 The
darkest point
Christina
Hill
Emily
Ballou
Aphelion
Picador, $32.95 pb, 512 pp, 9780330423120
Aphelion
can be called a family epic in that it is long and has many characters.
The title of the novel refers to the sun; a character explains
that ‘there is a point in astronomy when a planet is at its
furthest point from the sun, the slowest point in its orbit. It’s
called aphelion. I guess it’s the darkest point.’ In
this, her second novel, Emily Ballou uses overlapping and intersecting
voices. Six characters – five of them female – contribute
to the novel’s complex chorus of memory and reflection over
time.
The focus is upon time and how it shapes the relationships of
individuals across the generations, those between the women of
one family, in particular. Set in the highlands of the Snowy River,
Aphelion is about the effects of the Hydro-Electric Scheme
on the local people, the profound geographic and psychological
impact of the construction of the Eucumbene Dam. The specific
location for most of the novel is Adaminaby, both the old town
and the new one established in 1957, after the flooding of the
original settlement. The creation of Lake Eucumbene is the reason
for the town’s obliteration, but the lake is also the novel’s
symbol of all that haunts the characters. It conceals the old
realities of place and yet taunts the memory, as the drought of
the last ten years uncovers vestiges of the old town and the spectre
of drowned trees.
Three time frames are used: 1939, 2002 and 1957. In 1939, the
shortest section, the old town is as yet undis-turbed and the
happiness of the Windle family has an almost Arcadian simplicity.
Hortense, the mother, is in her thirties, her daughters, Esme
and Pictoria, in their teens. With their father, Jack, they go
fishing for trout at the river. 2002, the longest section and
the ‘now’ of the novel, comes next but is bifurcated
by 1957, which narrates the experiences of Hortense, now in her
fifties but in her prime and driven by her longing to travel,
and of Esme, thirty-five and desperate for love. Esme works as
head midwife in the ‘little America’ of Sue City (the
location of Australia’s first supermarket), the temporary
construction town of the American engin-eers who live there with
their wives and other immigrant labourers. The winter of 1957
is a turning point for both Hortense and Esme. The sudden elopement
of Pictoria with a young Italian workman forever alters their
lives because she leaves her daughter, five-year-old Byrne, to
be raised by them.
In 2002 Hortense is 101, her unmarried daughter Esme is eighty-one
and they live in their old house (relocated when the river was
flooding) with Pictoria’s estranged daughter Byrne, who is
fifty, and single, and her twenty-four year old daughter Lucetta.
Most of the characters are unhappy or at least disappointed. Hortense,
still vibrant and dedicated to the joys of living, is thwarted
because she is too old to be allowed to drive a car; Esme, frail,
embittered by a life in which so little has happened, is dependent
on heavy pain-killers and drinks secretly; Byrne believes that
her life has been curtailed by her dependent aunt and mother,
and Lucetta, widowed four years earlier, works as a vet and tries
to manage her grief.
Into this mêlée of rancour, need and disappointment
comes Hazel, a thirty-five year-old American-Australian drawn
to the town by the promise of employment as an archivist to establish
a memorial planned for the town. She too struggles with her past,
a failed love affair in Sydney and her fraught relationship with
the mother who is indefatigable in her determination to keep track
of the daughter who has escaped to Australia. A young hitchhiker
joins Hazel on the way to Adaminaby. This is Rhett, a close neighbour
of the Windle family; he is returning to the now empty house of
his family, all of whom have died.
All the characters are at the mercy of their own particular demons.
Drought dominates the landscape. The lake itself, once at least
eighty metres deep and very cold, is now half as deep, but always
filthy and dark. The lake and the submerged town become metaphors
for all that is lost but forever retained in the psyches of the
characters. Rhett, unable to face the ghosts of his now deserted
family home, goes diving:
Below, the old town lay, waiting, breathing water. He pointed
his torch. Then he was gone. Down to the homesteads that might
give way around him if he swam through; down to where the drowned
beds were lit with voices, writhing with ghosted lovers; down
to the memory of bodies through doors, floorboards and corridors,
people calling to each other, laughing, weeping. Maybe if he stayed
down long enough this time he could travel back along the anchor
line of his mother’s voice, back to her own childhood, follow
it through windows and squares of walls to find her, warm and
whole, with hands that could actually touch him.
There is much to admire in this novel. The 1957 section is especially
powerful; it brings the grand narrative of the heroic, almost
mythic construction of the dam to life. Ironically, the mindset
of unquestionable progress that went with it seems tragically
naïve today, though this is not explored. While landscape
and history are strongly realised in the novel, Ballou has attempted
too much. The plot seems unnecessarily convoluted, and this is
exacerbated by the narrative trick of withholding information.
Less is more. Aphelion is too long.
Christina
Hill is a Melbourne-based reviewer.
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