Safety

by Tegan Bennett Daylight

From the author of Bombora and What Falls Away, a stunning, moving novel about faith, love and family. Elizabeth has fallen in love in her early adulthood, but with a lack of conviction and disturbing results. In her late twenties she embarks on a new affair with Ross, a fellow academic at her university. Their relationship blooms and offers her the safety she has been searching for since childhood. She moves into this big, old house by the Parramatta River and becomes pregnant. Then Ross's fate, who was violent to both Ross and his mother, and disappeared while Rose still at school, resurfaces. He has been in Spain for fifteen years, and now is dying. Elizabeth persuades Ross that the family should make a journey to see him, to make peace with him and to show him Anna, their new daughter. But their holiday lays bare discomfitting truths and frailties, both in their relationship and their past. Bennett Daylight unfolds Ross and Elizabeth's love affair, and the joy and pain of motherhood with wonderful sensitivity in a captivating story written in her cahracteristically spare, limpid prose.

Genres: Fiction

217 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published January 1, 2006

About the author

Tegan Bennett Daylight is a fiction writer, teacher and critic. She is the author of three novels and a collection of short stories, Six Bedrooms, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Stella Award, the ALS Gold Medal and the Steele Rudd Award. She lives in the Blue Mountains with her husband and two children.

Reviews

[Chris Waterford · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high expectations of this book after reading her short stories "Six Bedrooms". The fine attention to detail was still evident but the narrative as a whole lacked substance and the safety that was yearned for always seemed to be illusory.

[Steve lovell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, this tome produced two mysteries. The lesser was how the book came to be on my shelves to start with. Such is the nature of ageing I have no recollection of purchasing or being given it. Maybe there's someone out there expecting it back! The bigger question remains though. As is my wont once knowing a book is thoroughly readable, I sought out the intriguingly named author's other works, this being published back in '06. 'Bombora' (prize-winning) and 'What Falls Away' were cited on the jacket as her previous, but there seems to be nothing since. Playing 'Where's Tegan' on Google, little else turned up apart from her attendance at various literary events. Hopefully a talented writer is not lost through reader ignorance.
The novel itseld features three most unappealling males. Elizabeth's early lover was domineering and manipulative, effectively ending their physical realtionship with a rape. He continued to hold a somewhat sinister appeal for the long suffering Elizabeth throughout her marriage to another shallow, self-centred, albeit softer, male in hubby Ross. Together with a young child in tow they set off for the UK and Spain, the latter country to visit supposedly the most repellent male of all - her father-in-law, long estranged from Ross. He was in the process of dying. As fsather and son fifully struggle to rebuild their relationship, that between husband and wife becomes extremely fraught. Elizabeth, supposedly an academic, is extraordinarily tolerant of Ross' obnoxious foul-mouthed put-downs and obsession with forcing her to have sex and attend bullfights. All is not quite resolved to my satisfaction. There are deaths, perhaps the most portentious, that of a bull!

[Shane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Safety reads rather like a third-person memoir. And a close friend of mine, who often reads memoirs, loved it. But would a first novel like this have gotten published?

Not long ago, another friend asked me a provocative question: What would I do if I had only a few months to live? One of the first things I’d do is let go of stuff, I said. And ever since he told me he’s dying, it seems easier to let go of books; much easier than letting go of a good friend.

So I’m starting with this book. On hearing why my friend looked forward to reading more each night, I sought to define exactly why I found Safety so boring. Some of my favourite novels are realist. And a bland style works fine if other elements compel. But I soon forgot much of Safety’s themes, characters, setting and plot. It also lacks contrivance, cynicism and pretence. But so what, if it stands out as the least interesting novel on my shelves?

While my friend could relate to the protagonist’s experience (failed marriage, a child with a disappointing de facto, difficult in-laws), I couldn’t; ‘women’s fiction’ rarely grips me (too atypical?). Yet I can’t relate to the characters in most of my favourite novels either (e.g. Wuthering Heights).

If I were in hospital with nothing else to read, I might be grateful for Safety – or any book to help me kill time – but not if I were in hospital because I had only a few months to live. The more time Safety killed, the less rewarded I felt for my efforts. Not saying the author took no risks here; just that risk is relative.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel about relationships with a strangely insular and somewhat dated feel to it. While I appreciated the lack of indulgence of the narrative style, at times I wondered why I was following the life of the somewhat ordinary Elizabeth and wondered if the one big event in her life - her rape by a boyfriend - was enough to hang the entire book on. This is not to dismiss this traumatic occurance, but to question whether, in this context, it warrants the rather heavy weight given to it. Perhaps it is believable that Elizabeth seems to define herself in regards to the rape, but it is unfortunate that it did not make me more sympathetic to her. In fact, I grew more and more impatient with her tolerance of the demanding Ross. The element of the novel which struck the greater chord was the mother and daughter relationship where Elizabeth falls so much in love with her baby, Anna, that all else seems void. Here Bennett Daylight sums it up beautifully: 'Elizabeth let go of everything but Anna and herself'. Her depiction of the feeding, weeping, sleep deprived new mother gives the novel its strongest scenes.

[Julie Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kept waiting for something to happen within the short sections of this book, before realising that it was about the ordinariness of life and relationships. I found the descriptions of early motherhood particularly affecting, but I’m not sure I’ll remember much about it later on.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exploration of early experiences that become timeless and rush back, imposing on current life when they want to. Like there is no choice.
Both main characters carry burdens from early life and both deal with them differently. He, angry and dismissive, her inward and shamed.

Thought provoking. Good read.

[Penni Russon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a version of me. Elizabeth's thoughts are hauntingly familiar and the English relatives had an uncanny familiarity to them. A vivid read. At times the book seemed to be about to give in to aimlessness but the author does have her story on a long leash and tugs it back by the end. I was compelled by the interior of a marriage and it was refreshing to read such a well rendered baby who was not merely a cipher for maternal guilt or marital disharmony.

[Alan Marr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the ordinariness of this book. It's about life, loss and the desirability of dealing with stuff earlier than most of us do. There are no out of the ordinary events or experiences. It speaks of love and pain in a most inviting way.