Miriam Zolin
Tristessa & Lucido
St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2003. Pp. 268. US $20.00

Reviewed by John Scheckter

The most discomforting aspect of this misconceived work is its extensive use of the second person. Miriam Zolin, whose first novel was shortlisted for the Australian/Vogel manuscript award but not published, here presents a narrator who records herself as "you"; the difference between you-the-character and you-the-reader makes the experience grating. You feel preached to, emotionally hijacked, told how to respond, and silenced in ways that you are grammatically restricted from questioning. "You're a bit slow sometimes" (226). Oddly, "you wish you were someone else or somewhere else" (38), which you actually are. Eventually, as you fall in love with a man whose chief characteristic is his neediness, you find that "the churning in your stomach is making it hard to concentrate on anything" (176)-a response as close to emotional truth as any you will find in Tristessa & Lucido.

Theney Fairweather (short for Athena, whose godhead is glossed in case you slept through World Lit) has a gift: she can remove psychic pain by holding her hand over your heart. Just like that-and it is just like that, because the gift is inborn and therefore does not need to be discussed. Training as a technical writer, Theney moves to Melbourne, where she falls in love with her genius boss; an early Bill Gates type, he is clueless and she is predictably crushed. So what if she was too shy to tell him? In this novel, people are expected to know these things, not intellectually, but in their hearts or through their auras or all over their bodies in some way that is definitely not related to Luce Irigaray. Theney transfers to the company's branch in Nebraska, and there falls in love with Aubrey Meadows, the romantic sufferer. The character who tells her that Aubrey's wife drowned their twin babies and herself concludes that "it really messed with his mind" (63). Yes, you say, it might, but you are also told repeatedly that "analysis, in your experience, is not a great help" (177). You may scream at this-perhaps you did not sleep through Medea — but you will wait in vain for elucidation.

Along with its frustrating lack of depth, Tristessa & Lucido is a curiously disembodied work. Cather's Nebraska here is nothing but a cold wind; the vast discussions of love admit no eroticism, almost no physical contact. Strangely for a novel about redemption, it also has a nasty streak, as when, for example, Theney considers her official immigration status as a "resident alien": "You are bundled in with Martians and Mexicans, neither of whom you resemble in the slightest" (181). De nada. Theney's real contempt is reserved for women. Her best friend is known simply as "The Princess": "Her real name is one of those American ones that I had previously assumed had been invented for daytime television or sitcoms, until I actually came to this country and realised that there are real people walking about called Brooke and Stacy and Shelley and Laurie and Courtney. And not just a few. They were everywhere I looked, and they were blonde and Barbie-plastic, or aspiring to be" (114).

Aubrey's wife worked as a stripper; the kids were not his, and were born with HIV. That, presumably, warrants their narrative destruction and makes Aubrey's pain something he can overcome through love more pure. Put your hand over his heart, and they go away.

To work through her feelings for Aubrey, Theney begins to write the story of "Tristessa and Lucido," a medieval fantasy in which humans battle demons. Lucido is a tortured genius, and Tristessa a woman warrior whose valor and devotion cure his pain. The heavy-handed fairy tale actually embodies the solipsism of this work: entire realms of complicated experience and interaction are flattened into banality-"and so began a time of great conflict within the re-awakening heart of Lucido and of great efforts on the part of demons to keep the darkness dark and keep Lucido's fear alive" (231). Analysis and critical inquiry find little opening here, as both disturbance and therapy are externalized; there is no need to confront even the most disruptive human behaviors when they can be projected as idealized, displaced scripts that can ultimately be resolved by sheer desire for a particular outcome. Psychologically, apart from literary value, this strategy seems dangerous and irresponsible. When you exchange insight for closure, you can hardly claim to know yourself.