By Michael McGirr
FICTION
The Science of Appearances
JACINTA HALLORAN
SCRIBE, $29.99
Jacinta Halloran is, I suspect, an underrated writer. The Science of Appearances, her third novel, is created with the same quiet integrity evident in both Dissection (2008) and Pilgrimage (2012).
Author Jacinta Halloran.Credit: Eddie Jim
Pilgrimage, in particular, moves with grace. It is the story of an ageing mother and her adult daughter. The book works without histrionics, almost by stealth. It allows radically different views of the world to share the same space and ultimately to accommodate each other. The book has an openness that wants to listen to experiences from different sides of divisions of age, faith and health. It is a delightful book.
The Science of Appearances has equally warm instincts. It is an exquisite portrait of both Kyneton and Melbourne in the late '40s and early '50s. Mary and Dominic Quinn are twins. As the novel opens, they are teenagers coping with life in a socially rigid and stratified town. Their father, Francis, a teacher in a Catholic secondary school, has an unexpected heart attack. He has not yet turned 50.
The Science of Appearances, by Jacinta Halloran.
The family can't afford their own phone so Dominic is dispatched to find Dr Cameron, who will come to play a significant part in the story. Sadly, Cameron arrives too late. Joan Quinn, the twins' mother, is suddenly a widow in straitened circumstances. She is a brittle character whose apparent doggedness disguises her grief and anger. She is not much helped by her austere and stoic Catholicism, the kind of religion that seems to miss the entire point. Medicine and religion are recurring themes in Halloran's fiction.
Francis' job came with a house that the family must now lose. Mary is withdrawn from school, where she has been a promising student with a flare for art, to clean houses for the likes of the Camerons. Dominic has to ride a bike to Woodend because he gets a job in a post office. Mary picks up extra work cleaning the presbytery where she encounters the predatory Father Clancy. His behaviour is the last push Mary needs to run away to Melbourne and a life of her own.
Halloran takes time to establish the suffocating culture of a small town because it is the springboard she needs to launch into a panoramic portrayal of Melbourne in the years after World War II. Mary begins in a hostel but soon makes friends with the Jessops who run the cafe on St Kilda pier. She enters the art world, working as a life model to pay for classes. Her steps do falter but she flourishes. For a time she becomes Madeline but she eventually reclaims her identity as Mary on her own terms.
Dominic finds his way to Melbourne University and a career in science, especially in genetics. He shares his time with great advances in this field that Halloran uses to great narrative effect. Likewise, Mary will be immersed in a creative culture that is also experimenting and making discoveries.
There are significant betrayals and a great deal of pain in these young lives. They are vulnerable but never crushed. Halloran's gentleness as a writer belies the strength of her worldly wisdom. She does not see the world through rose-coloured glasses. She appreciates its beauty with honesty.
Michael McGirr is the dean of faith at St Kevin's College in Melbourne.