Hydra by Adriane Howell. Transit Lounge. 256pp. $29.99.
A Danish chair, the stuff of antique trade mythology, is Anja's downfall. Taking it out from under a grieving mother, leaving her to fall, forces Anja from the Melbourne auction house, experts in handling deceased estates, where she manages the mid-century modern department.
Anja buys the 99-year lease for a cottage being carved off part of a naval base, HMAS Hydra, south-east of the city. There, she hopes, she will find space to rebuild and reimagine herself after splitting from the husband with whom she tried to have children. She is now behind where she is expected to be for her age.
Although Anja finds a job in an antiques market - closer to a car-boot sale than the auction house and cutting-edge thoughts of object classification she is used to - the cottage is a lonely, dark place. Here the mind - or is it the navy boys on the nearby base? - can play tricks. Anja has intentionally isolated herself but is never able to feel properly alone.
Adriane Howell's debut novel lingers after a first reading. Its narrative can be uncertain, revealed in glimpses and poignant moments. The complexity does not take away from its suspense or drive - indeed its flashes of humour. The pages are not so over burdened with technique to bog down the story.
The novel's uncertainty is smartly achieved by a sure-footed writer, leading the reader on a path clear enough to follow and complex enough to make the following of it worthwhile. Howell's first-person prose manages that rare combination of literary skill and believability that a person would really tell their story this way.
Hydra deserves a careful, slow second reading to catch revealing moments missed on the first pass. It's hard to say for certain what happens in Hydra. Parts feel like fiction within fiction, or maybe not?
The constant background hum of needing to perpetually second guess becomes integral to the novel.
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Anja's first-person account is intercut with a report from an inquiry into strange sightings on the naval base 40 years ago. Anja is experiencing something eerily similar but can never really tell where her senses let her down, confronted with the force of an urban legend, a contemporary myth.
Howell's novel has many threads and not all of them are fused into neat ends. They did not need to be. Hydra does not answer all the questions it poses, but it poses them in such a beguiling way that answers hardly seem like the point.
There are parts of our experience that remain unknowable. But Howell shows often the best way through is to take action regardless.