REVIEW #23: WHILST FINDING EMMA, YOU WILL FIND A DIFFERENT AUSTRALIA

Finding Emma
By Valerie Volk
Wakefield Press, 2024
 

The most puzzling part of this novel was working out why I was so captivated by the protagonist who was unlikable from the first page and whose candid recognition of her flaws didn’t win me over in the slightest. Perhaps, in this post-truth world, someone who is willing to be honest and unwilling to perceive themselves as a victim is just so refreshing, we are drawn to her as a drowning person is drawn to the life-giving air at the sea’s surface.

A UNFAMILIAR HISTORICAL AUSTRALIA THAT REVEALS THAT HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS ARE CONSISTENTLY COMPLEX, WHATEVER THE ERA.

However, Emma Werner has little to recommend her. She doesn’t like children, not even her own grandchildren. She accused a teacher of kissing her to cover her own embarrassingly awkward professions of love. Though there is some insinuation that the teacher was not entirely innocent in his interactions with her, he is dismissed on the strength of her self-serving lie. After losing her fiancé to typhoid, she is determined to honour his memory and never love again. At first, she is cool to any possible suitor and gives no encouragement to Kurt, despite his devotion to her and sensitivity towards her feelings for her lost love. Nevertheless, her ego is pleased by his attentions. In fact, she revels in his adoration, even though she knows her sister loves Kurt and she is merely toying with his deep affection.

After accepting his proposal of marriage, she spends her life making caustic comments to her husband and continues to pay weekly visits to the grave of her former fiancé, indifferent to the pain and humiliation she is causing Kurt. Not only does she fail to return her husband’s adoration and love, she is also unfaithful to him, when the brother of her former fiancé comes to visit and her practical and unaffectionate character is deluded into believing she can conjure the passion of her lost love. Moreover, to add insult to injury, Emma spends her time reading old journals of her past life and love, conveying a strong message to her husband that she would rather live in the past with a ghost than enjoy their life together.

Though Emma realizes her foolishness and discovers a new appreciation for her husband, it is too late to mitigate the opinion I formed of her from the outset which only set like an irradicable beetroot stain on a cream bodice; it wouldn’t fade, and couldn’t be ignored or washed clean.  It is true that she grew to admire his knowledge and the respect he was given by the community. Unlike Emma, they valued his curiosity and creative energy that was instrumental in changing all their lives through his technological innovation and expertise. But even her admiration was motivated by self-interest, since it conferred on her a status she enjoyed, helping her to bear the jealousy and judgement of the other women.

It was a remarkable feat for Volk to create a desire to keep reading about her thoroughly self-absorbed and hard-hearted protagonist. Every other character is only presented through her eyes and their only role is to reveal the inner life of the protagonist. Emma dominates the reader’s thoughts as she dominates the other characters in her community, despite keeping her distance from everyone. Whether it is her childhood, her first love, her dutiful motherhood, her dry and distant relationship with her husband, her naïve delusions of love for her dead fiancé’s brother, or her satisfaction in finding a useful role in the running of her husband’s business, Emma’s thoughts and feelings dominate every situation and overflow like a dark, ugly stain onto all those around her. Her voice is constantly in our ear and, despite its snarky and icy tone, we keep wanting to find out how things will end. Are we waiting for her to learn her lesson? Are we hoping that she will get her comeuppance in the end?

The clever way of moving between her journals and her present life enabled us to reflect on her character, as Emma did with the benefit of hindsight and the insight of experience. It would have been easy to have created a female victim of repression in a patriarchal society, but it was refreshing to see Volk present a woman who, whilst expected to follow the conventions of her day, refused to play the victim − a role that is greatly relished in our contemporary world despite that fact that women in Australia are free to be whoever they wish to be from prime minister to preacher to publican to plumber. Perhaps the title implies the idea of being overshadowed by everyone around her and having to discover her true self, but I felt this was a strong woman who spent a lifetime justifying her character, rather than finding herself. In many ways, this is what we all do.

I found the book so valuable in reminding us how egocentric we are. It reminds us of the impact we have on others, especially our spouse and our children, but even our local communities and our nation. It is a timely reminder of the way technology impacts society and of the terrible social and psychological costs of war. It reminds us of the challenges of migration and of building a nation, especially a multicultural one like ours. These are all valuable things to reflect on and Volk manages to challenge us with them all, in the process of finding Emma. Though I thoroughly disliked her protagonist, I couldn’t put the book down. That is a testament to Volk’s tremendous ability to engage us in the lives of her characters, taking us into a totally believable world that has much to teach us about out own times . . . if we take the trouble to reflect on the differences between the first half of the twentieth century and the first half of the twenty-first. If you choose to take this journey into the past with Emma, you will be rewarded with a great deal to reflect upon.