The Anniversary (Stephanie Bishop, Hachette)

The Anniversary is a book that’s hard to describe: the writing is quiet, meandering, full of thoughts on art and the act of creative expression. And yet, it is also compelling and dark, a psychological thriller that makes you want to peel back the layers. The narrator is a writer at the peak of her career, having just won a huge literary prize. On a cruise to celebrate her wedding anniversary, her husband, a lauded filmmaker and her former professor, is washed overboard in a storm. With this she comes undone, unsure of where to go and what to do, or if she can even make art without his influence. The narrator’s voice is interior: she muses on the world around her, compulsively consuming her environment to turn into art. But this means she sometimes has trouble telling what is real, which the author plays with. Scenes are visited and revisited, adding missing details and layers of meaning that cast old arguments in new light. This is a novel about relationships between men and women, parents and children, about how power is exercised in ways large and small. Balancing philosophical tangents, concrete detail and frequent jumps forwards and backwards in time with the driving momentum at the heart of the book is a complicated task, but one that the author almost always manages. Stephanie Bishop is the author of four novels including much-awarded The Other Side of the World, and The Anniversary lives up to the hype. For fans of Rachel Cusk or Siri Hustvedt.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Fay Helfenbaum is a freelance writer and editor and was a bookseller for five years. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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