‘Evermore’: a novel and accompanying exegesis Joanne Taylor A thesis submitted to the University of Western Sydney in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 2013 The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in full or in part, for a degree at this or any other institution. ................................................................................... (Signature) Acknowledgements I wish to thank my supervisors at the University of Western Sydney, Dr Sara Knox and Dr Richard Lunn. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Knox for supporting my candidature in the fullest sense, not only in her rigorous attention to matters of scholarship but in her provision of insightful feedback and encouragement and much pertinent and practical advice, including supporting my successful application for a Varuna Fellowship. I am grateful to Dr Lunn for his engagement around the early possible direction of my creative work and to the University of Western Sydney for enabling me in my reimagination of my creative life. Additionally, I am grateful to those members of the Writing and Society group with whom I shared an enjoyable and intellectually rewarding week at Varuna, and to Professor Gail Jones for her encouragement at that time. I am grateful to Dr Paul Gillen and Dr Maria Nugent for their thoughtful feedback on my creative work, and to Ross Taylor, Diana Taylor and Lyndal Carter for their extended engagement in discussion around the same. I am indebted to Professor Kaarin Anstey for her generous time and assistance with many technical and administrative matters. I remain especially grateful to my parents for a wonderful childhood lived in a house full of books, for colourful and plentiful extended family and for their early and consistent encouragment of me as a reader and as a writer. Abstract And then? —Reading For The End Novels generally rely on suspension of disbelief and on techniques of suspense to involve the reader in the story. The exegesis of this thesis will explore these issues and related questions in relation to crime fiction, while the creative work explores these issues and questions in the context of a crime novel. The thesis poses the questions, how is suspense created and sustained for the length of a crime novel? Technically, how are crime fiction narratives shifted and shaped so that their trajectory encompasses successful resolution of the story and the discourse? What makes an ending work? What is the relationship between loss and sense-making in the narrative and the place of stories in relation to this? The exegetical work examines three very different crime novels that create and sustain suspense and the ways in which they do so: Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced, Neil Cross’ Burial and Garry Disher’s Chain of Evidence. Detailed reference will be made to these works, with others referenced as appropriate. The thesis contrives to reveal how craft is consciously deployed to bring together elements in the text in such a way that they combine to form a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. The creative response to these questions aims to show a crafted whole, encapsulated in the crime novel which forms the greater part of this thesis. A synopsis for the novel is as follows: It is nearly ten years since Ella Ravell disappeared from a Sydney bushland suburb. It is also ten years since a baby died in its cradle. But at least with that death there was a body. In this novel, the shadowy underside of the cosy world of Sydney suburbia is shown through ordinary interactions between friends, neighbours and strangers. The novel follows the lives of Ella Ravell’s family and neighbours ten years on from her disappearance, and the developing action highlights the fracture lines already running through people’s lives; lines that it takes little further stress to break. As the cracks appear, the ways in which we invent and construct stories of our lives and give them meaning to resolve our disconnection are laid bare. By the close of the story, the characters must face the randomness that is part of nature and that happy endings are unlikely. The use of animal motifs—dead, iii dangerous, domestic and fantastic—acts in tandem with the Sydney settings to emphasise gothic elements in the story. These elements connect to overall themes of lost loves, of lost illusions, of extinction of hope and of species and the danger of nature. The Australian Museum and its specimens naturally belong in the realm of the fantastic, and this story places them at centre stage, along with showcasing parts of the city of Sydney that add to this fantastic element. The contrast between the darkness of the themes and the lightness of tone effected by the narrative techniques used to unfold the story of Ella Ravell’s disappearance contrives to mirror the ways in which narratives impose an illusion of the orderliness of events. The choice of a multi-narrator structure is intended to activate and emphasise psychological and symbolic nuances in the text, adding to the creation of a suburban gothic atmosphere. Under the surface of a Sydney and people that we think we know lies something darker and more complex, a space where loss and vanishing and dark, sometimes long-held, secrets and sorrows dominate people’s lives. iv A note on citations This thesis follows the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition) by implementing shortened citations in footnotes. Please refer to the bibliography for full bibliographic details. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii A Note on Citations v Exegesis Chapter 1 Reading for the End 1 Chapter 2 Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced 15 Chapter 3 Neil Cross’s Burial 30 Chapter 4 Garry Disher’s Chain of Evidence 48 Chapter 5 And Then? 71 Chapter 6 ‘Evermore’—A Reflection on the Process of Creation 76 Bibliography 92 Novel ‘Evermore’ 97 vi Chapter 1 Reading for the End Novels generally rely on suspension of disbelief and on techniques of suspense to involve the reader in the story. How is suspense created and sustained for the length of a crime novel? Technically, how are crime fiction narratives shifted and shaped so that their trajectory encompasses successful resolution of the story and the discourse? What makes an ending work? What is the relationship between loss and sense-making in the narrative and the place of stories in relation to this? This exegetical work examines three very different crime novels that create and sustain suspense and the ways in which they do so: Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced, Neil Cross’ Burial and Garry Disher’s Chain of Evidence. Detailed reference will be made to these works, with others referenced as appropriate. In each case, a close textual analysis will incorporate discussions of structure, dialogue, place, character, the diegetical uses to which the body or the corpse(s) are put and the shaping power of point-of-view. These are the techniques by which a crime story is shaped and the tools that must be used to craft endings which manifest an illusion of inevitability about outcomes. The way in which techniques such as foreshadowing, clues and red herrings are used to create and sustain suspense will be explored. The question, “what makes an ending work?” is the one against which all questions of suspense will ultimately most likely be judged. If the ending does not “work” in the sense of satisfying the reader, then any amount of technical prowess demonstrated on the way may be irrelevant.1 So what does make an ending work? At the most basic level, resolution of both story and discourse2 must be felt by the reader to be 1 There will conceivably be those, who having enjoyed the process of reading and appreciating the dexterity of the author along the way will not find their pleasure diminished by discovering an unsatisfying ending. These are likely to be in a minority. 2 ‘Discourse’ is a term that, like ‘paradigm’, has moved from a specialist lexicon into the public sphere. In this paper, the meaning of the word ‘discourse’ is equivalent to the structuralist narrative theory descriptor, where ‘story’ is the basic chronological events of a narrative and ‘discourse’ refers to the way in which the story is told. It will be noticed that this term, discourse, is equivalent to the Russian formalist term ‘szujet’, discussed on page six of this exegesis. 1 satisfactory. In this sense of satisfaction, any reading of the types of crime fiction explored here must also include the re-reading. Explorations of the centrality of this process to reading crime fiction may be found in any contemporary critical text on the subject; two of the most instructive of these, encompassing an impressive breadth of theorists and constructs, are Lee Horsley’s Twentieth Century Crime Fiction and John Scaggs’ Crime Fiction. It is this circular re-reading made after the end of the linear story is reached—a reading which re-presents clues, red herrings, foreshadowing— which determines the ultimate enjoyment of the reading overall. This is the paradox of reading well-executed crime novels. They are read not simply to the end, but for the end, and what makes an ending work are the ways in which the preceding story has unfurled. The very word, resolution—re-solution—is suggestive of the re-solving that accompanies all end readings of a crime fiction text. The process of reading for the end is precisely this process of watching and/or participating in (depending on your critical point of view) the unpacking of secrets, laying them out as clues or red herrings, and then piecing them together, jigsaw like, to see the picture at the end.