One Another

A story within another story. A research thesis within a distraction. Layer upon layer, Gail Jones has skilfully woven multiple narratives into a tightly held novel that will undo the reader with its poignancy. This is a novel about betrayal and grief, but also about our inner dialogue, that conversation you have with another person, real or not, in your own mind, which allows you to live in parallel spaces.

Helen, from Tasmania, has been researching the life of Joseph Conrad while studying at Cambridge University and living with her lover, Justin. He, of disarming charm and disturbing grief, does not acknowledge Helen’s own heartache at losing a parent and then her prized manuscript. Leaving her studies, Helen becomes free to conjure endless possibilities, and her imagination takes flight. Meanwhile, Justin’s behaviour unravels further. Of course, there are consequences.

Elements of this novel disarmed me. I reflected numerous times on the hours of research a novel like this involves. Jones’s knowledge of Joseph Conrad’s work is beyond impressive, but it is the imagined life of Conrad – the scenes from his own life – that is the jewel here. Jones uses these moments to create bonds across the literary landscape, to capture everything that it is to be human: the fragility, the sorrow, and the quest to be appreciated, known, understood. The writing is breathtaking as she weaves connections into empty spaces.

Of course, you will love this novel if you enjoyed Anna Funder’s Wifedom, or Richard Flanagan’s Question 7; all these authors show us the links and the losses. Read One Another if you love the work of Conrad and you want to know more about from where his agility with torment stems. I read this beautiful novel because Gail Jones is one of Australia’s finest authors and I know her stories grant compassion and grace our collective imagination.