A marauding monkey, a charging camel . . . and all the fun of the circus: Poet Libby Angel's The Trapeze Act is an engaging debut novel.
THE TRAPEZE ACT
Libby Angel
Text publishing
By RACHEL GURNEY
Flying, tumbling, free-falling, and catching onto what you can are all parts of a trapeze act, and also the lives of circus performers.
Libby Angel's novel, The Trapeze Act, features several generations of a Dutch outfit, Rodzirkus, from Maartje May in the 1850s, (the first woman to complete a triple somersault to catch), to her namesake Loretta Maartje Lord, the narrator, more than 100 years later.
Although Loretta herself doesn't perform any acts, her mother, Leda, is an elite trapeze artist who leaves Rodzirkus in Adelaide in the late 1950s. She marries a criminal lawyer, Gilbert Lord, but is very much her own person, dressing and behaving theatrically, including outing her husband's mistress to a judge at a law ball before getting her revenge.
The novel starts shakily, flitting between characters, time periods and places, which are hard to grasp, but then settles to alternate between the storylines of Leda's life after leaving the circus, (from Loretta's perspective), and the life of Gilbert's ancestor, Ernest Lord, who leaves England in 1858 in search of elephants and therefore ivory, and water, in central Australia.
This ill-fated journey is told in snippets of Lord's diary that Loretta has found amongst her father's belongings.
There is some symmetry in the stories with a marauding monkey in the circus and then a charging camel in the desert; a .22 rifle causes damage at a dinner party, while an expedition rider's pistol goes off in its holster.
This is poet Angel's debut novel. Her poetry shows in her delightful prose, and turn of phrase, e.g. "my mother was always more neon light than a vaporous wraith'' and horses moved in "perfect synchronicity, forming intricate mandelas in the sawdust''.
Chaos ensues in both threads with the truth becoming evident for Ernest and only the natives save his day. Meanwhile Loretta's brother, Kingston, wreaks havoc, and Leda does an about turn, shunning all worldly goods, including her wigs, outlandish outfits, and even basic linen.
Some incidents gain clarity, making sense of the opening passages, but Loretta has many paths open to her. The only sign of any ambition from her was to state at school that her goal was to "leave this godforsaken town and set the world on fire''. She appears to be just an observer for most of the action; we can only imagine what she may do.
Within the first 10 pages, we are told that: "The past is a story we tell ourselves, memories are fantasies, the future is a mirage.''
Enjoy the journey but don't expect to get anywhere.
Rachel Gurney is an avid Dunedin reader.
