Sofie Laguna, Infinite splendours

With pandemic post-lockdown restrictions still in place, but not wanting yet another Zoom meeting, Minervans "pivoted" (to use the word of the day) to a late afternoon meeting in the park opposite our October host's home.  We enjoyed our savoury nibbles, wine and cake in the late afternoon sun, while still keeping to our tried-and-true bookgroup formula - chat for half an hour or so, book discussion for around an hour, followed by cake and chat for another half hour or so. 

Our book was Sofie Laguna's Infinite splendours, which tells the story of Lawrence who was, as a sensitive, imaginative ten-year-old, groomed and raped by his visiting uncle. What happens to Lawrence after this, how he traverses life as a damaged person, occupies the major part of the book. It's a tough, heart-in-throat book about, as Laguna says, the price paid when certain boundaries are crossed.

We started of course, with our ...

First impressions

Several of our first impressions aligned, with the following reactions recurring most often:

• a bit repetitive, so longer than necessary
• a tough, painful, disturbing read, "a bit of an ordeal", particularly given we've already done novels about intergenerational First Nations trauma, and poverty and alcoholism, this year
• powerfully, beautifully, superbly written, including the writing about the mountain, nature and the landscape

A few of us were uncertain about the credibility of Lawrence's reaction to his experience. The book could read that his reaction is inevitable whereas evidence points to the contrary. Some of us weren't completely convinced by Lawrence's trajectory, though we were able to go with it.

Other impressions included:

• had faith that Laguna would leave us with hope, but this time it felt a bit thin
• liked that it put a human face on a child molester, showing that underneath there is often a suffering person who is damaged, but overall found it too much of a social messaging novel, and felt lectured at
• thought the art was boring and predictable 
• thought the best parts were the children interacting at the beginning
• didn't believe the character or resolution
• was drawn in by the lovely depiction of childhood, really liked the use of the mountain to evoke Lawrence, and found it so sad, but was entranced
• found the characters, even minor ones, very well described
• found the fear, foreboding visceral at times

Further discussion

Naturally we focused a lot on what happened to Lawrence, how and why it happened, and how nothing was done for him after the event. We discussed the suggestion in the novel that his mother and uncle (Reggie) had been molested, and that Reggie told Lawrence not to tell his mother because it would destroy her. We also noted that Lawrence's mother had likened Lawrence to Reggie, describing them both as clever. One member wondered whether the mother had been molested by her brother (Reggie) when young, but the rest of us didn't see this. We noted that Paul had been less interested in Uncle from the start. After the event, he suspected something had happened, asking Lawrence "what did he do to you?", but the traumatised Lawrence refused to answer. This was heartbreaking, given he had done all he could to protect Paul from being abused similarly. All these and more affected why the situation played out the way it did.

We considered that one of the reasons Laguna set this novel in the past was that it was a time when there was less awareness of abuse and of its potential longterm impact. It enabled her to more authentically tell a story about someone who went under the radar.

We discussed the writing of the main abuse scene, and how it was described from a 10-year-old's perspective. We agreed that Laguna conveyed well what happened without using language that Lawrence wouldn't know.

We talked a lot about Lawrence, and his apparent naïvety as an adult. In many ways his development stopped when he was 10-years-old, which is not surprising. He changed from the sensitive, imaginative, curious little boy he had been to someone withdrawn, and prickly. He fluctuated between love and hate for his mother and Paul. 

We noted that Laguna quickly spans the years from 10 to 25, when the mother dies, and doesn't detail Lawrence's reaching puberty. Laguna uses various ideas to convey the effect of the trauma on Lawrence, one being his bowel-movement difficulty with visits to the outhouse being excruciating for him, and another being descriptions of his "two selves", which started at the time of the abuse: 

I felt myself dividing; there were two selves to choose from. One inside, one outside. (p. 152/3)

Much later, when the final crisis comes, Lawrence reflects

It was another moment on the way to the next, and I was both in it and outside of it. Yet was it not the same for all moments? One part engaged, another observing. Two selves. (p. 411)

One member suggested that, in some ways, 10-year-olds are the peak of human achievement. Expanding this, another member added that Lawrence reads in his art book that Constable had said he had seen all he needed to see for his paintings by the time he was 10 years old.

We discussed the ending a little, but got a bit waylaid by one member saying she didn't believe it at all. This resulted in a good discussion about art and artistic talent, and about Lawrence's skills and what style we thought he painted in, but we didn't discuss other aspects of the ending.

We also briefly discussed the large number of motifs in the novel: the bunker, Wallis (a mountain in the Grampians), the outhouse, the scarecrow, Robinson Crusoe, colours, Madame Butterfly, to name some. Were there too many? We all liked the role of Wallis, as something unchangeable/stable but also magnificent in Lawrence's life. We also felt that the bunker worked well as a place of safety for Lawrence, even if sometimes that safety meant hiding from himself rather than resolving his inner demons.

We talked about the title, which came from the artist Millet who said that "I see far more in the countryside than charm, I see infinite splendours." Lawrence spent his life trying to capture those splendours, and at the end his art, in a sense, achieves "eternity" (or "infinity") for him.

We talked also little about Paul. Some felt he'd been an excellent brother, while others felt he had been too cursory in his care. We liked Mrs Barry, who had recognised that Lawrence behaved like the men who had come home from the war (ie. traumatised) but, of course, she didn't know why.

Some members were concerned about some anachronisms (caused probably by editors being too young!):

• Ten-year-old Lawrence would not say "f**k off" to his brother in 1953
• The scarecrow's face was coloured with a marker which members felt didn't exist then (According to Wikipedia they were around, but would they have been prevalent in rural Victoria at the time?)
• Reggie makes coffee which was not likely in a 1950s country home

A member referred us to other works on child abuse, Polish-Swiss psychologist Alice Miller's Thou shalt not be aware, and Andrew Bovell's play, When the rain stops falling.

No matter how much we liked or struggled with the book, we ended up having our usual highly engaged, wide-ranging and insightful discussion - but, we also agreed that we'd like to fit in a few lighter (though still meaty!) books next year!

And, some pics ... with thanks to the (absent) photographer

Present: 11 people