I HAVE no doubt that Chloe Hooper is a very good writer. Her
account of the Palm Island ‘murder’ from a few years ago in which Cameron
Doomadgee died in a police cell was chilling and absolutely captivating. Her new,
second novel of fiction, is called ‘The Engagement.’ Again one couldn’t deny
that there is an intelligent writer at work here, capable of some impressively
taut and thrilling writing. However, ‘The Engagement’ left me cold and I found
it a bit of a chore to get to the end.
Liese Campbell, a 35 year old architect, is the unreliable
narrator who has fled London and now works in her uncle’s Melbourne real estate
business. Enter Alexander Colquhoun, a wealthy client who becomes more than
just a little obsessed with Liese. After having sex in a number of potential
rental apartments, Colquhoun pays her an enormous amount of money and takes her
to his enormous grazier’s property named Warrowill, in rural Victoria. Both people- and there is
barely anyone else in the novel- continually play intimate mind games which
ultimately leave me cold and disinterested. Eventually the games become too
tense and serious for Liese, to the point where she feels a strong compulsion
to run away, and even fears for her life. Earlier she enjoyed this game of
pretending to be a prostitute, until the game became out of her control and
Alexander became more of a disturbing prospect than she anticipated. I suppose
both Alexander and Liese are unusual and interesting in a way. However, for me
the book dragged on, each time making me think something of note or import was
going to happen, only to feel let down.
Neither character is warm or attractive in any way. They are
both selfish, scheming types and I didn’t at any stage care what happened to
either of them. Alexander is by far the most repulsive, not helped by the fact
that there is a carcass of a swan he has butchered in the kitchen, and a series
of infantile and disturbing letters about Liese he has invented.
The melodrama is contained in the idea that Liese feels more
and more desperate to escape, as a claustrophobic metaphorical net is placed
over here. Alexander never really seems to lock any doors. Hooper is at her skilful
best in that at times it seems that imprisonment is partly of Liese’s own
making. Ultimately, however, the whole
ambiguous game is something that I never really at any stage felt I was wanting
to buy into.
“It lay on the ground, a black spineless thing with arms and
legs outstretched. It seemed to have no eyes. It seemed to have no mouth. It swam
in shiny black oil, twitching and wriggling inside a translucent sheath.”
At her best Chloe Hooper is powerful, and one day perhaps,
consistently powerful, like an M J Hyland who really knows how to write
thrilling prose.
