"I was lonely," I mutter. She sighs. "Maybe you need to stop using that word as an excuse to mistreat yourself.”

Jen all at sea. Little Howrah Beach, Hobart. March 2021.

A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing by Jessie Tu

This one is a very dark and - at times - quite disturbing book. I initially found it quite difficult to find my groove with the story and connect with the central narrator. She is aware of the difficulty that her personality radiates in her interpersonal interactions with others, which extends out to the reader. Her intense loneliness only exacerbates this.

That said, as we learn more about Jena's backstory and the sources of her trauma, I found myself softening towards her and wishing that she'd end the self-harming behaviour and look ahead instead of behind.

The pivot for me was in exiting the odious Mark's gravitational pull and heading off to New York. It is here that Jessie Tu really flexes her creative muscles and (partially) frees Jena from her torpor. From here, I found the book much more engaging, and I was keen to see where things would lead.

Filled with vivid descriptions of cold, disengaged and disconcerting sexual encounters, the book explores how a world in which sex can be freely viewed and arranged can lead to unhealthy loops of activity so far removed from pleasure that they look far more like self-harm derived from unreconciled trauma. Given her introduction, I was surprised by the extent to which I found myself hoping for Jena to break through and succeed in a way that might make her happy.

This book does a magnificent job in detailing the corrosive aspects of loneliness and isolation. It is a hard but rewarding read.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2

Comments

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

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In dreams begin responsibilities.

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This will hurt me...

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