Cover image from publisher's website. Penguin Books.
The Precipice by Virginia Duigan
Published 2011, Penguin Books.
Sometimes you wander the aisles of a library and find nothing, and at other times you find a true gem. I have only just finished my latest read, Virginia Duigan’s ‘The Precipice’, and let me tell you, it was in the latter category.
Voice
The novel was written in first person, and the author crafts a masterful voice. The speaker, Thea, is a retired school Principal and she speaks in a very refined way – her vocabulary is significant and the language in the piece elevates the speaker to a position of superiority over those around her. This is matched by the insights into the other characters in the novel, and it becomes increasingly clear as the novel unfolds that she is quite happy living in her hermit hovel, only venturing out to attend a writer’s workshop. Initially, Duigan crafts a distance between the speaker and the audience – yet, through the novel she is endeared to us, and we begin to understand the inner anguish that hangs over her life and forced her into a solitary existence.
Plot
Thea owns a large parcel of remote land in the Blue Mountains, a bush setting in Australia. Next to her tiny hovel, she has built a magnificent dream home – it was a product of her imagination, and in many ways, the house was a mirror of her imagination and creativity. We learn that the house had to be sold to pay debt following the loss of life savings, presumably connected to the 2007 financial crisis given the novel’s release date in 2011, although this isn’t concretely said in the novel.
The novel opens then with an antagonism between Thea and her new neighbours – she calls them invaders, and describes them in terms of being foreign. It’s a young couple who are free spirited, and in direct contrast to herself. This animosity is only enhanced as the couple have arrived with a twelve year old niece who now lives with them. It seems she was Frank’s brother’s child, yet she had spent years in foster placement following parental neglect, and Frank and his wife Elise were doing them a favour. It was an opportunity for the girl Kim – but an annoyance to Thea, whose serenity was being interrupted. She offers her mind, her intention to set out ground rules about how to be appropriately neighbourly and mind each other’s privacy. She wanted a certain decorum, and the humour in the novel was developed: she had the intention to be abrupt, but at the time, she becomes accommodating, then she chastises herself for not being more aloof. It’s that inner voice we so often recognise in ourselves.
SPOILERS AHEAD
As the novel develops, Thea begins to develop a strong relationship with Kim. Thea, childless, did not think of herself as paternal, but given her long career in education, she finds it necessary to input into the girl’s life. She helps buy Kim a young puppy, and looks after her – providing friendship and stimulating conversation. She even brings her along to the writer’s workshop and she takes her to secret locations in the bush – a cave with ancient cave paintings, and a precipice – a hidden creek which turns into a dangerous waterwall. Both locations untouched by any other humans – completely isolated and private.
As this friendship develops, Thea gains increased insight into the girl’s life – and she is concerned with Frank’s behaviours. Was he simply care-free, or was there something a bit more dangerous about him? Frank was a musician and created the music for films – he calls them artsy, but the reality is they would best be described as pornographic. Thea learns that twelve year old Kim has been shown these films, and that Frank often gives his niece massages. The suspicions of Thea develop, and she comes home one day to see Frank sunbathing in the nude, moments before Kim was set to arrive home – but the sinister nature of their relationship is only revealed further when she finds a disc with Kim in it – and while she was not in a compromised depiction, the film around shots of Kim were highly sexual. And – the main actors in the film were known to Kim; as Frank would have them around for ‘cast parties’ while his wife Elise was away in Melbourne.
Thea’s eyebrows were more than raised, and the speaker discloses to the audience that in her own private career as a Principal, she had set up a private extension tutoring system in her school – and one of her teachers had used the one on one access to drug and abuse a student – and while the teacher had been jailed, the victim had ended her own young life. This was the guilt that Thea was carrying, feeling like she had facilitated access for that encounter to develop. This time around, she was intent not to let it happen again. She visited Frank the next morning, and invited him on a bushwalk – they headed to the isolated precipice, and invited him to view the magnificence of the vistas – and then she took a deliberate moment to enact her plan, pushing him from the ledge to his death. She bush, she had warned us, was dangerous – and people do go missing from time to time – they simply get lost and never found again, and this was the story she would peddle to Kim, Elise and anyone asking about Frank’s whereabouts – she would say, she certainly had not seen him. The novel ends with the suggestion that Thea would continue to support Kim, and that she felt she had saved the young girl – not fixing a past wrong, but allowing some guilt to be alleviated. In a cliché, perhaps, the distant older woman had softened, she had powerfully found the purpose she had been hunting – and quite ironically, since she had intended to stay alone and mind her own business only 304 pages earlier!
Why did I love it?
The voice – the way Thea articulated her thoughts were just so delightful; it was the saying things to the audience that you should only ever think. Yes – she was thinking them, but by sharing them with the audience, it allowed us to be completely endeared to this wonderful woman. The story itself is full of rich description of moments that formed the relationship between Thea and her neighbours – and the way the story was punctuated with the writer’s group was wonderful. As for setting, it was limited, as for plot, it was actually not particularly complicated – but, as for description and language – oh, what a joy!
I think I was on track to give this read a 10/10! In the end, I probably dropped it to a 9.5/10 – the reason for this is to do with the ending. I wanted to know what happened next? Frank had just been murdered – which, given the way Duigan turned him into a monster, didn’t bother me – in fact, I was hoping that she would hurry up and push him! But – I came to care for Kim. I wanted to know how her story ended. I guess that what is makes a good read, to form that connection with character constructs. They’re not real, but I need to think of them as more than a name on a page. They become part of us.