Something New

 We feature each month Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.   

THE STARVING BRIDE by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University NZ$34.99 )

 

 

I have always admired the novels of Catherine Chidgey. I have read them all, from In a Fishbone Church (her first novel) to her latest. But once again I am behind the pack because I now review novels only each month, and by the time I get to publish my review other pundits have already had there say. Item – in the Listener Stephanie Johnson wrote a review of The Starving Bride telling us it is “aimed squarely at youth, and particularly girls” and later says “although less literary than Chidgey’s previous, the novel does not lack sophistication or complexity”. So that was a very positive review. Item -  Philip Matthews also wrote a review of The Starving Bride. He gave us a detailed account of the novel, but in the end he tells us that “The descent from Remote Sympathy to The Starving Bride is depressing. [Remote Sympathy is one of Catherine Chidgey greatest novels.]  The elements of this plot do not come together in satisfying ways, and as for the central twist, which is a flashback involving a bar of luxury chocolate, it must be one of the most ludicrous and unlikely ideas dreamed up in recent New Zealand fiction. It is just one of the ways in which the book borders on silliness and unseriousness and it is hard to know how to think about it.”

The odd thing is that I partly agree with both pundits. Yes the novel will go down well with teenage girls more than with adults; and yes the adults will see all the flaws in the tail.

A quick synopsis: The novel is set in England, but it is an England that may be somewhere in the future. Hazel is fired from a factory for messing with goods. So she goes to Blackpool which is very crass and tawdry with its seaside amusements. Her best friend is Gilda who is a glamour-puss dancing in Blackpool. Hazel is a little bit weighty. Gilda suggests that Hazel would be perfect as “The Starving Bride”. This [as Chidgey tells us in a note at the end of the novel] was once an amusement in which a slightly weighty young woman would be put into a cage for the crowds to see her asleep - with the idea that she would starve for forty days as the young woman becomes slimmer. [Of course we soon understand that it is a fraud in many ways.] Hazel would like the money so every day the crowds come to see her starving. And to make things even more interesting for the crowd, there is a caged lion next to where Hazel sleeps. Catherine Chidgey gives us much of the chatter and often cruel gossip that goes with the crowd as they try to understand how Hazel survives.

What happens to Hazel is the main interest of the novel. She remembers the unpleasant school girls who used to tease her for her weight, saying she is fat and ugly… and she decides to really starve. But every so often there is another man in the novel, Frank Marsh, who has nothing to do with Hazel. He is a member of the local Borough Council, and he is trying to get them to understand that Blackpool’s famous Tower is rusting away and it will soon collapse. They don’t listen to him or they shout him down - after all, they are more interested in the money they are making.

So much for a general synopsis.

It would wrong to see The Starving Bride as only for teenaged girls. There is much sophistication in the way Chidgey presents the crowd, shows the dishonesty of those who run the shows and the under-handed deals. We understand that friends can also become enemies. But there is much more to the novel. As I see it, this novel is a warning. A group of girls come to admire Hazel because she is dieting and they too want to diet as if this is chique. This comes close to the anorexia nervosa that has plagued many teenage girls – the idea that they have to be extremely slim, sometimes going to the point of killing themselves. And that is what the core of this novel is… as I see it.

I have deliberately simplified Catherine Chidgey’s novel. I do think the ending is melodrama of the sort that teenagers enjoy (the baddies lose etc), but then it is very readable even for grown-ups. Chidgey could appeal to teenagers as well as adults. Having said that, The Starving Bride is not as thoughtful as her best novels The Wish Child, Remote Sympathy, The Book of Guilt and others.