Novel Family
Skeleton reviewed by
Peter Pierce
In the
Sydney Morning Herald
September
30, 2016
The mordantly witty 'Family Skeleton', supposedly
related from a wardrobe by one of them, is Carmel Bird's ninth novel, and as
vibrant and off-beat as those that have happily gone before. The O'Day family,
its fortune made as funeral directors, especially to Melbourne's rich, and
latterly from the death-driven theme park Heavenly Days, lives in the mansion
Bellevue, built for them in Toorak in 1933.
The patriarch, rakish Edmund Rice O'Day, has expired in the arms
of his mistress. He is survived by Margaret, the distant cousin (a
"medical" rather than a "funeral" O'Day) whom he married
long ago. From the tapestry room in Bellevue, Margaret casts a cool eye on the
generations of her family as they disport themselves in her gardens. Deep into
her 70s, Margaret feels the not unpleasant compulsion to compose a
journal-cum-memoir, The Book of Revelation.
The novel entwines the voices of the sardonic, presumably female
skeleton narrator and the not always charitable observations Margaret writes of
family and acquaintances, for instance of her daughter-in-law Charmaine, who
"sprang from a diplomatic family that has been turned into a family of
wealthy dry-cleaners". Charmaine's children now number four – Orson,
Oriane, Orlando, and most recently Ophelia. This strikes her grandmother as an
ill-omened name, which indeed it proves to be. For such fashion Peaches Geldof
is blamed – "she had set the benchmark high".
Into this commotion arrives a distant, but determined and
disruptive relative from the US, Dr Doria Fogelsong, who is writing an
expansive history of the O'Days. Margaret is at once worried and alert:
"Doria was the archetypal stranger who rides into town … the harbinger of
fate." Doria will overhear the indiscretions of children, probe the
meaning of old photographs and find time to give the quilt made in Van Diemen's
Land by two female O'Day convict ancestors to the museum in Hobart. It is
perhaps no surprise that one of Margaret's sons-in-law will suspect Doria of
being a blackmailer.
Bird marshals a large and preening cast from Melbourne's
professional ranks – psychiatrist, solicitor, bibulous poet who follows several
real-life predecessors into death by drowning, gay parish priest and family
doctor, besides "jolly fat aunts and mean skinny ones". Astringent
fun is had in the portrayals of each of them, as we move between the dissecting
gazes of the two women telling their parts of the story.
Family
scandals are rehearsed – Edmund's philandering since his school days, the
mystery of why his sister Marina interrupted a dance at Bellevue by jumping
from the first floor – while for Margaret, the most shocking of them all is
unexpectedly revealed. This is the metaphorical skeleton, so long unsuspected,
at the heart of the novel.
Throughout, Bird's touch is light as she deploys the motifs of
butterflies for weddings and funerals and the small brown suitcase that appears
each year under the Christmas tree because "there are sad children
somewhere"; imagines the daily epigraphs, his jocular remarks on death,
that Edmund O'Day delivered each day for his employees.
As the narrative quickens to the climactic events of Margaret's
last hours, Bird's tone darkens, but she never loses the wry response to the
mess people haplessly and indulgently make of things.
The Family Skeleton maintains its energy and power of surprise
literally to the last lines. This is one of Bird's most accomplished and
enjoyable fictional escapades.
Peter Pierce is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to
Australian Literature.
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