AUSTRALIAN FUGUE

An amnesiac returns to Australia to confront her past in Skilbeck’s debut novel.

Ruby Rivers is in Newcastle Jail in New South Wales for a murder that she doesn’t remember committing. Back in London, she was the owner of a posh gallery known for exhibiting “antipodean” art (works from Australia and New Zealand). Ruby and her wealthy husband, acclaimed philosopher Sir Hugo Rivers, made a trip to her native Australia on a search for new artworks. However, she has no memory of living in Australia, as she was somehow struck with amnesia shortly after her arrival in England, where she started a new life several years ago. Ruby only has vague notions of a dark romantic affair and a vision of a woman playing the violin—but once she’s back in Sydney, the pieces of her past start to fall into place. There, a musician and an artist have a shared history with the woman Ruby once was. Their reunion ends in blood, but the identity of the guilty party isn’t so clear-cut. Skilbeck’s prose is as measured as poetry, and the way the narration shifts between different characters provides an almost cubist view of people and events. For example, in Hugo’s memory of the first time he saw Ruby, she was wearing a fur coat: “In an age of hunt saboteurs, animal rights, she stood out like Wanda in Venus in Furs”; later in their relationship, she notes its cost: “Only ten pounds can you believe and twice as much for old raincoats that looked as if they’d come straight off a flasher’s back.” The chapters are intercut with excerpts that address the concept of the fugue state, which lend Ruby’s condition a bit of context. For all its style, however, the story at the center of the novel simply doesn’t feel quite as emotionally stirring as it could be. Skilbeck creates some memorable characters as she whets the reader’s appetite for mystery, but the plot that unfolds never becomes fully engrossing.

A complex but uneven novel of art and mental illness.