Barbara Else: Three Pretty Widows

Vintage $24.95

Review: Margie Thomson*

Within the close friendships of a lifetime dwell both memories and secrets, and so it is within Three Pretty Widows.

When Barnaby, a lifelong friend of Ruth, Eliot and Walsh and husband of Bella, dies unexpectedly, the whole scene is thrown into confusion, precipitating crisis and, finally, resolution for all the characters, including the deceased, and for Jocasta, the enigmatic stranger who lives next door to Ruth and Walsh.

This is Else's fourth novel and, I think, her best yet - more subtle, more multi-layered, more intricate. Her skill is enormous and with great control she reveals her story, layer by layer, scattering clues as she goes - little hints and details that it is impossible to detect until a second reading.

Else is known as a funny novelist, but she's not the kind to make you giggle helplessly. Her humour is quieter, deeper, found in her dark, sardonic point of skew, in her quirky, wry vignettes that are a fond satire on modern middle-class life and those who live it.

With Three Pretty Widows she has chosen her topic well. Widowhood does not immediately announce itself as the most interesting status for a woman, but think again. There is a lot of implied drama here. A woman cannot be a widow unless she has first been a wife; and wives become widows through ill-health, accident or design - all territory full of rich possibilities for the storyteller, and Else leaves little of it unexplored.

Grief is the obvious and expected emotion for a widow, and this is explored through the character of Bella. Lust-rously gorgeous, Bella was Barnaby's third (and much younger) wife. Tired after 15 years of his bullying panache, she left him three months before this story opens, going to stay with Eliot, who is in love with her. Bella, however, has remained resolutely in the spare room, still uncertain about her feelings for either Eliot or Barnaby. Barnaby's death simply adds to her confusion, her grief a complexity of guilt, loss and regret. Bella wears her beauty like an albatross around her neck. Even we, the readers, can scarcely see past it, and so Bella remains a somewhat shadowy character, despite her centrality to the narrative.

Ruth and Walsh have been married for many years. Ruth, now in her 50s, is a well-known columnist and beauty who is subject to helplessness and rage when confronted in her mirror with the evidence of passing time. Her options and the place of her famous beauty in her public and private identity make up part of the book's examination of the meaning of beauty in women's lives.

If one is beautiful, one can, perhaps, get away with anything. And a warning: never underestimate a beautiful woman. Weaving back and forwards through time, in and out of myth, across continents, and delving into the dark arts of potions and magic, is Jocasta's story. Jocasta is old now, but in her youth she too was heart-catchingly beautiful. She stalks the pages rather like a ghost: she knows more about the other characters than they know about her, is more involved in their lives than they could ever suspect.

The other, more literal, ghost haunting the narrative is that of Barnaby himself. He watches his widow with interest. Had he really been loved?

Will his own final act of love be discovered?

The narration of Three Pretty Widows is, like its more ghostly characters, oddly disembodied, almost mythic in places, and its dryness creates an initial sense of distance for the reader. Yet, suddenly, there I was in the middle of the book, quite entranced as if by one of Jocasta's secret recipes, the magical effects lingering for some time after finally closing the covers.

From the breathtakingly succinct title through to the satisfyingly wrapped-up ending, this is a most skilful, involving and enjoyable read.

* Margie Thomson is the Herald deputy books editor.