Helen Hodgman (1945–2022)

At 196 pages, Passing Remarks by Helen Hodgman (1945-2022) only just scrapes into my definition of a novella but I read it anyway for Novellas in November, hosted by Cathy of 746 Books and Rebecca of rel="nofollow" target="_top">Bookish Beck. Passing Remarks (1998) was Helen Hodgman's penultimate novel (1945-2022), and it is quite different to her other books that I've read.

Blues Skies (1976) is, despite its title, a sardonic portrait of marriage and motherhood in Tasmanian suburbia; Jack and Jill (1978) is a macabre twist on Tasmanian Gothic; and Hodgman's last novel The Bad Policeman (2001) is a tragi-comedy about an anti-hero with an heroic streak. (See my reviews here and here and here.) Though impossible to read now without the awareness that its preoccupation with ageing foreshadowed the author's own long, slow descent into dependence on others due to Parkinson's Disease — Passing Remarks is, as I showed in this Sensational Snippet, often outrageously funny.

Passing Remarks is also a novel of lesbian love. There is not much about Hodgman's private life in the public domain, but she married young and had a daughter within a marriage that appears to have lasted quite some time. (His Wikipedia page makes no mention of his personal life, except that he re-married in 1984). But in an interview at the SMH on the reissue of Jack and Jill in the Text Classics series, Hodgman revealed that she had fallen in love with a woman in what was described as a catastrophic affair that consumed her emotionally. Whether there were autobiographical elements in Passing Remarks or not, Hodgman writes convincingly about the lesbian milieu, and the problems that confront a May-September relationship.

The story is narrated mostly from the intimate perspective of Rosemary, whose breakup with Billie has precipitated a mid-life crisis; but told also from the point of view of Billie, the much younger lover who has left her.

For Rosemary, the break-up is a catastrophic moment of truth. It's not triggered by any dramatic moment, only Billie's desire to visit her mother who's living a hippie lifestyle in Bundagen on the NSW north coast, and then to travel north, to work perhaps in Byron Bay, or even go as far as Cairns. Billie sets off on her Harley insouciant about this departure, but it sends a chill down Rosemary's spine. She worries that it is her minor signs of bodily ageing that remind Billie of her mother.

What's the matter?' But Rosemary cannot tell Billie she is scared of being alone, not necessarily in the immediate future but in the longer term. Old and alone. Ill and lonely. This morning it seems possible people she's always dismissed as pathetic have a point. Stay married and live longer. Stay together and live.

But Hodgman doesn't dwell on it, Rosemary's inner dialogue undercuts itself.

They'd be printing it on bumperstickers next. Rosemary tells herself to stop it. You get a cat and you cope, Rosemary tells herself firmly. Or a dog, if you must. A dog is always pleased to see you when you get home from work. What she needs is a drink. She knows alcohol is a depressant, but, quite honestly, in the short term at least, it does the trick. Luckily there's still a bottle of champagne in the fridge. She opens it, hands a glass to Billie.

'To your travels,' she says and drinks.

'Cheers, lover,' says Billie. And Rosemary reminds herself that she'd rather be dead than totter handcuffed and in tandem towards the grave. (p.16)

As she reflects on major problem in the relationship — the age difference — Rosemary revisits incidents from their time together that hint at other issues.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/11/24/passing-remarks-1998-by-helen-hodgman/… (mere)

Novellas in November is a good time to tackle some of the backlog of Aussie titles from the 20th century.

The late Helen Hodgman (1945-2022) was a Tasmanian author of six highly regarded novels. Jack and Jill (1978) was her second novel (after Blue Skies, 1976, see my review) and it won the Somerset Maugham Award.

Although Jack and Jill is set in outback NSW, this macabre novella has the ambience of Tasmanian Gothic.

From the first page, Hodgman demolishes any ideas of a bucolic lifestyle.

Wilma Limb lay beneath greying bedclothes, so thin she barely raised a bump. Her daughter Jill, that impatient baby, pounded her tight-shut lids with blunt fingers. The bruised flesh slit open far enough to release a flicker of jaundiced spite and then closed again. Eager for more attention, Jill gathered a fold of flaky skin from her mother's cheek and pinched. Wilma groaned and clawed at her, parting her lips in a rigid grin, a slight scum gathering at the corners of her mouth. Crowing happily, Jill fled to the kitchen. The black wiry hair that framed her round face in a halo of crinkly strands shone in the morning sun. 'Little Bottle Brush', her father called her. Today there was no Daddy to tickle and tease her. He was off mending fences. (p.7)

By the time he comes back, Jill has been alone in the house with her mother's corpse for four days.

Spurning curiosity and probable judgements about his wife's ghastly end, Douggie sets off for elsewhere with Jill, abandoning her occasionally for overnight trysts with the policeman's wife. He locks Jill inside with the Correspondence School wireless set so that she can't skive off. He doesn't want any stickybeaking stranger accusing him of not doing his best.

And he does do his best, running his farm single-handed, buying books for her from Sydney and even learning to knit. They're better off than most...

Douggie heard over the wireless set how things were bad. The jolly swagmen increased. Each carried his woeful tale of no jobs, dole queues, steakless days and hard times. As they told of wives and kiddies left behind in squalor, Jill grinned at her father, poked fun at them behind their unmanly backs. She didn't trust these no-hopers and kept an eye on them from the tops of trees, lying in wait to drop dead leaves down the backs of their necks. (p.13)

By now, Jill is five.

Tohttps://anzlitlovers.com/2022/11/15/jack-and-jill-by-helen-hodgman/ read the rest of my review please visit… (mere)

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you see that title The Bad Policeman? Corrupt, venal cops not averse to dealing in drugs and some serious violence like Gilou in the French TV series Engrenages (Spiral)? The old-fashioned sort like the ones in The Bill who bash suspects to get a confession because they "know" they're guilty and give young offenders a kick in the backside but don't bother to charge them? Or those clichéd world-weary types who are too cynical to make much effort and will turn a blind eye to a traffic offence as a favour for a mate?

It's not so easy to answer the question about Mark Blainey, the overweight country cop who narrates Helen Hodgman's novel. He's done some bad things, and he fails the major case he stumbles into, plus he has a cynical view of the job he's made his career:

Cops versus robbers. If you blew a whistle and ordered both teams to change sides, no one would notice the difference, especially the players. (p.101)

Hodgman's choice to make Mark the narrator of the novel means that we see things from his point-of-view and we need to keep a sharp eye out for self-deception. Self-pity too, because he wife Marilyn has left him for a dentist in New Zealand and he really misses her. He knows he's failed as a husband and a father because he's also got a lousy relationship with his son Jason.

I thought about love and I thought about the apostle Paul which is something I don't often do, but if you really want to feel bad about love, Paul's your man. You realise when you read the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (13:4-8) that you may think you're pretty crash hot at loving but, according to Paul, you're a total f------ non-starter. (p.97)

He reads the epistle at his mother's funeral...and gets ticked off by his bossy sister for reading the old-fashioned version of it, with 'love thinketh no evil' and 'love never faileth' and so on. He's had a book of poetry published, but really, he can't get anything right.

Mark's also about to lose his best mate and work partner Steve. He lets Steve do the serious work when they're on duty because Steve is ambitious, whereas he is content to keep reminding everyone that he's only a constable, not a sergeant.

This all seems a bit heavy, but the tone of the first half of novella is dry, sardonic and amusing, even endearing at times, as when Mark gets landed with a kitten and realises that 'this is what it's like when someone is dependent on you'. This tone shifts, however, in the second half.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/11/16/the-bad-policeman-by-helen-hodgman/… (mere)