Recognising a Cave

Finally got around to reading Catherine Chidgey’s ‘The Transformation’, a gift from a wee while back. Finished it today. It was a good read, more due to the confidence and pleasure of the prose itself rather than the way its tale unfolded. I found it quite curiously structured – I was halfway through before I felt the story was really underway, and the finale threatens some glorious grand guignol but then finishes on a soft note, a decision which to be honest disappointed me. Nor do any of the other characters stand up to the mighty wigmaker whose story this is; he dominates every moment of the book, and the triangle of characters is thrown askew as a result. In any case, the last third of the book I read without pause, which is a rare thing in my easily-distracted world and a pretty clear sign that I was engrossed. So, rock on.
Catherine is an acquaintance; I haven’t seen her for years but last time I did we said hello to each other. She grew up near to where I did, and knowing this I had a nice rush of pleasure to read one late passage in the book:
“The action reminded her of something she had done as a child, at a picnic. There had been a cave. She had wanted to touch the very back of it, but could not see where it ended, and had moved orward one step at a time, completely blind, her index finger a snail’s horn trembling at the brush of every web, expecting at any moment to feel cool stone against her palm…”
I’m sure every kid who grew up in the Hutt Valley knows the cave that must have inspired this sequence – the infamous Weta Cave in Percy’s Reserve. Man, that cave was creepy.
…you know, I did have a point about how my response to this overshadowed in some way the emotional response to the climax of the novel, and what this meant about, I dunno, reading books or knowing authors or something. I forget. Oh well.
(Catherine, if you ever google this up or something: g’day!)
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Yep, all this week’s blog entries have been nice softball topics. I’m easing myself back into it.