By Helen Elliott
FICTION
Wing
Nikki Gemmell
Fourth Estate, $26.95
Cin’s mother is Mig. Tamsin’s mother is Tink. Willa’s mother is Cara. Ella’s mother is Beth. Pup is the school administrator, a bloke. The head of the school is called Sarge by her staff. That school is Koongala, a Sydney girls’ school where the parents drive not just Mercedes and Porsches but rarer things. But 67 girls aged between 15 and 17 have gone on a bush school camp and four are missing; Cin, Tamsin, Willa and Ella. Tony Breen, Breenzy, the “Swiss knife” of a teacher who had pushed for this particular camp, is also missing. He had volunteered to look for them when they failed to return. Brave old Breenzy.
Unsurprisingly, Picnic at Hanging Rock is mentioned in all the (exhausting) publicity for this novel.
Nikki Gemmell is a columnist for The Australian, a journalist and the author of many books. Her novel The Bride Stripped Bare was the bestselling book in Australia in 2003. That was about sexual awakening and a vanishing woman.
Wing is narrated by Sarge in breathless, and deathless, second person. Sarge’s career has been her life. She might be head of this exclusive school – so exclusive it has never had a suicide – but she is about to be offered a magnificent new job and she joyfully anticipates her resignation, letting the parents and board know what she really thinks of them, their entitlement and their general ridiculousness. Sarge’s own background is unentitled.
Author Nikki GemmellCredit: Kathy Luu
Ability, organisational skills and determination have been her enabling gifts. But the cost is high. While her outward demeanour is confident, her interior is on constant vigilance. She often sounds crazy, even to herself. She says she is happily “post-sexual” and she has no friends in her private life, although she considers Tony Breen – an old-fashioned man whose job in life is to be a white knight for the ladies – her friend because they exchange socks and chocolate at Christmas. Tony is always available to take on Sarge’s grubby work.
But Sarge has a secret; Mig and her are childhood friends, possibly lovers, and Sarge is Cin’s godmother. Mig, an artist, could never afford the fees for this school, so Sarge is secretly paying them. That’s fine, but she also jumped her beloved goddaughter over the long waiting list. And Cin – a useful name for language play – becomes the leader of the pack, the Koongalettes.
Sarge writes of Cin as if she were in love with her, calling her insufferable and self-obsessed behaviour courageous and authentic. (I told you she was crazy.) And Mig, the only steadfast figure in her life – they were both aspiring and dazzling state school girls who didn’t want to stay where they were assigned by class and status – is no longer speaking to Sarge. Their argument has something to do with the ability, or non-ability, to love.
Wing covers the four days after Sarge learns of the girls’ disappearance – the anguished waiting at the campsite with the ghastly parents and ghastlier media. What we, the reader, hear is the noise, the desperation inside Sarge’s head as she obsesses about her life, her childlessness, her loneliness, her love for Mig and Cin, her disdain of the plain, ordinary or just chunky people, her fury at the entitlement of the rich. Inside her head she uses profanities non-stop. Outside she is impassive, even lofty, although she does lose it with the media on one sensational occasion. It’s her one blow-up in all these years, but she knows it could be enough to lose the new job.
I am baffled. What is Gemmell trying to analyse by presenting this cast of truly awful, nasty people? Is she admiring of this behaviour? Of selfishness, narcissism, rudeness, stupidity? None of this makes sense – regardless of how often we are told how clever and beautiful they are – because we never get beyond Sarge’s internal ramblings.
And the writing? Well, the characters’ names – brittle, one syllable – seem to be a metaphor for the book in every way. Maybe this is all ironic? Can Gemmell believe this means feminism 2024? I’m terrified she does; the book’s dedication says: To all the blazing women and all the blazing girls. And two admirable women – Susan Johnson and Suzie Miller – are quoted on the cover saying they couldn’t put this down. Call me perverse; I had to pay myself to pick it up again and again to read for this review.
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