Translation, suspense and mother-daughter relationships are the focus of The Honeyeater, the highly anticipated second novel from the author of A Lonely Girl Is A Dangerous Thing. Jessie Tu introduces Fay, a young translator, who is trying to carve a career for herself with the support of her mentor.
As with Lonely Girl, Tu’s sophomore offering considers mother daughter relationships, albeit in a markedly different way. The protagonist, Fay, lives with her mother. Though they are close in a literal and figurative sense, they keep things to themselves because, as Fay notes, ‘it isn’t kind to burden loved ones with your troubles.’ Though mother and daughter do not grow closer during the French holiday with which the novel opens, the death of Fay’s lover and the accompanying emotional fallout marks a shift in their dynamic.
The identity of Tu’s protagonist is bound up in the support she provides her mother, support she begins to accept in return. By the novel’s conclusion, Tu makes it abundantly clear that the protection is bidirectional, that loved ones can hold space for our troubles in their own powerful ways.
Tu juxtaposes the fierce protectiveness and unconditional love that characterizes Fay and her mother’s bond with the toxic dynamic between Fay and her mentor, Samantha Egan-Smith. Fay is betrayed in a number of ways by Egan-Smith and her husband. Having her lived experience as a native Chinese speaker ignored, and her work and ideas stolen, highlights the ongoing racism and misogyny in academia (and society more broadly).
Marginalised readers – particularly women and people of colour – will be able to relate to the way Fay is gaslit, the way her lover could ‘make [her] believe [she] was wrong for thinking he betrayed [her],’ the way her contributions become merely a means of supporting those already in positions of power. These themes are part of what makes The Honeyeater such a notable departure from Lonely Girl.
Although there are occasional echoes of Lonely Girl in the narrator’s inner monologue, The Honeyeater is a sophisticated follow up. It offers an intriguing plot couched in impressive prose, such as Tu’s description of travelling as ‘the ultimate form of compressed living – everyday life suspended in search of some beauty. It is a temporal experience of other possibilities…’ The well-placed revelations about the nature of Fay’s relationship with her mentor and her mentor’s husband, give the novel a propulsive, page-turning quality.
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The Honeyeater is a novel of rare quality and wit, a testament to Tu’s understanding of her characters and ability to depict interpersonal complexities.
The Honeyeater, Jessie Tu
Publisher: Allen and Unwin
ISBN: 9781761470745
Format: Paperback
Pages: 352pp
Price: $32.99
Publication date: 2 July 2024
