THE AUSTRALIAN
The Passengers by Eleanor Limprecht: women’s tales never quite join up Author Eleanor Limprecht was born and raised in the US but now lives in Sydney. Picture: Toby Zerna. CAT WOODS THE AUSTRALIAN 12:00AM March 3, 2018
Eleanor Limprecht’s new novel The Passengers knits together the stories of two women who are from the same family but years, countries and attitudes apart. Sarah, now elderly, was an Australian war bride. She married an American serviceman and moved with him to the US in 1946. She went there on the so-called bride ship USS Mariposa. US-born Hannah, who has not been to Australia, is her troubled granddaughter. The two come together on a cruise from San Diego to Sydney. Sarah’s husband of almost 70 years has died and she wishes to return to her native Sydney one final time. Hannah offers to accompany her, though whether she does so for her own benefit or her grandmother’s is uncertain. The Passengers, by Eleanor Limprecht.
The first half of the novel, which is Limprecht’s third, can feel a bit disjointed. Just as it appears Hannah may not be merely a calorie-counting, list-obsessed, cliched anorexic, we move on to Sarah resuming her story of wartime loss, toxic family relationships and that whirlwind romance with a GI. Sarah’s story, perhaps like her appetite for food and life, is richer, more nuanced, bolder and more engaging. The vulnerability of her strained home life in Australia, with an alcoholic father and withdrawn, wary mother is delicately described, relatable, real. The feel of her cheek against the flank of the cow she milks at 5am, the call of birds as the sun begins to rise, comes alive. Hannah, a Los Angeles-based nursing student with a skateboarding, punk-rock boyfriend, feels half-drawn in comparison. She remains more of a support act to her grandmother’s story. Without great detail or drama she describes her history of being in and out of eating disorder clinics throughout her teens and 20s. It is jarring at times. This is, perhaps, the difficulty of depicting the life of a woman in the grips of an eating disorder. Self-obsessed Hannah is hard to be interested in, though towards the final chapters recollections of her schooldays and her discovery of sex, manipulation and her parents’ divorce put blood into her anemic story. Sarah, on the other hand, is a skilled storyteller with a wise ability to draw her parents, her brothers and her own internal dialogue into a convincing web. Limprecht has a superior ear for dialogue, silent and spoken, between mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, siblings and female friends. She deftly illustrates the awkward, almost painful, family dinners where secrets and the unsaid are thicker than the gravy growing cold by the second. When Sarah’s family must abandon their farm because of financial dire straits, moving from the rural environment she has known as home is a shock. Living in cramped quarters in a ramshackle home in suburban Sydney becomes too much. She strikes out alone, moving into a tiny apartment and working as a public servant during wartime. She recalls, ostensibly to entertain and enlighten Hannah, meeting American soldier Roy and the fumbling, flourishing relationship that results in marriage and plans for a new life in small-town America. Limprecht was born and reared in the US but now lives in Sydney. Her previous novels are What was Lef t and Long Bay. In The Passengers, the intricacies of love, sex, rivalry, blood ties, expectations and the inevitable disappointments of life are moving at times. I would have preferred Hannah and Sarah’s stories to be more seamlessly connected. Perhaps an earlier revelation of Hannah’s problems would have made her a more sympathetic and relatable character. But overall this well-written novel deftly melds history with family drama.
Cat Woods is a Melbourne-based writer. The Passengers By Eleanor Limprecht Allen & Unwin, 250pp, $29.99
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