Contemp fiction, aka the weekly book post

[lizbee]

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth

Hepworth is a Melbourne writer who has achieved international bestseller status with low-key domestic thrillers. She's compared to Liane Moriarty a lot, but her work is less satirical, and mostly focuses on dysfunctional upper middle-class families in Melbourne's leafy south-eastern suburbs.

This specific dysfunctional upper middle-class family consists of two adult daughters in their thirties; their mother, who has advanced Alzheimers; and their father, a successful heart surgeon who has just announced he is divorcing their mother to marry an interior decorator who is the same age as his daughters.

SHENANIGANS ENSUE, if you count domestic abuse, gaslighting, kleptomania and recovery from sexual assault SHENANIGANS. There are also adorable children and a sweet romance based largely on food puns, but this a pretty serious book wearing a cute rom-com hat. The juxtaposition can be a bit jarring, but I like that Hepworth trusts her audience with this material, and I think it's important that domestic violence isn't only depicted in gritty, realistic srs bzns dramas. Hepworth is also acutely aware of class, which I appreciate; I'm a sucker for books about upper-middle class Melburnians having dramas, but sometimes you get the impression the author doesn't know any other type of people exist.

Does My Body Offend You by Mayra Cuevas and Marie Marquardt

This actually might be historical, given that it is very specifically set in 2017 -- one of the heroines has moved from Puerto Rico to Florida in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Badly sunburned, she turns up to school wearing a modest tunic but no bra, and is humiliated by the school's response. But she also meets a brash white girl, who promises they can change the world. Or at least their school's dress code.

YES, IT'S ANOTHER DRESS CODE NOVEL. I went to a high school with an unreasonably strict uniform policy (girls were restricted to wearing skirts, shorts or culottes; I wore dress pants for my final two years, and to this day, girls are explicitly banned from wearing dress pants because of it) so I love a dress code novel.

Does My Body Offend You follows in the footsteps of a lot of dress code novels and other "teenage girls become activist" stories, and as the authors note, it's a genre that more often than not centres whiteness. Honestly, so does Does My Body Offend You, given that one of the protagonists has an arc about unlearning her white saviour instinct, but it's executed well. I really cared about the characters and their situation, and I appreciated that it handled a lot of issues, like slut culture and victim blaming, with more nuance than I normally expect from YA.

Comments

[lauradi7dw]

I went to public schools long enough ago that girls (and female teachers) were required to wear dresses or skirts. The year (in the 1970s) that pant suits became fashionable, the high school Physics teacher received one for Christmas. She wore it to school in January. The administration agreed that that was a formal enough look, so the rule was changed to allow pant suits. That broke the dam - by then end of the school year, girls were wearing jeans.

[fred_mouse]

Question on the Sally Hepworth ouvre: does it give that real 'I am in Melbourne' feel? I've seen the books around but not picked them up; I picked something else up on spec the other day and discovered that I am so much more engaged with stories set in cities that I actually know and can relate so, and so Hepworth's work might be kind of what I'm looking for.

The not knowing other classes exist would be a deal breaker otherwise (I have North Shore Sydney relatives, and the more oblivious they are the less I can deal with them), but a book that screams Here Is A City You Love might be worth experimenting with.

[lizbee]

It's not overt, but if you know Melbourne, you can see it very clearly -- there's references to the lockdowns, and one sister very clearly lives in Brunswick/Fitzroy.