believe), the narrative races and stumbles from one darkly hilarious pratfall to the next, and is recommended for readers who can laugh while cringing. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In Australian filmmaker Barrett's (Rush Oh!) delightfully bizarre novel, Eleanor Mellett steps straight out of a chick-lit plot line into Wicker Man-type horror. Recovering from breast cancer at a young age and disappointed in her romantic life, Eleanor accepts a teaching job in the remote mountain town of Talbingo. The school is small, with only 11 pupils, and missing its previous teacher, Miss Barker, who mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night. The village seems idyllic, except for the pastor who continually quotes Bible verses regarding demonic possession and tries to exorcize the cancer-causing evil from Eleanor's body. There's also Daphne, who tells Eleanor that she's going to have to catch the bus on Thursday-the bus for the "afflicted." Oh, and Eleanor's new love interest is likely an incubus, who would really like her to have his baby. VERDICT This book deserves to find its (cult) audience. For readers who enjoy their horror elegantly twisted.-Jennifer Mills, Shorewood-Troy Lib., IL © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
While recovering from breast cancer, a woman takes a job as a teacher at a one-room schoolhouse in an isolated Australian town, where she is beset by both inner and outer demons.Eleanor Mellett is in her early 30s, recently single, and in recovery from cancer treatments that have culminated in a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. A support group misfit, Eleanor begins to keep a private blog as a therapeutic gesture. It is through this device that Eleanor's "funny-angry" voice, the unchallenged star of this unconventional novel, dictates the reader's experience of the plot. In short order, Eleanor moves to remote Talbingo to replace the angelic Miss Barker (who's disappeared), becomes involved with the erotically gifted vacuum salesman Gregory and his lumpen teenage brother, Ryan, and runs afoul of the small-town sensibilities of a host of characters, from the school's ferocious front-office maven, Glenda, to the exorcism-happy Friar. Throw in an ominous "1960s sci-fi power station, like some kind of reinforced bunker where Dr. Evil might live," a vengeful, reanimated hand, and the potentially sentient soul-transport bus of the title, and the results may seem like a hyperbolic decoupage of B-movie reference, each layer complicating and confusing the one before. What saves this book from the threat of murk, however, is movie director and writer Barrett's (Rush Oh!, 2016) skillful deployment of the form. Eleanor's voice is bold, frank, and savagely funny. Her observations about the intersections of cancer culture and the rom-com ideology of a certain kind of 21st-century feminism are so keen as to draw blood. Moreover, the total-eclipse-level narcissism of this personal-blog style neatly conceals how unreliable Eleanor's perspective actually becomes. Readers will find themselves going to great lengths to excuse some of her more dubious behaviorsincluding, but not limited to: assault, breaking and entering, and potentially maiming the Friar. Eleanor begins her blog by stumbling through a world of familiar absurdity and ends it by stumbling out of a world whose absurdity has become frenetically surreal. The journey from here to there shows the alert reader a tremendous amount about both the rigidity of our social mores and the flexibility of our sympathies.Narrated by a cybercentury Wife of Bath, this bawdy tale suspends both our disbelief and our scruples. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
