A Place Near Eden is one of those books so cunningly constructed that at the end you have no idea whether the narrator is a victim who has been wickedly manipulated or a sociopath leading the hapless reader down the garden path.

The 'reader' addressed in the novel is not you or me, it's a child, one of the characters drawn into a web of untruths. The narrator is building a legacy, one that will torment this child, regardless of what she chooses to believe.

Even the title is a tease: a place near Eden, near Paradise. But not...

The story links three characters related by circumstance. Foster-child Sem is the catalyst for the already-failing marriage of Tilly's parents to break apart. Celeste is the more confident friend who manages their adolescent world more successfully than the reserved and apparently submissive Tilly, who narrates the story. In the beginning she seems like one of those tiresome narcissistic YA types, endlessly ruminating about herself and her preoccupations. But as the novel progresses, it emerges that manipulation is going on, but it isn't clear who is doing it, and who the victim is.

This theme of destructive manipulative behaviour is further developed when Tilly deconstructs a doco made by an emerging film-maker friend called Peter. Peter manipulates Tilly and the other participants in the drama into acquiescing to interviews, which he structures to maximise dramatic effects that self-incriminate the speaker. He creates three different speculative versions of the situation, to manipulate the viewer into choosing their own version, thus believing that they have 'solved' the mystery for themselves.

In the first version, for example, Peter manipulates the sequence of events to portray a version in which Sem's social circumstances meant that his tragedy was inevitable. Tilly realises how disingenuous Peter could be:

"Because it's clear to me now that the re-enactment of Sem's birth and childhood, the first interview with my mother, all that was to set the stage for a story that Peter didn't believe was true, or at least wasn't the whole truth. (p.177)

...there was an untruth is what was left out of this story. Peter presented Sem's life this first time in a neat order, each thing seeming to lead almost inevitably to the next, so that Peter could eventually arrive at a certain conclusion: that Sem was lost and seeking meaning. That his childhood had forced him into a place where he had no options and nowhere to go. [...] Someone who was broken, who was always going to disappear.

There was no mention in this version of the story of Sem's jobs, or that he loved to cook, and wrote poetry. Peter didn't account for the fact that lots of people get a bit lost, but still pull through. Or how people who seem fine can be the ones in trouble." (p.178)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/07/13/a-place-near-eden-by-nell-pierce-2022-vogel-... ( )

This novel is the unanimous 2022 winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award winner, awarded to a previously unpublished manuscript by an Australian author under 35.

It is described as

'Part absorbing mystery, part riveting family drama, A Place Near Eden is a story of the pursuit of truth and the ways we fail those we love.'

The authorial voice is that of Matilda who we meet in her mid teens. Her friend includes Celeste. Soon, against her father's wishes, her mother takes on Sem (Semyon, Russian for Simon apparently) as a foster child. He struggles to settle in. Her father eventually leaves the family, but only after objecting to Sem staying on with Matilda and her mother. That includes having Matilda see a counsellor, with the consequence Matilda makes some revelations, the truth of which are questioned (including by Matilda) over the years.

Matilda, Celeste and Sem go their different ways over the coming years, but run into each other in the coming years. Each of them struggle to know what their respective lives have in store for them. Sem picks up work in a rural setting, but also spends times at an alternative/hippie commune.

Matilda and Celeste end up house sitting 'a place near Eden' on the Coast for a number of months. Whilst there Sem turns up again, and he and Celeste rekindle their relationship. Matilda and Celest pick up some work in a pizza house. Nothing is terribly stable. Sem and Celeste and Matilda and Celest each have a troubled relationship.

Peter, a sometime boyfriend of Matilda, who is now a documentary maker, re-emerges.

After a night of drinking and arguments, an accident (?) occurs. Next morning, Sem has gone again and Matilda remembers very little of the night before. Celeste tells Matilda what has in fact happened. But Matilda questions whether Celeste is telling the truth, and if not why not?

Peter turns up again, looking to make a documentary as to what has happened to Sem, raising yet more concerns and doubts in the mind of Matilda.

What is the truth? And what does one do with that truth for the benefit of both yourself and/or your friends?

But my problem with the novel is that nothing is resolved. The novel stops in the middle of nowhere (or possible at the beginning of another process, the resolution of which we will not participate in). I am not saying that I have to have ever novel resolved a la an Agatha Christie, with everything little thing explained with a bow on top. There are many novels, even those close to the crime/mystery/thriller genre(s) which do not operate in that way. One example is du Maurier's Rebecca, where many things were resolved, but du Maurier left enough on the table such that readers wanted more: how will they survive/live away from Manderley?; will they stay together?; will new evidence or doubts turn up?

The writing itself is very good, and the ambiguity as to what is truth and memory is done well. But I would have preferred to have resolution. To put it another way, I would describe this novel as more akin to a 'fragment'. In contrast, Rebecca was 'complete', in that it addressed the whole chapter as to a time/a set of relationships, without attempting to be something akin to a whole of life biography.

If the writing in a work is so wonderful, I could accept it on its own, without that resolution. And whilst the writing here is very good, as one would expect of an award winner, I do not think it is to such a standard.

I accept that others may not need/prefer having such a resolution or be of the view that the writing in this novel is of such a standard, such that the novel stands on its own.

Hence my rating is a compromise. If you are of my view, it is probably a 3*. If, in contrast, you do not need that resolution it is probably a 4*.

And if you are wanting to see the current state of Australian literature this, along with a dip into the shortlist for this award, as well as the winners and shortlists of the recently announced Stella Price and yet to be announced Miles Franklin Award would not see you go too far astray.

Big Ship

27 May 2022 ( )