Claustrophobia

by Tracy Ryan

Claustrophobia is the taut, compelling story of a young Perth wife who sets out to protect her husband by stalking his ex-lover, but unexpectedly falls into a passionate affair and a world of lies. In a novel that possesses the dark wit, psychological insight and narrative momentum of a Patricia Highsmith, Tracy Ryan captures the disturbing elements that sometimes lurk beneath the surface of a marriage. The realities of obsessive attachment and social isolation are explored through a deft and thought-provoking look at a complex personality and a plot that twists its page-turning way into our psyche.
(From the blurb)

Genres: Thriller, Australia

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 12, 2014

About the author

Tracy Ryan is a Western Australian poet and novelist. She was particularly well-known in the 1990s as a trailblazing feminist poet, with early collections as 'Killing Delilah' and 'Bluebeard in Drag'. Such poetry collections reflected the fraught nature of the the times regarding the end of second-wave feminism, through her experiences as poet, woman, mother, partner and the inhabitant of politicised body in a politicised space.

Ryan has worked various jobs in libraries, bookselling, editing, community journalism and university teaching. She has a BA in English from Curtin University, studied European languages at the University of Western Australia, and finished with a BA (Hons) in French from the University of New England in NSW. She is especially interested in foreign languages and the translation of poetry.

Ryan's poetry has been compared, by poet Dorothy Hewett, with Sylvia Plath, and Debra Zott, in her review of Hothouse, agrees, saying that "certainly, there are [in Ryan's poetry] the mythic underpinnings one finds in Plath's poetry, as well as that quality of imbuing the personal with highly dramatised mythic proportions" and that "it is no secret that Ryan has been influenced by Plath". However, she argues that "the very mention of Plath's name shapes, and threatens to place limits on, the reader's experience of Ryan's poetry", that "Tracy Ryan's poetry does not need the Plath myth to prop it up".

In 2001, Ryan said the following about her writing in a session with the Virginia G Piper Centre for Creative Writing:

I don’t adhere to any particular school of thought, except in the broadest sense that my writing is inextricably bound up with my feminism. This would be the only real connector between my books. I am interested in trying to find ways in which language may be interrupted, disrupted and rejigged for feminist purposes (among others). Usually this attempt would arise from something in either my personal life or the world around me. My home state is currently enacting a legal clamp-down on women, with regard to street prostitution—passing laws that restrict women’s movements and rights to occupy space. Though such factors are often what ‘provokes’ me into a poem, the poem equally draws life off other books (like most poets, I spend a lot of time reading). I work by a kind of principle of immersion in particular poets at particular times."

Notable awards and short-listings:

Western Australian Premier’s Book Award, Poetry (Shortlisted 2014)

NSW Premier’s Literary Award, Kenneth Slessor Prize (Shortlisted 2012)

Western Australian Premier’s Book Award, Poetry (Winner 2012)

Australian Book Review Poetry Prize (Winner 2009)

The Age Book of the Year Award, Poetry (Shortlisted 2008)

Trudie Graham Award for Memoir (Winner 2007)

Western Australian Premier’s Book Award (Winner 2000)

National Book Council’s Banjo Award (Commended 1997)

Western Australian Premier’s Book
Award (Shortlisted 1994, 1998)

Mattara Poetry Prize (Winner 1987)

Reviews

[Sam Still Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

You may think that I chose Claustrophobia by Tracy Ryan simply for the cover. It’s slightly retro, giving the idea of a Thelma and Louise type escape, yet the woman is still tightly wrapped up in her scarf. The cover is symbolic of what’s to come, as the protagonist tries to investigate suspected infidelity, and then falls in love. Whatever she does, she can’t escape the confines of her life and her actions.

The novel centres around Pen (don’t call her Penelope), who lives a quiet life with her husband in Perth’s Hills region. She works at the school in administration; he’s a teacher with ambitions. Children don’t seem to be on the agenda for the couple, so they’ve decided to renovate their house instead. While cleaning up, Pen finds a letter her husband wrote to his former lover, a lecturer at his university while he was a student. It was this relationship that landed him in hospital after a breakdown and led him to meet Pen, who was working in a lunch bar near the hospital. Pen doesn’t like the tone of the letter as it insinuates that she is Derrick’s second (and poorer) choice. She decides that she’s going to track down Kathleen, which is easy. She’s working at the university in central Perth, so Pen organises to attend one of her extension classes for the general public. Then she gets a job at the university library. Then she might be falling in love…

This novel starts off quietly, but ends with a roar. It’s a book that seeps into your skin and I simply couldn’t stop thinking about it. I initially thought it would be a tale of quiet domesticity laced with betrayal, but it’s so much more. It’s the blossoming of Pen as a person in her own right, from Derrick’s wife and henpecked daughter to a woman capable of forming a tangled web of lies. It’s about exploration of sexuality, gaining independence and how a marriage can be suffocating for one party and not the other. This is a cleverly plotted novel with a fantastic twist at the end that puts Claustrophobia up there with The Talented Mr Ripley (and a few shades of Carol [or The Price of Salt], also by Patricia Highsmith). I also love how the novel ties in the strange coincidences that tend to happen in Perth – even though the city is growing, no individual seems to be one or two degrees away from the other (it’s highly likely that you’ll open your social media account to find that two people from different parts of your social sphere know each other well). Pen knows that, and it makes her lying and plotting to keep Kathleen and Derrick separate all the more risky. When she goes ‘down south’ (to the south west region of Western Australia) with Kathleen, she’s petrified that she’ll see someone, that there will be some record of her being there. Pen’s desperation to remove all evidence might seem excessive, but there’s probably someone she knows in the same area!

I loved the descriptions of Perth and the Hills area as separate entities, because they are seen that way locally (I’m not going to go into the details, things could get heated!). As Pen comes down the hill to town, she shakes off the shackles that define her as wife. She’s an entirely different person by the time she’s driving by the river to the university (the descriptions are of the University of Western Australia, and yes, there are peacocks). Perth seems to offer both opportunity and freedom to Pen – wouldn’t you feel the same way, driving between the river and native bushland? It also appears to be her own territory, compared to the Hills, which belongs to Derrick. Derrick belongs firmly on the sidelines for most of the book – there’s a subplot of an incident at the school, which is handled with disbelief and shock, but is quickly swept under the carpet. It’s at the conclusion of the novel that he shows his true colours – will they be for or against Pen?

The finale will have you on the edge of your seat. It’s so different to the rest of the book –frenetic and full of feeling. At the end, you’ll be wondering what happens next for Pen and the secrets each individual hides in this town. Part love story and part psychological thriller, Claustrophobia is a book that shouldn’t be missed.

Thank you to Quikmark Media and Transit Lounge for the copy of this book.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

[Jules · Rating 1 out of 5]

La protagonista è fastidiosa, come del resto tutti gli altri personaggi, perciò suscitano zero empatia. I capitoli sono troppo lunghi per il contenuto che hanno (cioè tutti gli inutili rimuginamenti di Pen), il ritmo è spaventosamente lento e più di una volta mi è capitato che mi si chiudessero gli occhi.
Altro grosso problema è la pessima traduzione: non ho letto la versione in lingua, ma gli errori nei tempi verbali saltano facilmente all'occhio (i congiuntivi, santo cielo!!!).

La cosa più assurda del libro? Decisamente il finale.

[Choopie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't get it. All that head stuff and then an abrupt ending that beggars belief??

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Claustrophobia is an interesting book. It took a little while to lure me in, but once it did, I became more and more intrigued. It reminded me of Julie Proudfoot’s The Neighbour because once again the reader is inside the mind of someone who is seriously psychologically disturbed. So part of the pleasure is decoding what to believe.

Pen (Penelope) Barber reveals herself as a bit odd right from the start. In conversation with her awful hectoring mother, Pen thinks mutinous thoughts, but never confronts her – or anyone else who provokes her self-righteous feeling of inferiority . Indeed, she’s often in a curious dream world of her own, having conversations in her mind that she would never dare to have in real life. She has a nice husband called Derrick, who seems devoted to her, but when a parcel is delivered for him her overreaction is bizarre: she vacillates between fantasies about surprise gifts, and unhealthy suspicion. And when she finds an hysterical letter that Derrick sent in the death throes of a long-ago love-affair, she decides that this long-ago lover must be dealt with in no uncertain terms.

It a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2014/07/19/cl...

[Maria Sole Bramanti · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh, mamma mia, come è difficile recensire questo libro. Ci provo. Non è scritto male, è scorrevole, sufficientemente breve, però, non riesco ad inquadrarne il genere, non riesco a trovarvi un significato, non mi sono affezionata a nessuno dei personaggi. E poi, sembra incompiuto; il finale, voglio dire, non è realmente un finale; è lasciato in sospeso ed è una cosa che, personalmente, non sopporto: se leggo un libro, voglio leggerne sia l’inizio, che la fine…non voglio essere io ad immaginare quale sia il finale; altrimenti, lo scriverei io, il libro, no? All’inizio c viene presentata questa coppia quasi perfetta, due bei giovani che si amano, con un bel lavoro, una bella casa…una vita tranquilla, appunto. Ad un certo punto,, l’autrice ci fa credere che la storia prenda una piega gialla e ci racconta particolari del passato dei protagonisti che, scusate se mi ripeto, ci fanno credere che arriveremo a comprendere a fondo le ragioni che spingono il racconto verso una certa direzione. Poi, però, il tono cambia, senza un reale motivo, e ci ritroviamo all’interno di una storia d’amore che finisce tragicamente (e, scusate di nuovo la ripetizione, anche qui senza un reale motivo). Ci avviamo verso il finale. Ecco, ci siamo… ora capirò, ora mi si aprirà un mondo…. E … puff.. il libro è finito. Ma come? Perché? Beh, insomma: personaggi non approfonditi (e trattasi di 4 personaggi, non duecento, quindi, insomma, un piccolo sforzo, si poteva anche fare….), una trama di cui noi non capiamo il senso, ma neppure i protagonisti lo capiscono, ve lo assicuro… una storia banale, se non fosse per quello che succede nel finale, che, forse, se fosse stato sviluppato in qualche modo, avrebbe permesso al romanzo di trovare una sua identità. “Pen era consapevole di essere in bilico sulla soglia di una vita completamente diversa” leggiamo, ad un certo punto; e questa è proprio l sensazione che ti lascia il romanzo…. Il suo essere in bilico tra romanzo rosa, giallo, romanzo esistenziale, e, alla fine, non essere niente. In conclusione, non consiglio questo libro, perché non lascia nulla, se non un po’ di amaro in bocca per non averne letto un altro. 1 stella su 5

[Una Lettrice Selvaggia · Rating 2 out of 5]

RECENSIONE DI “ UNA VITA TRANQUILLA” DI TRACY RYAN
Quanto può essere deludente una lettura? Quanto può essere imbarazzante un romanzo senza senso, senza verve? Parecchio, direi, se penso alla mia ultima lettura in ordine di tempo: “Una vita tranquilla” di Tracy Ryan edito da Newton&Compton.
Siamo in Australia. Pen Barber è sposata da dieci anni con Derrick, un insegnante. Pen fa la bibliotecaria part-time nello stesso college dove insegna il marito e conduce una vita monotona e banale. Ha una madre assillante e ficcanaso, una lavoro che non la soddisfa, un matrimonio che vive una fase di stallo, il desiderio, irrealizzato, di diventare madre.
Un giorno, mentre è impegnata a sistemare alcune vecchie cose in occasione dei lavori di ristrutturazione della loro casa, Pen scopre una lettera d’amore che il marito aveva scritto oltre dieci anni prima ad un’altra donna: la sua amante, molto più grande di lui, che lo aveva sedotto quando era solo uno studente. La scoperta di questa lettera sconvolge Pen che si convince di essere stata solo un ripiego per il marito. Questo genera una serie di avvenimenti che avranno conseguenze impreviste.
Il romanzo tutto è tranne che un thriller, come è riportato in copertina. Pen è un personaggio odioso, sicuramente mentalmente disturbato, che si sente sempre inferiore a tutto e tutti, che pensa che tutti la guardino e la giudichino. È un personaggio assurdo calato in una storia assurda che di thriller e suspance non ha niente. La trama è debolissima, la vicenda narrata è assurda al limite del ridicolo ma soprattutto al di là della vicenda oggettivamente brutta che è stata narrata, della quale, francamente, avremmo potuto anche fare a meno, ciò che forse mi ha molto infastidito è anche la mancanza di una certa logica nella narrazione.
Insomma, ad oggi, il libro più brutto che ho letto e del quale se potete, vi prego, fatene a meno.

[Valentina Panzetta · Rating 2 out of 5]

<<..Ma a volte non riesci a staccarti perché pensi che poi migliorerà. Anche se sai che non sarà così.>>
Questa è una frase presa dal libro in questione che mi permette di esternare esattamente ciò che penso del libro.
Ammetto di essere andata a cercare la definizione di "thriller" subito dopo aver chiuso il libro perché ho avuto persino dei dubbi. Un thriller dovrebbe metterti suspense e tenerti incollata alle pagine per saperne sempre di più, ma questo è successo solo a pagina 230 (e le pagine in tutto sono 250 eh!).
I personaggi poi erano molto confusionari. Pen una volta è dolce e due secondi dopo vuole ucciderti. Il marito, Derrick, è troppo appiccicoso e pesante; e la madre di Pen avrei voluta ucciderla io invece!
Insomma, mi son fatta trasportare dalla trama che aveva di base una bella storia, ma non ne sono rimasta colpita. Non è da buttare sicuramente, ma neanche lo consiglierei

[Rita · Rating 1 out of 5]

DA CESTINARE, TRANQUILLAMENTE

Questo "thriller" si può tranquillamente buttar via: è prolisso, surreale, inconcludente, lacunoso... In una parola: inutile.

[Francesca Lo Giudice · Rating 1 out of 5]

inutile e col finale mozzato

[Joan Kerr · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the beginning of 'Claustrophobia'Pen Barber is leading a strangely muted life in the outer suburbs of Perth. Married for 10 years to the pleasant but rather wussy Derrick, she has no children and apparently no life beyond her home and a part-time job as receptionist at the college where Derrick teaches. She doesn’t seem to have any strong feelings about any of this; in fact, her upbringing at the hands of a sourly critical mother has trained her not to think about her feelings. She’s clever, we learn, but has no ambition to do anything with her cleverness; she’s attractive, we learn from what other say about her, but doesn’t seem to have any awareness of it. She loves Derrick, but without passion; he’s kind, reliable, and he loves her completely.

Derrick is her life project. When she met him he had had a nervous breakdown after a love affair with an older woman, one of his university lecturers. It’s Pen who got him back to study, got him qualified as a teacher, got him to move from the public system to a prestigious private college.

'She had worked and scraped to build him the kind of buffer against the world that he’d need if he was to thrive' (26)

When Pen finds a 10-year-old letter to his lover Kathleen, marked Return to sender, she’s shocked at the passion it reveals and at the fact that Derrick writes that he’ll marry Pen if Kathleen doesn’t respond to him.

'He had loved some else and not her at all.' (30)

But confrontation isn’t her style. Instead, she sets out to find Kathleen. And then things get very complicated. Events seize pragmatic, controlled Pen and whirl her into deceit after deceit, only half-knowing where she’s going, both willing and unwilling.

'She was lost, and she knew it, but she had to keep moving.' (139)

It’s difficult to juggle the ordinariness of suburban life with subterranean suspense, and clever and engaging as it is, I didn’t think Tracy Ryan quite pulled it off. The blurb mentions Highsmith, but it doesn’t have that Highsmithian creepiness that gets into your bones – even though the end of the story is worthy of Highsmith herself.

[Serena Shannon (Serisop) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Veramente bello questo libro e non me l'aspettavo per niente!
Adoro i libri in cui, prima di tutto, si analizza in modo sottile una mente chiaramente malata.
La nostra protagonista principale, Pen, è tutto tranne che in piena salute mentale 😂
Quando scopre che suo marito ha conservato una lettera che aveva spedito molti anni prima ad un'ex fidanzata, cerca quest'ultima e ne diventa completamente ossessionata.
È una vera e propria stalker e noi lettori cerchiamo di dare un senso alla sua ossessione.
Ma ragazzi, il colpo di scena finale è l'elemento che mi ha davvero sconvolta!
Mi è venuto da ridere per l'assurdità della cosa e ho capito che questo libro mi è piaciuto proprio tanto!
Brava Tracy Ryan!

[Deb Kingston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read because it was written by an Australian author. Only 3🌟. It held my interest enough to keep reading till over half way but towards the end it failed miserably it was like the author just ran out of suspenseful ideas and wanted done with it.

[Anne Connolly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a bad little book. Worth the read.

[KT Malley · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite books of all time!

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using a title like CLAUSTROPHOBIA obviously sets certain expectations for readers, which luckily, in this outing are uncomfortably well imagined. There's something incredibly claustrophobic about everything to do with this book. The enclosed, world that the two main characters Pen and her husband Derrick occupy. From their home life, working together at the same school, even when Pen finally breaks away to another job, albeit for reasons that Derrick doesn't know. It's not just circumstances though. Of course, with Pen as the main narrator of the book there is an inward focus, but even with that there's something locked down, controlled yet bubbling about everything that places the the reader in a claustrophobic, uncomfortable, almost voyeuristic position.

There's also something incredibly compelling about CLAUSTROPHOBIA. Not necessarily likeable, these characters are mesmerising. Right from the beginning when the book starts out in such a restrained manner, to the ending that came out of nowhere, in one hell of a rush, it's one of those stories that just gets in. That stays in your mind, becomes hard to put down while reading, and hard to forget afterwards. Partially it's the way that Pen steps out from the shadows of her husband, and over-bearing mother, and her motivation for doing that which gets in. Partially it's the unexpected path her steps lead her down. Mostly it's the idea that the reader is closely following a momentous occasion in the life of a woman who, with increasing confidence, for better or worse, takes control of her own life.

The geography of Perth plays into this feeling of movement, of separation - somewhere between Pen and Derrick's quiet, uneventful life in the Perth Hills and the brash city with its University Campus and night life, Pen changes. Not just her perception of her own life, but her sense of ability, of empowerment. And about then in the book you know that definitely somebody, somewhere is going to get hurt. Who that is, how it happens and who does what is a mystery right up until that out of nowhere ending. And at that point, as a reader you're likely to be just a little bit torn. Whether you liked Pen up until that point, whether you had any sympathy, or even found her compelling, suddenly there's a moral dilemma you're going to have to do a bit of thinking about. Which is exactly what a psychological thriller of this kind should do.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/revie...

[Vintagecobweb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh! What a tangled web we weave…


Pen (Penelope) finds a letter her husband wrote (before they were married) to a woman known as Kathleen and for some reason her husband Derrick kept it. Pen opened it, wasn't happy with what she read, decided to play Detective and track Kathleen down.

After locating Kathleen, Pen went a step further; plotting to find ways she could plant herself into Kathleen's life so as to learn more about her. The various ways that Pen devised to do this had me thinking she was a tad unstable; her actions had nothing to do with protecting her husband as was cited on the back cover of the book.

Pen was a lonely nosey parker who was supposed to be intelligent, however she showed a total lack of common sense - her reality was further impaired as she was swept along in a web of lies and deceit, all of her own making.

Pen's husband Derrick, came across as a bit of a dolt in all of this. There were plenty of opportunities to call Pen out on her lies but instead he just shrugged them off and accepted her many excuses.

Even though I enjoyed the book, the ending was disappointing, it seemed rushed for such a dramatic end and of course, there was dutiful Derrick once again being very accepting of Pen's confession. He also just accepted the death that was a direct result of Pen's deceptiveness, all of which Derrick just took in very calmly and casually while he formulated a plan to cover up the accident in order to protect Pen from having to answer questions about her stalking behaviour and her relationship with Kathleen.

If you're looking to read a well written book with some twists, turns, lies and deceit, with an ending that’s different from what a logical mind may imagine - then Claustrophobia is well worth the read.

[Nene Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the cool retro cover to the slow burn of the story itself, I loved this book. And the ending..? Well, just goes to show - you never really know people. Subtle, slightly menacing, totally believeable and ultimately explosive, this story had me hooked from page one.

[Monique · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I really felt the author had got into the head of the main character Pen. Both characters, Pen and Derrick are pretty 'odd' and definitely not likeable. However this did not detract from the read.

[Chani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good weekend or holiday read. Suspense was quite good but I was disappointed as the ending was weak. I didn't particularly like the main character, or any character for that matter.

[Elisa Vangelisti]

ne ho letto un terzo. una noia mortale.