The Truth About Her
Last month I promised to write about Jacqueline Maley’s debut novel, The Truth About Her. Maley will be known to many as a journalist and columnist—as is her protagonist, Suzy Hamilton, in this very topical story about journalistic ethics, media manipulation and who owns the story. Suzy has outed a fake wellness blogger (think Belle Gibson) who has suicided after Suzy’s article appears. Plagued by guilt and questioning her choices in other areas of her life, Suzy, a single mother, capitulates when the blogger’s mother confronts her, asking her to write ‘the truth’ about her daughter. So while the novel delves into ideas about truth and storytelling, it is also a very moving book about motherhood. We can feel Suzy’s love for her own daughter viscerally, and understand the agony of the blogger’s mother who can’t accept that her daughter may have done wrong. The relationship between Suzy and her own mother, also beautifully handled, adds yet another layer. Indeed, there are as many layers in The Truth About Her as there are in any unravelling of truth and lies. Maley’s Glebe and inner-west setting will be comfortingly familiar to many, and her terrific characterisation and sure control of the narrative ensure she will be a novelist to watch. This is a satisfying, intelligent book (with a spicy romance) which is very easy to love. Jacqueline will be signing copies on Saturday morning May 8th 10.30 to 11.10am, the day before Mother’s Day.
Sometimes I like to pick up a book at random and this month it was the Italian bestseller Fidelity by Marco Missiroli. Published to great acclaim, Fidelity was shortlisted for the Premio Strega (the Italian Booker) and is currently being made into a Netflix series (can’t wait). In it, Missiroli ploughs the depths of a marriage where both partners (in their 30s) are unfaithful to varying degrees. I was bracing myself for the book to become some macho, Mediterranean justification of why men stray, but Missiroli pulls back at just the right moment. Fidelity is a fascinating, insightful study of a modern marriage. It’s brilliantly written, very European, and quite enchanting.
Infinite Country is a beautiful and heartbreaking novel by Columbian-American writer Patricia Engel, which follows a Columbian couple who go to America ‘to make a better life’. Needless to say, it doesn’t work out that way, and we follow the consequences of this decision on the family, both in Columbia and America. The characters are wonderfully drawn and the writing superb. One of the best novels I’ve read about the migration experience.
As many who read this column will have noted, I rarely, if ever, read non-fiction. (I avidly follow politics, so I like to live the rest of the time in a world of make-believe). I am so glad I made an exception for Mark McKenna’s astounding book Return to Uluru. McKenna traces the story of an Aboriginal man who was murdered by a white policeman n 1934. I thought I knew a bit about Indigenous history, but I never knew Aboriginal prisoners were decapitated, before their heads and other body parts were sent far, far away from their people and their country. This is just one shockingly hideous story among many in our shameful history, but McKenna brings an historian’s skill as well as a human’s compassion and respect for his subject. We all, and I for one, have so much more to learn.
See you on D’Hill, Morgan