Bri Lee’s debut novel, The Work, is torn between two books. One is a half hearted interrogation of capital and power and their influence on art, told via millennial characters whose hubris and privilege speak of who wields control in creative industries. The other is a modern romance between two people with a mutual yet sparring love of art in a novel that mostly treats art and artists like a beguiling yet uninterrogated backdrop – like a painting in a restaurant.
Lee’s other works – the acclaimed Eggshell Skull and two follow-ups, Beauty and Who Gets to Be Smart – are each memoir-infused nonfiction, respectively tackling Australia’s inadequate justice system for sexual assault and rape survivors, beauty standards and institutions, and correlations between privilege and knowledge. In her foray into fiction, Lee brings her familiarity with sociocultural issues – and parts of herself again, as she’s mentioned – to The Work, using the lens of gender inequity, power and class to scrutinise the cultural sector’s gatekeepers and profiteers.
Whether the novel accomplishes this is another question. The Work, split between New York and Sydney, alternates between two characters: Lally, a career-focused thirtysomething American who is the owner of a contemporary gallery in Manhattan, and Patrick, an Australian bloke in his late 20s from regional Queensland now working as a junior appraiser at a prestigious antiquities company in Sydney. Both have worked hard for their success; both unconsciously lie to themselves about the certain privileges they enjoy (an “unexpected inheritance”, male privilege).
The novel’s tension stems from Lally and Patrick’s relationship (they have a meet-cute through work, exchange flirty barbs, have a lot of sex) in tandem with their unfolding career mistakes. Lally, in her bid to feed “what the market hungered for”, commissions an installation by the controversial artist Chuck Farr, which she persists with despite historical allegations of coercion against him from several male models. Patrick, meanwhile, finds himself in a precarious position after having sex with his first major client, a divorcee looking to pawn off her former husband’s assets.
Art isn’t the focus of The Work; Lee herself says it’s more about “real estate”. That’s true, and the novel is most compelling when illustrating the market’s ever-shifting perceptions of cultural value, our gendered ideals of creativity, and the machinery that distributes and profits from it. It’s self-aware of performative currency in “young and diverse” artists – Lally bats no eyelid pushing the “devastated-migrant-son angle” for a photography series – with the novel’s characters attuned to the inequities of their industries while remaining complicit in upholding them.
However, the novel’s limp handling of art detracts from the plot. There are moments when it convincingly engages with its ethics and politics, such as when Lally contends with the moral ambiguity of Farr’s provocative video works. But lazy obscurities creep in: Farr’s work hits “that sweet spot in Lally’s aesthetic-intellectual interior”, and circular, platitudinous conversations abound. Characters also often refer simply to “art”, untethered from any medium or idea:
‘Do most of your friends do other kinds of work?’ she asked.
‘You mean not-art?’
‘Yes. There’s art, and then there’s everything else.’
Are these satirical jabs at industry cliches or authorial flatness? Who knows. But as passion for artistic expression is seemingly the underpinning of Lally and Pat’s budding romance, we’re left a bit bored.
Also, for such an unabashedly horny book – which Lee says is aimed at challenging the male-dominated canon of badly written sex – so much of its eroticism, though frank and explicit, veers into the comically stilted. We jump from jarring descriptions (breasts like “panna cottas”) to prose deadened by anatomical specificity: “She grabbed his left hand, placed it on her breast, climbed onto him, and put his right hand on her arse.” Lines like “Lally felt desperate to … get their physical in sync with their intellectual” evoke all the sensuality of backing up your iCloud.
In The Work, neither Lally nor Patrick face any real consequences for their sins. They don’t need to, of course, but its function in the novel feels less a knowing wink towards the reality of the art sector than something simply elided for the sake of the love story. Indeed, the novel’s bow-tied ending – admittedly culminating in an authentic depiction of a modern relationship – defangs any claim it may have had as a barbed skewering of money and power. Ultimately, this is a cleanly written if clunky romp seemingly aimed at “giving the market what it wants” – a book trying to tick too many boxes.
The Work by Bri Lee is published by Allen & Unwin ($32.99)
