Foxybaby

by Elizabeth Jolley

Alma Porch, a spinster and aspiring writer, agrees to teach a course during a summer session at a remote school in Australia

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Australia

261 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Monica Elizabeth Jolley was an award-winning writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 1950s. She was 53 years old when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels (including an autobiographical trilogy), four short story collections, and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s and achieving significant critical acclaim. She was also a pioneer of creative writing teaching in Australia, counting many well known writers such as Tim Winton among her students. Her novels explore alienated characters and the nature of loneliness and entrapment.

Honours:
1987: Western Australian Citizen of the Year
1988: Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to literature
1989: Canada/Australia Literary Award
1997: Australian Living Treasure

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was definitely a point in this where I felt I couldn't endure anymore boring monologues from Mrs Castle or listen to another controlling comment from Mrs Peycroft, the owner perhaps; certainly the organiser of the slimming school, in the middle of nowhere, Australia?

I also had to ask myself why is Alma Porch, along with myself enduring these moronic over-weight matronly matrons, plus various others, Mr Miles and his wife or Finchy, the cleaner and the robotic Miss Paisley, Peycroft's dull secretary? Miss Porch certainly has the restriction of her car being towed away, and no other means of transport to escape from this isolated re-treat. Myself, I had to ask, what is the point of stepping into the lives of all of these miserable, inadequate, people; are they real? I could certainly remember periods in my life, where I had encountered, people I could quite easily have classed as evil and down-right stupid; so yes they seem real enough.

Towards the end, I could see how Alma, as a writer is very much stuck in her head; we have this re-iterated on multiple occasions, by long internal ramblings of a fictitious nature, it's a sort of prop to help her cope with difficult mostly impossible situations. But yes, as I approached the end, I could see how Jolley has written a very self- reflective story about a writer struggling with her doubts about the purpose or use of her words. As Alma Porch says, there are already so many other, younger writers producing hundreds of novels, books and plays every day - why would she even try to compete with all of those others.

Mrs Viggars, one of the only sensible matrons in the diet-school, offers sound and friendly advise to Alma on several occasions. And in turn we see Alma, rally her flagging intent and spirits. I liked this exposé of how a writer experiences the process of writing. I also can understand the solipsistic nature of being eternally in 'your own head,' very rarely is there someone you can trust with your creative thoughts, even just your opinions of the other people in your life; and this can lead to an inevitable questioning of your own sense of reality. 'Am I right?' the writer questions herself, 'are people really this awful, this selfish, this openly focused on their own gain or preservation?'

I have just put down the short stories by Joyce Carol Oates, and my objection to those four stories was - 'the characters are so twisted and awful,' and yet in my experience I know full-well that people can be this nasty, this egotistically driven; oblivious to any suffering they might cause to others. Most people will block out the ugliness or quite rightly in the opinion of psychologists today, adjust their colour lenses to 'more-positive' or self-soothe themselves into a better reality.

The book ends with Alma, our writer, awakening from a long dream, a night-mare, rather and finding that she has just arrived at her destination and doesn't know yet, any of her fellow passengers. Some other reviewers objected to this sudden inversion of our reading reality - that sudden shift to - 'oh take no account - it was just a dream'. The substance of the story seems real enough. The relationships between Alma and the other residents of the school, are perfectly sensible and the presence of Mrs Viggars and a Miss Harrow, who although very spiteful, her intelligent observance of their living conditions reflects exactly Miss Porch's own experiences. "Why can't we all have separate bedrooms; after Vladimir Leftov has left, there must be a spare room?" And when Miss Porch is invited to a special meeting with Miss Harrow's young men, Anders and Xerxes, the description of their paintings, which they try to force the ladies to buy is very funny. Here is a bit of that macabré scene:

"Which will you choose Mabel?" Anders seemed to bark, "and you Miss Porch? Which pictures will you choose?" The coloured cardboard flopped forwards or fell back crazily as a final threatening attempt was made to display them all at once. The carrot in the mop one was clearly, Miss Porch could now see, something else. She felt very uncomfortable as though violated in some way. She did not want to consider the possibilities though found herself, against her will, wondering whether the purple-red vegetable was protruding from the bushiness or whether it was being pushed into it. She tried to draw back from the violence of the painting. There was no room to recoil.

That scene allows me to jump to Miss Porch's work in progress, which is being acted out by the students as a drama class. It's about a father and his daughter, and her newly born baby. The daughter and baby are both Alma's past selves; and the father, a Doctor Steadman is therefore most likely Alma's father. Alma's reliable support, Mrs Viggars, suggests to her that she can resolve the outcome of her play/novel, but she also implies a psychological resolution And so we see that Alma is using her writing to understand herself by remembering her childhood. Alma is the young woman, Sandy/Anna, but I have a feeling that our narrator also sees herself as Steadman, the father struggling to reunite with his child.

That's a strange assumption because Alma is an elderly spinster and very little is reported about her past, except that she teaches in a school, called The Towers. She doesn't feel secure about her job, and has only accepted the holiday work as a necessary extra to her income.

I liked these references to Alma's insecurity. Lack of security is suggested in all the characters, in the ways they behave; they are all affected to some degree. The lonely Mrs Castle who can never stop talking about her daughter and son-in-law, who prefer not to have her in the house. Miss Harrow's failed book. Mrs Peycroft's absent husband.

There are frequent references to the lack of food. Mrs Viggars, who is wealthy pays for most of the other guests to eat at the mid-night feasts, which are supplied by the devious Miles, who sends enormous bills to her, even though she is the one who has supplied all the wine. Viggars herself often comments to Alma 'it's the lack of food, you will feel much better once you've eaten something.'

I liked all these references to physical comforts, the things we depend on without realising how much we need them. There are several comments also on how creative people living in attics, on miserable amounts of food, is a figment of the collective imagination. No creativity is possible without sustaining and regular meals, is one of Mrs Viggars' observations.

And to sum up: Foxybaby is one of those novels, that will probably reward several readings, as there are layers embedded within the text. There are also various taboo subjects which appear to be approached and then bounced away from or hidden in a sort of oblique sideways or dream-type sequence of writing. For example, I think it is clear that the relationship between the father and the daughter in Alma's play is incestuous. And raises questions about Alma's fascination and obsession and also rejection of sexuality; it's as if she can't quite look at it directly and yet so much of what she hears and what is written into both the novel and the play is about sex and sexual relationships. Miss Harrow wants to woo Anders back to her and away from the evil Xerxes. Even Mrs Viggars appears to have a relationship with Mrs Rennet; Mrs Peycroft requests Alma to join herself and Miss Paisley in an 'orgy'. And Miles chases both his wife and the cleaner Mrs Finchey with raucous sexual commentary throughout. But at the end - it is all just a dream! The question of course is - is it? Perhaps Miss Alma Porch is about to go through everything just as her dream in the bus has envisioned, or even worse. Is it Shakespeare who says, "We are such stuff as dreams are made of." Wikipedia - "It is a quote used to describe the illusory nature of life; Prospero understands that life is a dream."

I enjoyed this novel, number six in Elizabeth Jolley's lengthy repertoire. She started writing, as many have noted, at the age of 53. I reckon she would have been approximately 57/58 when Foxybaby was published in 1985. I hope that her novels will not disappear. She is a wonderful writer, and I love being inside her head.

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth Jolley is easily one of the best Australian writers and probably where I would recommend you start if you are thinking of reading some Australian Lit. The first of her novels I ever read was at Uni a lifetime ago – Miss Peabody’s Inheritance. Jolley creates worlds that are both bizarre and funny, but I think she gets away with these worlds because she just never seemed to be the sort of person who should have been writing the books she has. She is like an imposter, someone who looks like an old aunt that would sits in a corner at Christmas listening to everyone talk and refusing to drink anything stronger than tea – only for you to find out latter that she kept a devastatingly accurate diary highlighting all of the family foibles throughout the years. Jolley was that aunt, never quite who you expect she should be. There is more than a bit of Wodehouse and Waugh in her.

How can I describe Foxybaby? Well, it is a story within a story (within a story), I guess. We generally expect the ‘story-within’ to be less realistic than the surface ‘story’, if you know what I mean. Take Hamlet, for instance. In that play you have another play acted out within it, and that play is often ‘over-acted’ to show it is a play within a play. This novel is the story of a novelist going off to teach at a summer school cum weight-loss health farm and she is writing a novel, which is also being acted out by the people in her drama group as she reads it. The story of the novel is the story of Foxybaby – a young girl/woman, heroin addict with a baby (also addicted) and of her father who is trying to make everything all right. There are repeated suggestions that the father’s affection for his daughter is less than wholesome, but this is often raised by other characters in the story (as opposed to the ‘story-within’) and often says more about them than about the father. The story-within is harrowing, the surface story is a farce – which is an interesting inversion of how these things generally work.

The characters are in some ways what you might call ‘stock-characters’ – including a Benny Hill inspired Mr Miles, who puts the cheat into Cheatham, the ‘I just want to spend time with my grand-kiddies’ Jonquil Castle and my favourite, the dear old Mrs Viggars (oomph!). There is also Miss Peycroft, head mistress and helpful supplier of interpretations and commentary to the writer’s novel in progress who helps arrange the tableau vivants consisting of the other characters as the novel within a novel is being read.

This is a very funny novel in places. There is even a Miss Harrow, an aging woman who retains a young man for his ‘services’, but he seems more interested in a young Greek man called Xerxes (the most amusingly unlikely name for any Greek imaginable – a bit like a Christian calling their child Judas – which even if the child was born at Easter time still wouldn’t seem a very likely name). My favourite line about all this being, “And, Anders, if, and I say, if you are going to Him now, do not consider for one moment that you may afterwards come to me. I have an utter distaste for wilting or dead flowers.”

This is not a novel of art imitating life – this is art as self-conscious art. Funny and profound – it constantly leaves us questioning what is real and what is unreal – where does fiction begin and end.

Throughout this novel various characters give the ‘novelist’ samples of their writing for her to read. At one point she even says, “Oh, how kind of you” – yeah, obviously, kind is exactly the right word. I can imagine that many of these stories (given Jolley was a ‘writer-in-residence’ for a number of years) probably came nearly directly from life.

There is a lovely part of the book when the novelist is reading her novel to the assembled group and a lesbian scene is being described and later a young woman has been so shocked by the very idea that she keeps saying, “But women, two women, together…” I really liked this because when people find something hard to believe they often do exactly that and keep saying what they can’t believe as if this, in itself, should be enough to confirm that what they object to is, by definition, unbelievable and therefore needs to not be believed.

This is the sort of book that mixes classical music with overflowing toilets and expects characters to survive on deep knee bends (down and down and up) and lettuce and lemon juice – in a punk rock, solid rock, disco beat kind of why. What more can I say?

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of Jolley's other works are classics of postmodern, self-reflexive literature, but are so much less showy and irritating than most such classics that I feel bad describing them in those terms. Foxybaby, unfortunately, isn't even a classic of ps-rl; it's just an exemplar. Alma Porch is going to teach at a weight-loss camp/college. On the way, she gets run off the road by a bus, and chaos ensues. But, 250 pages later, you'll learn she was only dreaming. It's all okay.

Now, Jolley is way too smart to be using the 'it was all just a dream' thing sincerely, but I have literally no idea why she does it. So I'll just move on.

The book is a play/film/novel within a novel (within, of course, a dream within a novel), with the striking oddity--as another goodreader has pointed out before me--that the outer, more 'real' layers are less realistic than the inner, ostensibly less real layers. The play/film/novel (which Alma is trying to write) is about a man trying to rescue his daughter and grandchild (who might also be his child) from heroin addiction and disco music. It might be the most boring thing I've ever read.

Our novel is a perfectly normal Jolley novel: isolated location, very few male characters, very few straight characters, and an endless parade of quirkiness. It's great fun, though I fear I'm getting diminishing returns with each Jolley novel I read.

But that inner layer takes up far too much time, and is far too dull, to be worth reading. There is some cross-over between the layers, which is later revealed to be caused by the fact that it's all just a dream, folks! So tiresome.

The book is interesting to think about, though. The college's head is Miss Peycroft, a classic Jolley creation (authoritarian, self-satisfied, slightly incompetent older lesbian cellist). And towards the end of the book we're asked if Peycroft might be just a bit too much, a bit too unrealistic? (because, duh, she's just in a dream, folks!). The interesting point here is that Peycroft might be entirely unrealistic, might be recognizably a Jolley type rather than a 'rounded character,' but she's still far more interesting than the less typical characters in the novel-within-the-novel. And that's what counts.

Also interesting stuff here, I'm sure, for those with a greater ability to believe that the unconscious/dreams/whatever are really important for the creative process.

[Tricia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this to be a really hard read. The ending redeemed it a bit but I found most of it uninteresting and I really disliked some of the characters.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I remember correctly (although after reading this novel, I'm not sure if I'm remembering anything correctly), I had requested from our local interlibrary loan Miss Peabody's Inheritance by Australian author Elizabeth Jolley. I received instead Foxybaby by the same author. I wonder if it makes a difference? I was taken into a surreal world, not unlike the Marx Brothers meeting the Keystone Kops in a mesmerizing, madcap where-is-this-going? caper, and don't think I made heads nor tails of the entire book. A wonderful review is given by fellow goodreads.com Trevor, and if you're not his friend so as to get in on his always interesting reviews, you should be.

Hoping he won't mind, I will quote verbatim Trevor's very accurate description of the author herself: "[Elizabeth] Jolley creates worlds that are both bizarre and funny, but I think she gets away with these worlds because she just never seemed to be the sort of person who should have been writing the books she has. She is like an imposter, someone who looks like an old aunt that would sits in a corner at Christmas listening to everyone talk and refusing to drink anything stronger than tea – only for you to find out later that she kept a devastatingly accurate diary highlighting all of the family foibles throughout the years. Jolley was that aunt, never quite who you expect she should be. There is more than a bit of Wodehouse and Waugh in her."

I am still hoping to get a chance to read "Miss Peabody's Inheritance" and probably should try and reread Foxybaby but will send it back (interlibrary loans are strict on prompt returns) and perhaps come across it another day.

[Terry Mulcahy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure how I got this book or why. It has lived under a stack of to-be-read books, and when some of those got read, I looked at it and realized I could read it quickly. I ended up enjoying it. Jolley's main character Alma Porch is interesting, and sympathetic, but the characters really roll out in this romp. The story within the story is her project, and you find yourself searching for her in the story, as Jolley intended. Far from the tiny, quiet conservative "college" in the countryside, Trinity College surprises with characters expected, and characters one does not expect in that environment. We do not meet them all; in fact while many hope to escape, at least one does, and the other men are not given much voice, if any, so they barely figure in the story. The story within a story, however, has a central male character, who is voiced by an older woman "student" of this self-described college in a "treatment" reading of Alma's work in progress. Jolley concentrates on the matronly women who are part of this college as students, teachers and administrators.
Most bore the crap out of Alma, and the readers, but Alma, after a failed escape attempt, soldiers on, grudgingly accepting some of the other people, and doing her best as a writer and teacher of writing. Jolley's experience with writing workshops in prisons and community centers figures largely in this novel.
Every once in a while, I believe I should read something out of the familiar, and this is one of those. I'm not sorry I read it.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes it’s quirky cheeky riotous satire that jolley is so good at but this book seems so English to me I just ignored the ref to a roo bar but then stopped at the mention of cockatoos. It feel so totally unanchored to any location, esp the contention that it’s in a desert. Perhaps this is the effect of the dream/time warp device which undoes the veracity of the story but also suggests it’s ongoing repetition. It’s clever but grueling.

[Michael Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

i voted for this in the abr favourite australian novel poll - i dont think it made it to the top 100 full of earnest wintonesque blahblah & of course jolley could write garner into a paper bag & out again - just beats out the sublime mr scobies riddle

[Suze Geuke]

schrijfstijl doet me denken aan G. v.h. Reve, zoals miss Porch tot neurotisch toe reacties en houdingen overweegt. verder zit het verhaal vol eigenzinnige personages met heul wat persoonlijkheidsstoornissen en ze zijn (geloof ik?) overwegend eenzame lesbiennes, vandaar een groot aantal interessante en irritante dialogen. en dan het toneelstuk/mimespel/tableau vivant/muziektheater tussen het verhaal doorgewoven, hmm, geinig op papier gezet.

maar het einde was me echt te flauw en dus weet ik niet zo goed wat ik er (i.e. de leeservaring) nu mee moet.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the title, so I read a random page in the middle and that page happened to be quirky and strange, so I gave it a whirl.

Somehow I randomly picked the best page in the whole book, because the whole thing was a real slog. And the ending was what you do it grade 8 when you don't know how to end a story (it was all a dreeeeeaaaam). Nah

[Jenine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chance find on the used book store shelf. I very much liked the new-to-me setting of a rural Australian summer college/fat farm in the 1980s. The protagonist's frequent imaginative reveries show the writer's outlook. The summer camp from hell seems worth escaping from but there are moments when the oddball culture provides a new perspective.

[Gareth · Rating 2 out of 5]

i thought it was drivel… too many words, annoying jokes, not funny, annoying phonic writing (like: “oh Gawd” for oh god) and felt all round stale and not a classic at all. sorry if im a philistine. good cover tho, they shoukd make 80s style covers again soon

[AnnaSpanner · Rating 2 out of 5]

So hard to stay engaged in this book. I felt there was no real plot or high point. By the end it had lost me. I liked the concept but not the execution.

[Randy Rhody · Rating 5 out of 5]

At a dieting retreat that includes sumptuous midnight banquets for several of the less-disciplined weight-watchers, writer Alma Porch conducts a stage-play class that is based on her unfinished manuscript, "Foxybaby."

Surrounded by unlikely characters, she confronts one hilarious, Kafka-like situation after another. Some insinuations along the way eluded me because of the author’s English-Australian style, now forty years past, but enough slips through to appreciate a series of absurd and comical encounters.

The story is much different than Jolley’s The Well, but like that book it has an enigmatic ending instead of a tidy resolution. In fact, there are two unusual endings - one for the manuscript/play and one for the book. I admire Jolley’s courage for subverting our expectations of what constitutes a finish.

Beyond entertainment, what is the point? Well, I found several passages of lasting interest, including the following for would-be writers.

“There are so many of them,” Miss Porch was surprised at the mean-sounding words and the spiteful discontent evident in her own voice, “that I feel it is not worth anything at all to try to go on writing. I mean, if so many great writers are writing what is the point of adding to the great quantity of words?”

Shortly after, another character counters her point. Perhaps Jolley herself considered these thoughts on an off-day, but we’re fortunate she didn’t yield to discouragement.

[Bridgit · Rating 1 out of 5]

Man, I wanted to quit this book so many times. This ranks as one of the books to make me fall asleep the most. I really have no idea what the point of this book was. There was no real plot. Nothing really happened. There were a silly amount of characters that did nothing and we learned no backstory about so knew nothing of their motivations. Ugh. I am at a loss as to why Jolley is considered one of Australia's best writers. This book should never have come out of retirement.

[Libby · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was really surprised at my difficulty reading this book. I've read other books by Elizabeth Jolley, who is an interesting, quirky writer, but I found this a slog. I wasn't interested in the characters, who I found tiresome, and the storyline was difficult to follow. This book was a dud, in my opinion, and I'm glad to have done with it.

[Pam]

11/20 bought at library sale rack

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusingly absurdist, though I couldn't get into the "Foxybaby" plot-within-a-plot at all.

[Luann Schindler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just couldn't get into the story. The opening letters were humorous, but the story just didn't hold my attention.

[Lisa]

I couldn't get into it.