Hobson’s entertaining novel is a multi-perspective tale of self-obsessed people behaving badly.
Melanie Hobson
Novel | 288 Pages | 5.5” x 8.25” | Reviewed: Paperback
978–0–8021–2852–2 | First Edition | $16.00
Black Cat | New York City | BUY HERE
In her debut novel, Melanie Hobson offers a cast of characters so self-consumed it feels surreal to read from their perspectives. A family reunites to support one of its own through a hardship, but also finds time to turn every situation into a rumination of their own lives. I often found myself thinking: “Surely they’re not making this situation about themselves?” But no, they definitely are.
Margaret and David, an older wealthy couple, live in a monumental home on the coast of Lake Ontario. David is the self-imposed king of his family. He is also by far one of the most unlikable, narcissistic characters I’ve ever read. From the start, it’s clear David believes the world revolves around him, his needs, his wants, his desires. Any misfortune, no matter how minor, is a personal attack against him and the kingdom he’s built. His abuse of Margaret, a former art student turned subversive housewife, is so commonplace that you could argue their entire relationship is built around it.
“They’d both known it would come. The violence was a periodic necessity of their life together, like a climate oscillation — a prolonged freeze hit by a sudden thaw. And that it came at night, and on the heels of the tour, was no surprise either, because that was how it always was between David and his wife. Neither of them would ever attach the “rape” to it, because they were married after all and she let him do it. The triggers were predictable and Margaret never shied from them.”
Their children — Georgina, Jacqueline, and Philippa — are all adults with families of their own. But this summer finds Philippa, the youngest, in crisis. Pregnant with her fifth child and struggling to cope, it’s clear Pippa is the most vulnerable of the bunch. Margaret’s solution is to call all her daughters back home as if their proximity will cure Pippa’s depression.
David is annoyed, Georgina and Jacqueline are skeptical, but all obey, and so begins a strange family reunion where secrets — some old, some new — are revealed and reckoned with one way or another. The entire novel unfolds over the course of four days and five nights.
The family shares one singular trait: self-obession. Every member of the family seems completely unaware or unwilling to acknowledge the other’s struggles. David is the extreme example, but Margaret and her children are not far behind.
The novel begins and ends with a character that is silent, but that overshadows almost everything: the colossal family home and surrounding gardens. The house, and the socio-economical status that comes with it, is everything to David. He spends almost all his free time tending the gardens, and part of the plot centers around an ill-planned garden tour. The interior of the house is filled with expensive furniture trinkets from Margaret’s and David’s travels abroad. Like its inhabitants, the house has its faults, cracks that are splintering and just about snap. Georgina recognizes the power the family home has over them:
“It was the house, she realized then. The house that had brought them all back, for it wasn’t they who’d inhabited the house; it was the house and its grounds that had colonized them.”
Hobson’s prose is languid throughout, like she’s not rushing anything, but rest assured there’s a story — a few stories, actually — to tell. The novel is told through all five family members’ perspectives, which I found really enjoyable. Instead of getting one character’s version of the truth, you get everyone’s, and then are left to piece it together as best you can — much like how actual family secrets are shared.
Overall, I have to say, it’s fun to read about people behaving badly, and this novel is nothing if not entertaining. Tolstoy taught us “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Hobson gives the phrase new life with this lot.
