Sue Reidy: Four Ways to be Woman

Black Swan $24.95

Review: Margie Thomson*

Sue Reidy's second novel is of that light, frothy genre of women's fiction whose characters purport to be just like their readers: contemporary, middle-class women who struggle with the many freedoms and dictates of the modern era, and who are in a semi-permanent state of angst over their identities, their bodies, their lovers (or lack of), their children (or lack of) and, in this latest of Reidy's, their age.

In Four Ways to be a Woman, the central characters are on the cusp of the big four-0, which has precipitated them all into various kinds of dissatisfaction. The biological clock is ticking, and two of them are increasingly desperate to conceive.

There's no doubt that women use novels in this increasingly popular genre as a keyhole into their own lives, as a form of narcissism, perhaps, or at least for a fresh perspective and, of course, for the sheer fun of getting inside someone else's wacky life. Being exactly the target age myself (39), I should have been the ideal reader, nodding in recognition of the "types" who appear in these pages, empathising with their concerns, bonding with them as firmly as I do with my real-life friends in cafes around the inner-city suburbs.

And yet it didn't happen. I picked up Four Ways to be a Woman with relish and the anticipation of pleasure, but my expectations quickly foundered in the face of ill-conceived pacing and too much clumsy "telling." It happens almost immediately, five pages in, when Agnes accidentally catches sight of herself in a full-length mirror and begins describing her body. Such "telling" - and one can hear the advice of countless creative-writing teachers exhorting their students to "show, not tell" - is an unfortunate incursion into our involvement with the novel; we are jolted outside the characters' lives, belief is suspended and dark, negative cynicism creeps in.

Clare, Agnes, Athena and Bridget have been friends since their convent schooldays. It's a strength of the book that we can believe in their friendships, despite the differences between these women who, between them, incorporate a number of stereotypes.

Clare is a high-powered, workaholic PR consultant who owns her own company, makes pots of money and lives in Epsom with an unpleasantly selfish architect. On the surface she has it all, yet beneath that corporate exterior lurk some deep insecurities and a burgeoning, unshared yearning for a baby.

Agnes is a successful fashion photographer who lives alone and has plenty of lovers. Her sexual and physical confidence reflect the political correctness that reverberates within the novel: Agnes wears her luxuriant pubic hair and her delicately "fringed" nipples without recourse to razor or wax. Combatively independent, she is potentially the most complex and interesting of the four, yet is so sharp-tongued and unsympathetic she only rarely rises above the irritating.

Athena Wildblood. The New-Age joke has worn a bit thin by now, I would have thought. Nevertheless, here she is again: the woman who worships a virgin goddess and sits, determined yet uncomfortable, in the lotus position, candles lit, and chanting.

Hers is a kind of naive spirituality. The only one of the four to have a child, she is a solo mother who weakly tolerates appalling abuse from her nasty daughter, the relationship improving into unlikely realms of the almost idyllic only when Athena finally tidies the house and paints everything white.

Then there's Bridget, the beautiful and talented painter who has been happily married to Matthew since she was 18. She craves a baby, but they've tried for years now with no luck. Then life cruelly takes her in an altogether different direction with a diagnosis of breast cancer.

Reidy's ideas are good, but the weight of her research into breast cancer and breast reconstruction, the recovery process, spiritual-healing workshops, the public relations industry, and much, much more sits heavily and awkwardly in her plot.

She has packed in too much, and not given enough time to what she has there. Relationships develop unevenly and therefore somehow unbelievably. Conflicts are not sufficiently examined or resolved. The landscape - geographically and socially that of Auckland - is not developed. Some places are mentioned specifically; others have an annoying, rather self-conscious obliqueness about them.

Such a shame. It should have been a nice, light, fun read, but in the end, the clunky distractions overwhelm one's enjoyment.

* Margie Thomson is the Herald books editor.