Customer Reviews

Disquiet

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Julia Leigh's novella is a series of glimpses into the lives of a family haunted by secrets both past and present. It is a nouveau-gothic tale that has the tone of an old horror story but has elements of modern living (a dead baby is stored in a state-of-the-art freezer). Nothing is ever fully explained, and the author skillfully tells a story almost solely through visuals. There is little dialogue, and when it occurs it is terse and gives away nothing. What we see is a carefully chosen selection of images designed to unsettle and put the reader on alert. But this alert is never fully realized, so that the denouement comes off as a bit of a letdown. There is a sense of a parallel universe, that the characters exist on a plateau that is slightly off-kilter to ours. Nothing truly scary happens, but the little things - a still lake, a shed with old canoes, a high heel used to crush a phone jack - build into a frenzy of beautiful lyricism and will leave the reader feeling haunted for days. Indeed, every image conveyed by Leigh is designed to keep itself stored in the memories of the reader, so that this novella will never quite go away. The prose is wonderfully rich, and the characters leap off the page, fully-formed in just a mere 120 pages. Disquiet tells a simple story that has a slight plot, but it pulls its weight in highly developed atmosphere and the author clearly has a gift for story-telling.

I disagree very strongly with the single, negative reviewer of this book posted up on this site -- actually, it is the only non-glowing review of this marvellous little tale that i have come across online. And i looked at a dozen or more reviews. (Leigh is a widely admired author whose fans include Toni Morrison, Simon Schama, and others). Leigh's latest novella is a beautifully written and marvellously atmospheric story whose central theme, for me at least, is the loss of loved ones--the loss of a partner, the loss of a parent, and perhaps most distressingly here, the loss of a child. Everyone we meet in this book has lost something or someone. But in Leigh's deft and unsentimental authorial hands this powerful material is far more deeply psychological than sad, more alluringly gothic-strange than expository as a series of ever more bizarre events unfold during an impromptu gathering of family at an old chataeu --a dead baby is stored in a freezer; an unidentified man continuouslly calls on the phone, and a woman watches indifferently as a pair of children seem ready to drown in a pond. The prose is rich, lyrical and spare, making the subject matter even more haunting and the characters even more memorable. Leigh is smart and easily talented enough as a writer to be able to brilliantly hold everything in suspense for the reader, with the dark tension beckoning you onward. This is a clever, engaging and marvellously evocative book which makes you feel like you are there, in this place, watching her well-drawn characters interact. I cannot recall a book in recent times in which the imagery is so vivid.
Ben

Spoiler Alert! I read the reviews for this book and was so hopeful. The modern-gothic tone grabbed me the first couple of pages in the bookstore, so I bought the book. It's a lovely little book to hold in your hand and there are more than a few spare, hauntingly gorgeous little scenes throughout. But by around page 80 or so, whenever you hit the couple of pages where she uses the word ancient three or four times very close together, the jig is up. Spare and haunting now just seems like lazy writing and bizarre in a very silly way. From here you begin to question everything that went before as far as the writing itself goes. And the cool, creepy first scene with the boy kicking down that door--paired with the last page, you'd think the boy had been the novella's child protagonist (the woman is the primary one); but the boy had only a very small supporting role throughout. The sister-in-law, Marcus's wife with her bundle of grief, took the novel over . . . and seemed not at all herself at the end when the woman (deus ex machina, here) finally buries her decomposing little corpse. All of the mysteries--about the woman's abusive relationship that she was running away from, the Murder she refers to, her own crazy family history--why she ran away from home--are never resolved in the least. A most disappointing and unsatisfying read with seemingly bloated positive reviews. Could have been a great book in a more talented and/or more conscientious and ambitious writer's hands.

The subtitle of "Disquiet" - "a story" - is the most accurate way to describe this little book. Small in all senses of the word, "Disquiet" presents little more than a short story of a situation. It is a book beautifully written, careful in progression and ultimately dark and eerie. Enjoyable, almost. It's hard not to get sucked into the read and emerge not long afterwards from the dark gloom that surrounds its well-crafted words.

But "Disquiet" faces a number of issues that are hard to overcome. Take, for instance, the fact that the book lacks any discernible plot. That might be okay, were the characters fully and richly developed, but they are not. Even at the end, they remain sketches - broad, intriguing sketches yes - but lack a sense of depth to them. The story as well. From beginning to end, it progresses almost "lightly", as though any quick movement will unsettle everything. It is partly due to that beautiful writing - the characters often speak rather stiffly, as though they're not sure what language they're speaking.

The first half of this small book was excellent. It felt like a good set-up for further development: first describe the situation beautifully and then delve slowly slowly into the heavier intricacies of the characters' lives. Instead, the ending is interesting, slightly unsettling, but not wholly satisfying. The vagueness, so appealing at first, begins to sounds repetitive and slightly worn and though the last two scenes cause the reader to sympathize deeply with the characters, the book ends abruptly, once again vague and confusing.

Ultimately, it is not an enjoyable, cheerful read. It's a curious, dark story, one that I'm glad I read, beautifully written and very much about the atmosphere and the overall feel. While some books can survive on general impressions alone, this slim book succeeds only partly. I recommend reading it, because it is quite interesting, raising a few disturbing questions I'd never thought to ask myself before, but am not certain it deserves to be purchased, particularly not when it costs the same as a standard paperback and is only 100 pages. As interesting and well written of a book as this is, I cannot recommend this book as a purchase and instead urge readers to seek this out in the library. 3.5 stars.

This slim volume is the perfect book to choose for a sunny afternoon, when you have an hour or two free and you're feeling all's well with the world, but you'd rather be disturbed, perturbed and disquieted. Something is amiss right at the beginning when Olivia (called "the woman") arrives at her Mother's gate and rather than ring the buzzer or just wait around 'til she can get one of the gardeners attention, opts to let her son bruise himself bloody by ramming a secret gate with his body. (Olivia has kept the key to this gate for 12 years; a gate she once used to sneak in and out of the estate during her formative years.) Olivia's body, too, we come to learn, has been rammed bloody by her husband (she refers to him as her murderer) back in Australia. Olivia's role models had been her mother, (probably a permissive parent) now an old, frail woman who dotes on two cats, and Ida the housekeeper ("the authoritarian") who brought to mind the housekeeper in DeMaurier's Rebecca. The characters now residing in the chateau are eccentric decision makers. Marcus, Olivia's brother, copes by having private cell phone conversations with his mistress. His wife, Sophia, is allowed to carry the decaying corpse of their infant around. The unresolved question as to how the baby died loiters about: stillborn or murdered by Marcus? Ice cream and other perishables are removed from the freezer so that the infant may reside there each night. Grandmother permits her cats to eat chicken on her priceless Persian carpets where the dessicated, decaying bones are allowed to remain scattered about her private, secured apartment within the chateau. A pretty flower arrangement is dessicated because there isn't any water in the vase. (Or, perhaps it is an artifical arrangement -- this is one of the many hazy areas where the reader is left to wonder what the writer is putting forth.) Olivia, motivated by the need to save her children from drowning, swims (although we are told earlier that she does not swim) in the icy water even though she has a broken arm. During her swim she daydreams about how the villagers and their children would have faces full of horrified wonder if she survived and her children did not. This is a curious story which the author has imbued with disquiet. I would like very much to know what motivated her to choose this subject and carry it through so well. Did she stumble upon Pessoa's Book of Disquiet at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris? Did she read Remnick and Finder's Disquiet Please? I highly recommend Disquiet for a reading group who enjoys the Gothic genre as there are many unresolved questions and plenty of rich imagery for discussion.

Leigh creates an unusual setting for this small, intense drama. Olivia and her two children gain entrance to her mother's French chateau through an overgrown side gate, the iron obstacle of the driveway impossible to navigate. Her arm in a sling, Olivia leads her children, Andrew, nine, and Lucy, six, into the estate, repeatedly dropping the heavy knocker against the door until there is a response. Once they are inside, Olivia introduces the children to their grandmother, an austere greeting at best, the lack of communication between mother and daughter evident. The old woman informs them that they are soon to be joined by Olivia's brother, Malcolm and his wife, Sophie, and their newborn baby. But when Malcolm and Sophie arrive, a pall settles over the intended celebration. The infant, Alice, has not survived her birth, although Sophie clings to the bundle in her arms, an accommodation made by Sophie's doctors to aid the grieving mother in processing her loss.

Embellishing on this grotesque situation, the author sets characters against the circumstances that have brought them to the chateau, each in need of shelter, life demanding more than they can endure. Olivia describes her husband as "my murderer", believing herself complicit in his violence against her. Andrew surreptitiously prepares to return to Australia, from which they have traveled, his young mind practical and focused. Lucy clings to her doll and her brother, a six-year-old adapting to circumstances out of her control. And Sophie, predictably, refuses to accept the immanent separation from her child, withdrawing into a sad fantasy. That this tale does not end tragically is due to the deft management of characters and the language of their deepest fears and flaws. In a denouement that can bring further horror or transcendence, the author cuts to the heart of these intimate dramas, clarity wrung from impending tragedy in a flash of images and intentions. The length of this story cannot obscure its focus, the power of choice in the face of profound distress. Luan Gaines/2009.

Reading a novella like this is like watching a great little movie late at night. It was a couple of hours of intense reading and mystery with characters that are immediately interesting and somehow lost in life's tougher tragedies, a terribly abusive husband (the murderer), a stillborn birth that almost destroys a distraught mother, accidents waiting to happen to young curious children on a large estate where there is a lake and leaky boats. It all happens in an old and almost abandoned and yet manicured estate in France. It reminded me of the setting for horror shows from my youth where there are boogeymen hiding in the shadows. The elderly mother is in a wheel chair and is formally caring for her middle aged children who have come to recuperate from their recent tragedies and yet she isn't really emotionally available to them, somewhat mystified by their immature and stupid lives. The main character, "the woman" seems like she is dying and trying to get her children set up with their inheritances and perhaps even to recruit her brother to become their parents since her life is basically over.

The crazy and perhaps most terrifying element of the story is that the mother of the stillborn is literally hanging on to the dead baby and won't let it go to the point where the baby is going rancid and disintegrating. There is some kind of metaphor here for the state of the family, hanging on to something that has long since died.

And yet, by the end, there is a plan and redemption and we pretty much have a successful future course that will work for everyone.........and yet, do we and will it really work?

I love the novella. It's a great little escape into a very complex and yet believable world laid out very poetically.

Spoilers

A single mum arrives on the doorstep of a gothic mansion with her two young children in tow. She's exhausted and so will you be before the book's finished. The woman's brother's wife has given birth prematurely to a stillborn child which she still carries around with her in a blanket as if it's alive. The family gathers, sees this and is, duh, unsettled. Eventually they confront the grieving couple and the stillborn child is buried. The end.

It's a quick read, more like a novella, but boy is it dull. "Feelings" explored ambiguously (quotation marks because I never believed they were genuine), none of the characters are memorable, the dialogue I don't remember. An utterly forgettable book with something of a non-story with rubbish characters. Completely dull, give it a miss. A better gothic novel - "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson.

The Review


My friend, Danielle, lent me this book because she thought I may enjoy this novella. The author's writing style is very calming despite the unrest and emotional horror of the story. It's almost like the reader is lulled into this story, rides along it peacefully, and then BAM! The reader is hit with a shocker! Back onto the smooth road and all is well. WHOOSH! The reader takes a sharp right hand turn! And, so it goes until we are finally able to complete the drive and arrive at the destination which is an ending that brings peace back to the reader. Whew!

I enjoyed this book for many reasons. First, I love the concept of a novella. You get more than a short story and you're not tied into 300+ pages of a story that has a lot of "fluff" in it. This story was written with as much "fluff" and character development as you needed, however it was true to the story and staying on point. Maybe a better way of putting it is that the writing was controlled and yet engaging.

On Sher's "Out of Ten Scale:"


I am fortunate to be reviewing not only this novella, but another one that I read within the same day. I liked them both. But, of the two, I preferred this one. Therefore, it's going to get slightly higher marks. For the genre Fiction:Novella, I am going to rate this book a 9 OUT OF 10.

It was difficult not to get so seduced by the brilliantly controlled prose and forget the heart of the tale - but I had no trouble finally doing so. Was there a more emotional scene in a recent book - told in such spare detail - than Olivia attempting to swim with her broken arm to save her son and daughter? I doubt I will forget that image. The dead baby felt like the gothic thread. The mother/daughter/son bond was for me the story - and a very modern one, I might add.