ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Mmm, I do love it when an author skewers the more tawdry aspects of contemporary life!

New Zealander Emily Perkins is the author of a collection of short stories Not Her Real Name and Other Stories (1996); and the novels: Leave Before You Go (1998, on my TBR); The New Girl (2001); Novel about My Wife (2008, see my review) and The Forrests (2012).  She is also a columnist and a screenwriter, a teacher of creative writing and was the host of TVNZ7’s book programme The Good Word.  Her latest release Lioness is set in Wellington NZ where she is now resident after a career which includes teaching in the UK, India, and China.

For readers whose mental image of New Zealand features pristine scenery and lots of sheep, Lioness offers an urban landscape and a world of wealth and privilege.  (If you’ve ever watched Grand Designs New Zealand you will know that there are some really (really) rich Kiwis who exemplify the kind of inequitable society that has emerged in late stage capitalism here in Australia too. (If you have some spare millions you can buy one those palatial extravaganzas, there were six on the market on the day I looked, see here.)

The central characters in Lioness are a husband and wife power couple: Trevor is a developer under scrutiny because of some shady planning deal on a waterfront hotel, and Therese runs a chain of lifestyle boutiques, which she’s about to expand into Sydney.  (Where they will retire to a suitably posh address.)

We visited Wellington in 2019 so I can attest to how well the setting is realised.  I’m very glad we didn’t experience the terrifying plane landing that Therese describes.

The plane jolted, my champagne glass nearly snatched out of my hand by an unseen force.  Landing in Wellington was infamously hairy, and even a jet like this could shake about in turbulence.  The seatbelt light dinged on repeat.  I drained my drink and tucked the glass into the seat pocket.  Trevor was engrossed in the spreadsheet on his laptop, headphones on. We lifted and dropped, plateauing with another bump. I reached for his forearm and he unhooked his headphones.  At the next bang of air, he closed the laptop.  We held hands, our fingers interlaced, as around us people gasped and yelped in the shaking cabin.  At the top of the galley the air stewards stared into the middle distance from their perches.  If the plane crashes, I thought, it won’t matter which class we are in. Another part of me thought, it will never crash with Trevor on board.

The next lift in the air — almost sweet, weightless — was followed by the sharpest drop yet, and someone screamed, and a woman behind us in the cabin started singing ‘Amazing grace.’ (p.9)

The oxygen masks come down, the plane banks so that all she can see through the window is the raw, bobbing ocean, and a man gets out his phone to ring his loved ones.

Next time, we’ll fly in through Auckland!

It is Therese who narrates most of the novel, with what seems like disarming honesty.  Her background is modest, and a makeover is part of the deal when she marries Trevor.  Along with changing her name from Teresa to the more aspirational Therese, smartening up her vowels and her dress sense, she gets that wonky eyetooth straightened so that she could open her mouth when she smiled.  These canines are what we used to tear our food, and this action is symbolic of the way she willingly submits to restraining any expression of anger.  To enjoy this kind of good life, she has to fit in and make everything good and nice for everybody else.

Her forbearance is not the patience of a gentle personality; it is the price of the life she leads.  And it is not until her life begins to unravel that she begins to realise it.  Her husband, being twenty years older than she is, is not aware that he is bullying her, but the patronising, greedy children from his first marriage certainly know they are doing it to her.  They come in for a bit of a shock when Therese makes friends with her neighbour Claire, who has a close resemblance to Germaine Greer as we see her in the media.  She lives life entirely on her own terms, says exactly what she thinks, is uninhibited by the expectations of others, and brutally dismissive of pretension. She is indifferent to money, status and the machinations of a contemporary career.  She does not care about her appearance or the fussy attention to home decor that Therese’s lifestyle store represents.  And sometimes, like Germaine, she uses her freedom to go a bit too far.

In some ways, Lioness came as a surprise to me, because no woman in my circle of friends would submit to the values and behaviour of the people who have re-made Therese in their own image.  What were the feminist battles of the 60s and 70s for, if young women emerge in the 21st century as equally unfulfilled versions of postwar womanhood?  Therese has her own chain of shops, but her ‘brand’ succeeds because it trades on her husband’s name (and his money.) Her real job is to look good, massage her husband’s ego and make his family happy.

Claire dishes it out to pregnant Sally, who is blathering about painless freebirth, with the truth about how much labour hurts:

‘It is absolutely that bad.  Imagine your bones being dragged out of your body.  The aching.  The tearing.  You think you’ll go mad with it.’

‘Well, this woman says with breathing, and owning your power—’

Claire gave a sharp laugh.  ‘And oils and affirmations, blah blah blah.  The white woman wellness complex.’ She was on her soapbox now.  I lay down and let the words wash over me.

‘Motherhood as a fetish, kids as another branch of ego.  Pointless pain because you think it’s authentic.  The accessory husband, the dried stick in a vase, the hushed voice that suppresses psychotic rage.’

Caroline dismisses this with an appeal to her own social status, because that’s all she has.

‘That’s a bit reductive,’ Caroline said.  A coldness stalked into the room on her private school vowels.  ‘Sorry, is my voice too modulated for you?’ (p.175)

But even Claire’s version of freedom is dependent on her husband in Auckland, and it takes a dressing-down from her single-mother sister Melissa to make her face it:

‘The thing is,’ Melissa said, ‘not everyone can do a so-called ‘role switch’.  Some people have to do the money job and the compost and the car rego and the emotional support because there’s no one else to do it.  Some people are on 24-7.  Like right now.  I’m meant to be returning library books and getting eczema cream and finding something I can stand to cook for dinner because if it’s pasta with cheese one more time I will grate my own face.  And that’s before the giant pile of marking that awaits me.  It’s just life, Claire.’  She threw a dismissive hand at the stage.  ‘You can’t opt out.’ (p.195)

She might be right about that, but Claire is also right when she says that women take part in their own inequality. She skewers thin former models hawking natural beauty, and smoothies as food and women just being good little mediators.  She attacks Therese’s shop with its meditation cushions, crystals, and incense and the mantra of ‘self-care’ masking greedy consumerism, and with a brief concession to saleswomen who might have suffered real trauma or exploitation and this is how they cope, she says that this is all at the expense of other women and not solving the fundamental problem.

A few drops under your tongue isn’t going to solve a lifetime of inequality, including your own part in it. I mean, even if you are a rich white lady whose power depends on the subjugation of others, in this world you’re still not as good as a man. (p.177)

And what does Therese do after Claire’s outbursts?  She soothes other people.  She checks on Sally who’s left the room in distress, and she tries to placate Caroline with an inane remark about Claire’s rant being ‘just conversation, people can disagree.’  Therese’s role is to make conflict go away.

This is a terrific book, but I did still find myself wondering if Therese would have dealt with these issues if her husband hadn’t had a crisis of his own.

Lioness has been widely reviewed, at The Guardian and at Better Reading.

Highly recommended.

Author: Emily Perkins
Title: Lioness
Cover design by Greg Heinimann
Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2023
ISBN: 9781526660671, pbk., 178 pages
Source: Kingston Library