Steeplechase
By Krissy Kneen
Text Publishing, 2013
RRP NZ$37.00
This is a first novel by an already accomplished writer. She was short-listed for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award in 2010 for her sexual
memoir “Affection”. Interestingly, she
is best known as a writer of literary erotica. The cover of this novel features a horse
engulfed in flames. I have to say that
had I been cruising a bookshop and seen the cover, read the title and noted the
author was best known for erotica, I suspect I wouldn’t have bothered with
it. But that would have been my loss,
because Krissy Kneen is an astonishingly good writer.
“Steeplechase” is a beautifully
sensual novel. The writing is superb
and I was captured from the start. The prose is spare and yet also luxurious. It is the story of two sisters, Bec and
Emily Reich both of them artists. The sisters have been separated for twenty
years. Bec lives in Brisbane and is
recovering from surgery when she gets a phone call from Emily who is living in
Beijing. Emily is a world famous artist and a
schizophrenic. Bec is an art teacher having an affair with one of her much
younger students and she’s recently held her own successful art exhibition. The sisters share a dark, sensual, and
disturbing past, tinged with madness. I
was at times confused, uncertain but never bored.
Part one of the novel develops
the narrative around Bec Reich and her inappropriate love affair with her
student, interspersed with flashbacks to the childhood of Bec and Emily, the
strange power Emily exerts over her sister, their unusual childhood. It is beautifully paced and an absolute
page-turner. Part Two actually begins
two thirds of the way through the book and the pace and tone changes becoming
more sinister and surreal. Near the end
of the novel, I wasn’t even certain there were two sisters, so surreal and
extraordinary is the narrative, the theme of folie a deux.
When Bec travels to Beijing to
meet up with her sister Emily after having not seen her for many years, the
author juxtaposes their fraught reunion with keen observations of Beijing, the
hutong in which Emily lives, the contrasts between life in Brisbane, the
disconnection a traveller feels after hours on a long flight and the immersion
in a totally different culture. This is
Bec, on seeing her sister for the first time after twenty years…
“I am shocked to see her this
way, blown out and hidden under her own flesh, and this meeting is so many
things: a death, a revelation, a gift that shrugs off its festive wrapping only
to disappoint. This moment is also a mirror and I am reflected: I am this size,
this weight. I am this same embodiment
of jetlagged exhaustion. In her eyes I
find my own loneliness and insecurities.”
Add to this the
background of mental illness, and you have a sinister canvas, suspense,
sensuality, confusion and to boot a quite horrifying denouement. Kneen doesn’t hold back when it comes to
detail, she doesn’t spare the reader, she writes as if painting a scene, bold
carnal brushstrokes.
How often do we laugh at the bad
sex awards when they come out – amazed that some of the very best writers can
write so badly? Let me tell you, that
Krissy Kneen could be nominated for the best sex award and yet that would be to
diminish her talent to speak so glibly.
She seems fearless as a writer but that’s because she has command of her
prose, control of her story. The love
story between the art teacher and her student is beautifully observed. I will confess that I wanted the story to be
less disturbing and that I was happy with Bec in Brisbane and her unsuitable
lover and just hints of the strange Emily.
Part two was more confronting and confusing and for a while I felt
disconnected – Beijing took over for a moment as a character, distancing me
from the narrative, and like Bec, I was for a time, lost.
I recommend this book, but also
with a warning about the sometimes graphic nature of some of the prose. I waxed lyrical about ‘The Slap’ one of my
favourite novels a year or so ago and some people took me to task because of
the ‘sex’. I hardly noticed it, so
absorbed was I in the characters.
Whereas, with this novel, sensuality and the carnal is at the heart of
the story, so if you’re not up for it, then fair enough – but you will be
missing a very interesting read.
Maggie Rainey-Smith (right) is a Wellington writer and regular reviewer on Beattie's Book Blog. She is also Chair of the Wellington branch of the NZ Society of Authors.
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