The story of a deceitful friendship

A young writer in crisis recognises – by chance, at the swimming pool – the face of a famous Australian author. After two hugely successful novels, decades earlier, Brenda Shales vanished from the public eye. No one knows where she is; some think she is dead, and no one knows what happened to her: she is the sort of literary figure who shaped the collective culture back when books still had the power to do so. In "The Hermit", she told the alienating story of a woman imprisoned in a small cell – like the anchorites, the nuns of the most punitive cloister. In "The Widowers", she gave voice to the candid and obscene thoughts of the men who opposed the divorce law in Australia. No one knows how those books came about, and Storia di un’amicizia bugiarda (Heloola) by Dominic Amerena, translated by Claudia Durastanti, is set right at the heart of that Australian literary bubble where revealing who Branda Shales is and what happened to her could mean a career-changing breakthrough, glory and honours. The protagonist, ambitious and boundless (the original title is I Want Everything), decides to get close to Brenda by lying. Thanks to an honest mistake by the receptionist at the dilapidated care home where Brenda lives, he pretends to be her grandson. He begins a manoeuvre to get close to her, which actually proves easy – perhaps suspiciously so – and Brenda recounts her life. Meanwhile, Ruth, the protagonist’s successful girlfriend – a prolific writer and local celebrity (the story is set in Melbourne) – writes a short story about her mother that goes viral, a so-called ‘literary matricide’. Behind the framework of a literary-psychological thriller – in the vein of R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface – Amerena raises the questions that have always fascinated us about literature, even more so today with the rise of autofiction. To whom does the story belong? Who has the right to tell it, and above all, within what limits? Consider Rachel Cusk’s latest novel, which is said to be based – implicitly but evidently – on the life of Natalie Portman. Dominic Amerena has written a gripping debut, which explores the most sordid and human aspects of the true nature of storytelling. Brenda Shales, in fact, proves to be anything but fragile or easily duped, and so the author also manages to reflect on the pleasure of being seen – that is, to reveal that being included in a book is not merely a process one endures, but something that tickles the ego and creativity of all those involved.

  

Dominic Amerena
, "The Story of a Deceitful
Friendship", Heloola Books, 300 pp., 19.50 euros