Giramondo Publishing

2007

The relationship between parent and child has driven many pens to paper, and the results waver greatly from mediocre to masterful. The same could be said about Holocaust stories, or stories of love, loss, grief, and memory.

Mireille Juchau’s second novel, Burning In, deals with all of these themes, keeping their inherently tragic beauty intact. In Burning In, Martine, Australian photographer of German descent, leaves behind Australia, and her mother, Lotte, and heads to New York.

Now this is where writing this review gets hard. Because just thinking back to the book is making me sad again. Martine has had a daughter, after living in New York nearly a decade, and her daughter goes missing in Central Park. But the book is exquisitely sad even before that event takes place. Martine’s strained relationship with her worried mother leaves the reader sympathising equally with each character: the complexities of Lotte’s dark past and the fears that are borne of this, and the yearning that a young, seemingly capable woman has to spread her wings, having never experienced the same displacement or family separation as her parent. Juchau’s characterisation of Martine, detached and numb as it is, only heightens the emotional depth of situation.

Martine enters the kitchen, holds up a can of coffee, in the other hand, tea, raises an eyebrow. Her silence makes the place austere, turns them reverential. Lusk nods his head at coffee, Joanie points feebly at tea. They’re waiting now, for her to set the tone. She lights the cigarette, watches Joanie’s quiet surprise. And doesn’t know anymore which part of what she does is performance, which part’s real. Grief is a floating world, though nothing about it is gentle. (p183)

Juchau’s writing, to me, seems like it’s bursting with literary juices. Each sentence drips with intricately set up scenes, and nuanced character descriptions. Something in the words feels like the same black and white photos Martine carries with her when she embarks on the next part of her journey, tracing her family back to Berlin. Despite the impossibly sad tones that are present throughout, there is also a playfulness that emerges in strange moments, when Martine interacts with her mother, and in the way she observes her friends’ reactions to her delicate psychological state.

This is a literary novel. The plot is in there somewhere, but it doesn’t drive the story. And there is enough of it for you to find yourself absorbed in the mood and the characters, and all of a sudden find that Martine’s story has travelled quite far without you noticing. I happen to love stories that do this. Not everybody does.