Snake Book

Snake, Kate Jennings' debut novel, is also her first book to be published in the UK. She is already known as a poet in Australia and America. The 72 short chapters, some less than a page long, of her lean novel are given titles that evoke poems: "I will walk within my House with a Perfect Heart" or "And You Alone Can Hear the Invisible Starfall". These suggest a language that will be lyrically rich, but quite the contrary--this is clinical prose which counters any hint of romance.A condensed epic, Snake is set in the 1940s in the Australian outback, on a farm near Progress, some 500 miles from the nearest city. It tells of the disintegration of the marriage between taciturn Rex and flighty Irene, which is suggested the moment the young couple approach their first home and Irene finds fault with Rex's tone. Rex is an uncommunicative bore who simply wants a "good woman" to share his crop with. He doesn't ask for much and for Irene that is asking too much. Her annoyance blooms like the iris she plants. "She emasculates you with the sure blade of her contempt", says the narrator who opens and closes the book. The middle section is written with a sparse, cold omniscience. The couple have children--Girlie and Boy--and Irene, unable to rouse maternal love, admits she would have rather been an engineer, building bridges and roads to facilitate her escape. When Girlie learns that there are over 70 varieties of snake--"fanged, flickering, unblinking"--in Australia, more than in any other continent, her mother mocks her fear. "Irene had read somewhere that snakes are necessary to the balance of nature". Boy however, encouraged by gender roles of the 1950s, revels in trying to behead them with an axe. When Irene's affairs turn as unfulfilling as her marriage, she tries to better herself.Rather than pit feminism against patriarchy, both characters are horribly trapped by the expectations of their era. Irene's one true love is her garden in which, "ahead of her time, she planted natives: banksia, bottlebrush, grevillea, wattle" and when she leaves, Rex rejoices by buying a herd of pigs and letting them destroy it. Their triumphs are too late. Jennings deftly evokes the cultural and social mores that make individuality impossible to achieve. The sad emotional restraint is born in the language itself which gnaws at conjugal conventions brilliantly. --Cherry SmythRead More