Tales of star-crossed lovers are one of the most reliable, and reliably charming, tropes in fiction. We can pick and choose between Cathy and Heathcliff, Romeo and Juliet, Anna and Vronsky, or even Orpheus and Eurydice.
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To that distinguished company Yvonne Weldon, a Wiradjuri woman who served as the first First Nations member of the Sydney City Council, has added a story of Evie, a young First Nations woman, and James. She starts at the end of their relationship, on Day 67, with a woman deserted at the altar but nonetheless reading out her vows. That disjointed, disconcerting beginning is followed by a prologue, itself a delightful cameo affirmation of love and family at a child's birthday party.
Then the action slips back into chronological form, as the reader discovers Evie, seeming to herself "like a faint ghost with a haunted soul". At that point, then throughout the novel, Weldon's writing is both intense and incisive. She does not waste words nor embroider emotions. Each phase in this benighted narrative of first love is raw, with Weldon's sharp and confronting prose in harmony with the harrowing story she tells. Although Weldon plays deftly with many emotional notes, her writing may be at its best in her portrayals of awkwardness.
The love affair commences in a patchwork room on a hot summer's day in 1993. We are at Sydney University, a locale somewhat less celebrated and evocative than settings for other literary lovers, whether the Yorkshire moors, a Verona balcony, Petersburg salons or Hades. Nonetheless, Weldon has the landscape, movement and feel of the campus and nearby Redfern down just right.
Evie, who has shunned studying law to start a bridging course in psychology, then meets James, an apprentice electrician. After that initial encounter, Weldon tracks the progress of their love day by day for each of their allotted 67 days. That is a complex, difficult narrative device, because the author needs to inject variety into each day, building momentum and suspense while gradually revealing layers of detail and meaning.
In Evie's case, that means disclosing a back-story of years suffering abuse and stalking by a relative-cum-coach. Her miserable history shadows even happy moments, ones when the couple feels "like golden sky dust has been sprinkled on us". For a little while, Evie anticipates James' kisses. Then, for the longest while, she lives in dread of his abandoning her.
Along the way, Weldon inserts some touching grace notes: the love of and by grandparents; a family road trip through central New South Wales (to share "the soil of my soul"); the joy in sunrises and sunsets both.
