Stella Prize

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” (Margaret Atwood)

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This is my second contribution to  AusReading Month 2023 hosted by Brona at This Reading Life.

Trigger warning: mentions physical and psychogical violence; domestic violence and gaslighting.

I absolutely loved Evie Wyld’s first two novels, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice (which was set in Queensland) and All the Birds, Singing (which was set in Scotland and Australia and won the Miles Franklin Award). Despite this I was slow to pick up her third novel The Bass Rock (2020) which won the Stella Prize in 2021, so I’m really glad this reading event finally prompted me to get to it. Evie Wyld was born in London and lives there now, after growing up on her grandparents’ farm in New South Wales; her wiki entry describes her as an Anglo-Australian author.

The Bass Rock is mainly set in North Berwick in Scotland, the titular rock being in Firth of Forth (there’s a great picture of the Bass Rock accompanying this Guardian review here), and across three different timelines. My heart always sinks at multiple timeline novels – usually one of the strands is far more compelling than the rest and I find myself whizzing through sections to get back to the one I’m enjoying most. But Wyld balanced all her elements expertly: formally through structure, and informally as they echoed one another while maintaining coherent yet distinct voices.

The contemporary strand is told in the first person by Viv. She is feeling entirely adrift after the death of her father and has had to spend some time as an inpatient being treated for her mental health. Now she is occupied trying to catalogue the possessions of her grandmother and great-aunt, with limited success.

“If I eat the cruciferous vegetables and cream the disgusting leg I would feel better and I would look better and I would be better. I scratch my leg through my tights until I feel the satisfactory glow of broken skin.”

In the second strand, we meet Ruth who, in the aftermath of the Second World War, has married Patrick. He is a widower with two young sons, Michael and Christopher, and has moved Ruth .to North Berwick. She is trying to find her place there, somewhat hindered by the fact that Patrick is barely ever at home. Instead, Ruth’s mainstay is her housekeeper Betty.

Finally, there is a strand told in the first person from the point of view of an eighteenth-century young man, about a woman called Sarah fleeing towards North Berwick after she is accused of witchcraft. This I thought was the least compelling narrative, but I think that was a deliberate choice. The Bass Rock is not about what men think. It is about what they do, and how too often that can involve violence towards women.

The Bass Rock really got under my skin. Its themes are domestic violence, societal violence, gaslighting and abuse. Through the different stories of these women across the ages, Wyld demonstrates how society both implicitly and explicitly condones and perpetrates this.

As Betty summarises to Ruth: “‘Men do these things and then they take on with their lives as though it’s all part and parcel.’ She placed the knife back on the table, laced her small fingers together and caged them over her knee.”

Or as Ruth’s sister Alice pragmatically observes: “’And in order to be able to enjoy your life there are certain things that one has to accept. It’s not being deluded, I won’t have that – it’s seeing things for what they really are, and buggering on until eventually the penny drops and you find yourself living a very fruitful life partly with them but partly with yourself. And the great thing is, they almost always die first.’”

Undoubtedly this novel is a tough read. I think what Wyld did brilliantly was show the insidious, everyday nature of so much abuse and how it is sustained. There is a particularly terrifying scene – ordinary, familial – demonstrating how ‘reasonable’ abusive men collude together to protect their own interests as part of the power structures that serve them so well, and fail women and children.

Wyld makes a great case for trusting your gut: Viv and her sister are on a train, pursued by a violent ex, they know they need to do something – move, pull the cord – but somehow remain frozen. Ruth knows Patrick is gaslighting her but somehow is persuaded to ignore what she fundamentally feels, both about her own situation and that of her step-sons.

But there is humour here too, mainly through Viv:

“I’m a little embarrassed by the assortment of snacks I bought during the day – honeyed almonds and wasabi peas. They are in bowls and I think it looks like I’m throwing some do, rather than persuading a homeless sex worker to stay with me because there might be a ghost.”

Yes, there is a supernatural element to The Bass Rock but it is a constant background murmur, rather than direct plot point, so don’t let that put you off if you are not keen on ghost stories. Looking on goodreads, those who came to The Bass Rock for a gothic tale were disappointed, and I do think it’s poor marketing to label it as such. There are gothic elements, and a tv adaptation could definitely choose to shoot it in such a way, but I would argue it’s not a thoroughly gothic novel. The ghost – if there is one – forms part of the wider theme of going with what you know rather than with what others try to persuade you to believe.

The Bass Rock is incredibly accomplished and I didn’t feel its themes ever overwhelmed story or characterisation. Recently I read a short story by one of my favourite writers on a similar subject, and was disappointed. In that instance I felt the characters were only there to enact the wider argument – both they and the plot felt flimsy. But here I found the characters and the plot compelling, with the wider themes making it an immensely powerful read.

There’s a five minute interview with Evie Wyld talking about The Bass Rock and visiting the location here

“As they crossed the June and reached the peak, the bay became visible, with the Bass Rock looming behind it. On clear days with the low tide it appeared so close that it might have beached itself on the sand, as if it were unmoored and went where it pleased.”

To end, an 80s song as usual, and I thought I’d choose rock with a heavy bass, because I have no shame when it comes to silly puns 😀 Classic song though…

“STELLA! STELLA!” (Stanley Kowalski, A Streetcar Named Desire)

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I’m not a big follower of book prizes although I like the Bailey’s Prize and usually try & read the Booker winner. However, the annual Stella Prize, which started in 2013 and awards outstanding Australian women’s writing, has lists which always look fascinating and wide-ranging. Currently the 2018 long list has been announced and the shortlist will be revealed on International Women’s Day, 8 March. I hadn’t read any of the winners and obviously this enormous oversight needed correcting. Also, Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest’s wonderful reviews of the last two winners convinced me I needed to rectify this sooner rather than later.

The 2017 winner was The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose. You can read Kate’s review here. It is an extraordinary novel, centred around the real-life event of The Artist is Present by Marina Abramovic, a 2010 performance art installation at MoMA in New York, which you can read about here.

Arky Levin is a film score composer, estranged from his wife and devoted to the city:

“When he moved to New York… and found the stars in their gaping darkness were nowhere to be seen, eclipsed by SoHo apartments and Midtown high-rises, Chinatown neons and flashy Fifth Avenue commercial buildings…he felt he had won. That humanity had won. New York was brighter than the universe bearing down on them. For this alone he had decided that he could live here forever and entirely expected to.”

Arky attends the installation for each of the 75 days it is in situ, and during this time he witnesses the profound effect the installation has on people. Marina sits one side of a table, and the public volunteers sit opposite her one at a time, gazing into her eyes. They can stay for as little or as long as they want, but they must make eye contact.

“Here in New York, where time was everyone’s currency, and to gaze deeply into the face of another was possibly a sign of madness, people were flocking to sit with Marina Abramovic. She wasn’t so much stealing hearts, he thought, as awakening them. The light that came into their eyes. Their intelligence, their sadness, all of it tumbled out as people sat.”

Such a simple but incredibly powerful idea, and the installation was a smash hit. Similarly, Rose uses a simple writing style to explore massive themes: love in many guises, loss, art, the desperate need for meaning in life and how we locate it. Arky learns about other and himself simply by sitting and watching the installation.

“Art will wake you up. Art will break your heart. There will be glorious days. If you want eternity, you must be fearless.”

The Museum of Modern Love, as the title suggests, is a love story, but not in the traditional sense. It is not a romance between two people. Instead it is a love story about people and all they can give to one another, as lovers, friends, relatives, artist and spectator. It is life-affirming without being sentimental. Rose acknowledges there is pain for people, but suggests that we have to get out there anyway, engage in acts of love in a myriad of ways, find connection and transcend.

“She was watching Marina Abramovic in her white dress on this final day of her enduring love. For hadn’t it been that for Abramovic? An act of love that said, This is all I have been, this is what I have become in travelling the places of my soul and my nation, my family and my ancestral blood. This is what I have learned. It is all about connection. If we do it with the merest amount of intention and candour and fearlessness, this is the biggest love we can feel. It’s more than love but we don’t have a bigger word.”

And here she is, on the last day, in the white dress:

In 2016 the winner was The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood. You can read Kate’s review here. I wish I’d read The Museum of Modern Love after this, as it would have been a good aid to recovery. The Natural Way of Things is brutal, shocking, urgent and without doubt one of the most powerful books I’ve read in recent years. It has absolutely stayed with me.

A group of young women are kidnapped and held hostage in a large, bleak piece of land in the outback, surrounded by an electric fence. There is no escape, and gradually they realise no-one is coming for them.

“Nobody knows. They have been here almost a week. Nobody has come, nothing has happened but waiting and labour and dog kennels and DIGNITY & RESPECT and beatings and fear and a piece of concrete guttering, and now perhaps infection is coming too.”

Gradually it emerges that all the women have a sex scandal in their past. These are never fully explained but enough information is given for the reader to realise that in each case, the power lay with the men involved, and in each case, the women are the vilified parties. Possibly they have been taken by a moral fanatic, who we never see. Their heads are shaved, their clothes taken and replaced with basic garments, including Handmaid’s Tale style bonnets, which come to represent both a coping mechanism and gradual institutionalisation for some of the captives:

“they depend on them for the snug containment of their heads, covering their ears, the obscured vision. Verla can understand it, though only from a distance. She used to hold them in contempt for keeping the bonnets; not anymore. But still, for her herself, that limp, stinking thing felt more like a prison than this whole place.”

As food supplies dwindle and illness threatens, the women fight for survival in their various ways. Their jailers are pathetic and inept, but also men and they hold the power.

“He frowns down and Verla knows he is thinking ugh at the two filthy girls, that he is freshly fearful of the lice eggs in their matted hair, of Verla stretched white with illness, of Yolanda and her rusted weaponry. He fears their thin feral bodies, their animal disease and power.”

The Natural Way of Things is about how society figures men and women, where power lies, how that is wielded and how predator and prey lies barely concealed in human relationships. It is beautifully written, perfectly paced, and absolutely terrifying.

To end, what else?