Reviewer Juliette Hughes
August 20, 2005

By Joanna Murray-Smith
Viking, $29.95

Sunnyside's cover carries a rather low-class teaser: "It should be nice. But it isn't", harking back to slogans on movies and books that were considered dangerously frank in the 1950s.

Sunnyside does revisit the theme of now-quaint excursions such as Peyton Place: white middle-class infidelity. But times change - Peyton Place's publishers described it as scorching; it treated inconvenient sexual attachments in far less detail and with incalculably less assurance than does Joanna Murray-Smith. Comparison with John Updike, too, is inevitable, but also unfair: there are few writers anywhere who are not humbled beside him.

Joanna Murray-Smith is forging her own brand in this area. She is a playwright as well as a novelist, and it shows in Sunnyside's meticulous plotting and vivid characterisation.

Alice Haskins is a novelist who is suffering from writer's block. She seems to have had the perfect life so far: her book sold well, won awards. She is happily married to Harry, a professor at the local university campus. With their two children, the sensitive Joe, 13, and the confident Grace, 11, the Haskinses inhabit a large and beautiful 1950s house from "Old Sunnyside" days, a cut above the McMansions that have been colonising the place lately.

Sunnyside bears many similarities to Mount Eliza, and is the name of one of that suburb's beaches. It is more than a background to the characters' actions and thoughts; the place has a potent life of its own that spins a glamour of having arrived at security and the fruits of aspiration, that curious marketers' word.

It denotes the blend of envy and dream that takes the place of respect in a world where everything has become model and signifier; for everyone must rise from where they were in order to meet expectations that define people by the kinds of goods they buy.

Murray-Smith's perception is sharp as she describes the place's influence: "Once they had made the move to Sunnyside, Harry began to look like the big, strong-jawed men selling barbecues in mail catalogues."

Covenants make their covetable house safe from further subdivision; everything has to be on one or two acres, a space unattainable for most Australians. Down the road is Deptford, where Harry works, a disordered suburb built over old swamps, populated by the criminal poor, its shopping strips dotted with bankrupt takeaways. Set against this, the Haskins' two-acre spread is heaven-like; only the rock fireplaces, says Murray-Smith, stop the house "from ascending into the clouds".

In a place of such idyllic perfection and convenience to city transport, one could, Alice thinks, be surely safe from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In that phrase, Murray-Smith gives Sunnyside the objective uppercut; it may be beautiful but, as with Deptford, the real dangers come from states of mind.

It is in louche Deptford, after all, that Molly McLelland (the start of whose affair with the pool-man opens the book) gets a tattoo; the decision is all of a piece with the adultery, but less easy for her friends to empathise with. Molly's fling has unsettled everyone.

For 40-year-old Alice, safety has become stifling: she cannot write, her libido is absent. Henry obviously suffers too. Though their relationship is still loyal, his fidelity to Alice gets tested: he has a female student, Olivia, whom he describes as "(n)ihilistic, acerbic, inattentive, obstreperous and contemptuous". Such adjectives are the opposite of his wife's qualities and seem pejorative until one considers their sinister, juicy vigour.

Young people are not all negative and threatening, however. Sunnyside's strong plot involves the vibrant hopes and affections of a neighbour's 17-year-old daughter, Scarlett, an intense admirer of Alice, who babysits Grace and Joe. Joe is preoccupied with the agonies of the sheep stranded on a ship in the middle of the ocean on the way to the Middle East; Grace is self-contained, optimistic and happy.

All three are prepared to fight and take risks for something important that goes beyond themselves: loyalty, love, family and compassion.

Whether this is a temporary youthful attribute that will dissipate in middle age isn't dwelt on. Sunnyside shows that middle-aged prosperity and privilege are as dangerous to well-being as their opposites. Murray-Smith sees clearly how decisions that could capsize a life, a relationship, a family, are made at our weakest and most vulnerable times, and that our loves and loyalties might have to exist on the razor-edge for a long, long time.

Sunnyside is published next week. Joanna Murray-Smith discusses satire with Tony Wilson, Larry Beinhart and Peter Rose at noon next Saturday at the Malthouse.
