A moaner's story, shortlisted for the Ockham fiction award
An adorable, blue-eyed baby gazes from a pink and blue cover. Is he wide-eyed from wonder? Or is it terror?
A Good Winter arrived in the post. During the afternoon, I gave it a bit of a look-through. At 3:30am I was reading the final pages.
Olga has lived in her apartment for 40 years, is the head of the body corporate for the apartment block and has created a flourishing garden. She befriends Lara who has moved into a flat so that she can be closer to her daughter, Sophie, who, recently widowed and overwhelmed by grief, is unable to care for her baby, Michael. Olga recognises that Lara needs help and the narrative follows the events of the following months, from winter into summer as Lara and Olga share the tasks of looking after Michael and Sophie begins to regain her independence. During that time, Olga and Lara’s friendship grows and intensifies.
Olga is the narrator of her story. Within the tight community she is part of, she appears, most likely, as a bit of a do-gooder, the kind of single, older woman who will tirelessly give up her time to help her friend and the newly widowed mother. The face which the community sees, however, disguises the inner Olga, who is, in fact, brutally critical. “All she was interested in was weeping for her dead husband. She was so busy weeping for her dead husband that she paid scant attention to his baby, who was right in front of her.”
The use of first-person narration allows us not only to recognise the distinct difference between Olga’s public persona and an inner self, which is consumed by censure and jealousy, but to also experience the disturbing intensity of her growing infatuation with Lara. Fenster cleverly invites us to look beyond and beneath what Olga tells us, setting up doubt and unease as we observe their relationship. Olga’s fixation with Lara’s physical appearance, her jealousy of Lara’s friends, her preoccupation with Lara’s activities implies a situation which appears to be moving out of control: “I worried about her in that awful catty office environment. It’s not a good environment for someone genteel like Lara.”
Implied, too, is the sexual attraction Olga feels for Lara, but is unable to acknowledge, suggesting a deep-set sexual repression already indicated by her repugnance towards lesbians, “There’s no rule that says you can’t have a bath and listen to Dory Previn and think about the friends in your life. Your friend unwrapping her scarf from around her head. I thought about something loosening inside. And fixing itself again. Loosening and fixing. And Lara unwrapping the scarf from around her head.”
Through Olga’s reflections, we discover possible causes for the negativity which permeates her mind. As a child, she was abandoned by her mother and, although Olga appears to idolise her, “my mother was an artist. An artist being slowly smothered to death on a sheep-shit farm,” we see the destructive nature of her influence which has encouraged Olga to remain aloof and feel superior, looking for the flaws rather than the strengths in the people around her. We experience Olga’s hurt which she attempts to conceal when her mother leaves, we share her memories of the bitter quarrels between her parents.
But, although the choice of point of view offers us full admission into Olga’s mind, this is not an easy place to be. Olga is the person you cross the street to avoid at all costs; the monologue of her misery, criticisms, jealousy and judgments become relentless, hard to bear; duck-liver pate, piercings, long red fingernails, lesbians- they all get it. As does stupid Mr. Stewart, fat Julie, silly Glynis, wallowing Sophie and her weak brother.
Olga moans, “I couldn’t help but wonder whether that man was ripping my brother off. Mocking my brother behind his back. He’s always been an idiot that way, and I’d have to watch it. Him charging into social situations, always looking for friends. Always smiling and chatting and laughing. Running around like a puppy with its tongue hanging out. Who can I lick?”
This is not a novel with engaging action, nor is it redolent with memorable imagery, description and detail. The writing is clipped, repetitive. The language is Olga’s own language - limited, tiresome, and monotonous. The world the novel inhabits is Olga’s own world which is narrow and constrained. So why did I find myself still reading at 3am? I was morbidly fascinated by Olga’s pure awfulness. She really seemed to have no redeeming features. I kept waiting for something more.
The possibility of friendship between Lara and Olga sets up a feeling of optimism and, as Olga reflects on her friendship with Lara and tries to understand her, there';s the implication that some sort of redemption and change may happen. However, her patterns of thinking and behaviour are too deeply entrenched to sustain the friendship which turns to jealousy, control, and attempts at ownership.
We are confronted not only by Olga’s misery but the hurt she causes other people and why she has become the small-minded, jealous, critical person she is, remains puzzling. Does it all go back to Olga’s mother, who instilled in her a sense of superiority and pride which caused her to despise her father and brother? Was it her parents’ vicious arguments or her mother’s abandonment? Possibly it is a culmination of all of these, but Olga has lived for 40 stagnant years in her apartment, supported by an inheritance from her mother. Should we pity or judge her in the pitiless way she judges those around her?
And what has happened during those past 40 years? Is Lara the only woman Olga has befriended in this obsessive way or has this happened before? And why, since her mother placed such great emphasis on the superiority and passion of the artist, has Olga has lived such a narrow life?
Olga tells her story. The pace takes us insistently onwards. A Good Winter draws us into a disturbed and damaged mind and carries us relentlessly through the seasons.
A Good Winter by Gigi Fenster (Text Publishing, $38) has been shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand national book awards, and is available in bookstores nationwide.
