Sliding doors: The pain you cannot see
Anne Freeman’s latest novel is a moving story of lost love, friendship and family while navigating life with an invisible disability.
Extortion, romance, recreational drug use and humour flow through the pages of Melbourne author Anne Freeman’s latest multi-layered offering of contemporary women’s fiction, The Time After Now.
Like her previous novels, Returning to Adelaide and Me That You See, Freeman navigates the lives of strong women enduring sticky situations and the inventive means they use to break free.
Freeman’s third novel differs from the first and second because it’s also an own-voices story in a similar vein to Carly Jay Metcalfe’s Breath about surviving cystic fibrosis, On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis, which tackles autism, and For a Muse of Fire, in which Heidi Heilig shines a torch on bipolar disease.
The author and her protagonist Olivia (Liv) suffer from type one diabetes. Just as Freeman was diagnosed when she was a young woman, so too was Liv. In dissecting the debilitating complexities of the disease, its bewildering daily management and the restraints placed on the sufferer because of it, Freeman’s telling has authenticity and provides candid informative detail.
It is a powerful dimension of the story, told without cloying sentiment and while illustrating how diabetes can hobble an individual’s life, it’s clear through Freeman’s witty, irresistibly vibrant storytelling that those afflicted are not necessarily defined by it. Liv, the relatable heroine, experiences elation, passion, ennui, grief and yearning, and rides the rollercoaster highs and lows of parenthood as much as the rest of us.
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Liv shares her comfortable, painstakingly managed life with Alastair, her ambitious barrister husband, and two children. She is aware she does all the hard yards to maintain their life together.
Twenty years after her intimate relationship with Drew folded, a love she never fully got over, she learns of his death on a photoshoot in Iceland. She reminisces about the caring, enriching partnership they once shared that throws her unfulfilling marriage into sharp relief.
Skilfully, the story slides between present day suburbia and Melbourne’s countercultural, post-millennial rave scene. Readers tend to either approve of or dislike stories flip-flopping between past and present, but Freeman’s shifts in time are equally absorbing, establishing an urgency to know more about Liv.
Already shaken by Drew’s death, Liz soon falls foul of a blackmailer threatening to expose a collection of sexually explicit, compromising photographs of herself and Drew. As she recalls her younger partying self she is troubled by how much she has dimmed her personality and stifled her dreams to conform to picture-perfect suburbia.
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Tension escalates as Liv probes the motives and identity of the sextornionist and the threat to her marriage while recalling the choices and sliding doors moments that have led to her entrapment. She also wonders if her past actions inadvertently caused Drew’s demise.
One of the book’s triumphs is the restraint, the gently brewing unease about Liv’s dilemma. The book’s themes are topical – recreational drug use, work-life integration, the challenge of living with chronic disease and the importance of deep friendships with women. Liv’s longstanding emotional intimacy with Miriam is the story’s anchoring relationship.
Characterisations are strong, laugh-out-loud and quirky. Miriam, Drew and drug-dealing Sketchy Dave are gems, just as Alastair is found wanting.
Pacy, relevant and riveting, The Time After Now’s surprising hair-pin bends as the story unfolds, capturing the reader in its thrall.
The Time After Now by Anne Freeman, Hawkeye Publishing, $34.99.
hawkeyebooks.com.au/products/the-time-after-now
An Evening with Anne Freeman in Conversation with Sarah Todman, Books@Stones, 360 Logan Rd, Stones Corner, October 1. Free. Register at:
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