Only one book so far under her belt, and I can see why Emily Bitto's The Strays has won numerous awards. How do you follow up a novel like this, and more importantly when will she publish another? Bitto's debut novel won the Stella Prize in 2015 along with a host of others and a few longlist prize mentions, too. I read somewhere that it is a " polished gem" of a novel and I have to agree. It's a perfectly told story in quite a slender volume so there is nothing extraneous and nothing wasted. I love novels like this-a really interesting story encapsulated in pristine prose that lingers in your mind long after you've finished reading. How far some authors can take you in a very few pages always amazes me.
The 'strays' refers to the group of artists that the Trentham family collects in their bohemian household in 1930s Melbourne, Australia. Evan Trentham is a famous artist of his day, much lauded and pushing the boundaries, maybe too far later in the story. It's just the sort of family, Evan and Helena with their three daughters, you might imagine being the product of two parents whose inspiration in life is to create and express. And it's through the eyes of a young woman who gets caught up in the excitement and exoticism of their world that we view them. You could call this a coming of age story, and certainly for Lily, it is an education. She is a careful observer and at times a participant who will not come out of the experience unscathed. She tells the story in hindsight. As she is living the the Trentham life it is magical and liberating, but only later will she see darker underside of their world and how it has affected and in some cases damaged the girls.
"Until I met the Trenthams, it seemed to me that there were two kinds of people in the world: those like my father's family--practical people, unperturbed by the undercurrents and interpretations of events, with a robust ability to get on and achieve what they set their minds to; and those like my mother, who was the only member of her family I knew. My mother's parents had died before I was born, and although she had a sister with a child around the same age as me, there had been an enormous, unspeakable falling-out between the sisters, and I had never known either my aunt or cousin on my mother's side. The fact of the falling-out, though, suggested to me that my mother's family must operate as she did, attuned to anything that might activate her indignation or impinge upon her sense of moral certainty."
Lily meets the middle Trentham sister, Eva, at school and the two become fast and close friends. There is such an openness to Eva and the attraction to her and her family is immediate. The Trenthams are so very unlike her family and her world up until that moment. Experiencing the Trenthams is like opening up new and vast vistas. She tells her parents at one point, when she has quite literally been taken in by the Trenthams that she loves them, but she wants to be different. And for Lily she sees the Trenthams as the guiding spirit into that new and appealing world.
"Around Evan and the other artists I was learning the habit of attention, of noticing the world in all its ravishing detail and complexity. The habit of being amazed . They told stories, looking at objects and people until they shook them clean out of the dust of everyday and made them myth."
And how could that not be attractive to a young woman just coming to understand the world and realize its potential. At first she just spends free time with Eva and the Trenthams and becomes one of their 'strays', but after her father has an accident at his work and must be looked after by Lily's mother, she moves in with the Trenthams temporarily while he recuperates.
The Trenthams, Evan in particular with his wife Helena form a small, progressive group of artists who challenge the staid Australian art world and try to push it headlong into modernity to mixed results. Their bohemian lifestyle of art and openness may inspire but their very loose parenting skills take a toll on their daughters. The three, four counting Lily, are left to their own devices with the elder daughter trying to offer some guidance to the younger girls. But in the end they are still more or less children. In some cases the adults are not much older than the girls and mixing the two results in more than simple broken hearts. In a family that knows no boundaries it's not surprising what happens, and when it does it is too late to repair easily.
Lily is ultimately an outsider looking in. She yearns for what Eva and the sister's have, but in the end she is excluded from things due to Eva's secrecy. She thinks of herself as a voyeur, "an unsuspected anthropologist disguised within the body of a girl, surrounded by other young girls who were part of the family."
"Yet I was a cuckoo in the nest, an imposter who listened and observed, hoarding and collecting information."
She takes what she sees and experiences with her through life and looking back recalls those years with the Trenthams, but it is only much later that she will understand the extent of those experiences and in the end betrayals and will be able to sort it out and see it for what it was.
I thought this was a beautifully crafted stories and one I can warmly recommend. It has been one of my best reads of the year and I look forward to Emily Bitto's next book.