Andrea Goldsmith is one of my favourite authors. I loved Reunion, and I loved The Memory Trap even more. This year she has a new book called Invented Lives (Scribe, April) so I wanted to read one of her books beforehand that I’ve had on my shelves since (dare I admit it?) 2008. I’d read The Prosperous Thief when it was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2003, and so when I found Modern Interiors (1991) in a second-hand bookshop, I knew it was a steal for $5.00. It turned out to be the perfect antidote to two books I’d borrowed and expected to like, which today went back to the library unread. This is when ‘standby’ books come into their own, when I’ve had a disappointment and I want to be sure that the next book is going to be good reading.
Modern Interiors has the tagline behind its rich façade the modern interior may not be all it pretends, but this book is a frank exploration into family obligations. What do we owe them, and what do they owe us? How do we deal with the pressure to hold families together even when they don’t deliver even the most rudimentary satisfactions and you don’t share values that are fundamental to identity and integrity? I thought about this just yesterday when the ABC reported on a survey about the psychological damage done by the Same-Sex Marriage survey, because I have a friend still traumatised by learning that his family didn’t care, and voted No.
Families can be thoughtless and cruel, and they can be exploitative. In Modern Interiors, there are two women, one old and one young, who have problematic families. Amy Vaughan is young, and has cast off her mother and sister because they are toxic human beings; Philippa Finemore is old and rich, and she struggles with the fact that two of her three children are awful people who just want to use her.
But while Amy feels she is better off without her family, she still needs the kind of support that families are supposed to provide. She has endured years of soul-destroying confidence-sapping misery which still blights her young life because she is afraid of relationships of any kind. She needs a mentor, and sometimes, she needs mothering. Philippa, OTOH, appears to have everything: money, confidence, comfort and style—and a nice man who’s comes into her life since widowhood. One of her children, the one she likes because he is accepting of her recent choices, is far away in London and though she misses him, she’s happy that he’s fulfilling his dreams. But her other children are openly hostile to her new independence—and deeply resentful that she is spending what they regard as their money on a charitable foundation and a new home at an inconvenient distance when baby-sitting is required.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/01/26/modern-interiors-by-andrea-goldsmith/ ( )