FICTION
Resistance
Jacinta Halloran
Text, $32.99

Pleasant as it is when an award results in a literary career. It does not automatically follow with a manuscript award, when new authors discover the difficult field they have entered. The 2007 Victorian Premier’s Manuscript award (for which I was a judge) was won by Nick Gadd. The shortlistings were by Amra Pajalic and Jacinta Halloran. All continue to publish their books. Resistance is Halloran’s fourth novel.

Her brand chronicles a modern woman, professional, intelligent, negotiating the tensions of troubled times. The settings are Australian, with interesting tourist excursions, such as Romania with Pilgrimage. Narrative conflicts pit family against work, with a side order of religion. The key theme is compassion.

Halloran tends to the contemporary, with The Science of Appearances a historical drawing upon genetics. That book was her third, and something of a diversion. Resistance returns to more usual mode. If it has a theme, it is the burden of caring. Her debut, Dissection, was about a female GP; Resistance concerns a family counsellor.

The heroine Nina is by profession and nature a good listener. She is self-contained, too modest to believe her life has interest to others. As a result, she is overburdened with confidences, from work colleagues to the counsellor assigned to her. That she is bereaved, with old and new traumas, she will not advertise.

Professionally, Nina has been assigned a rum case. The Agostino family suddenly dropped everything on their organic farm for a road trip into the Australian desert. When their car broke down, they stole another to continue the journey. Though pleading guilty to the offence, they refused to explain their behaviour. Consequently, they were referred for counselling.

Nina must decide if the two Agostino children are at risk. The parents are hostile witnesses, under duress. Their offspring seem content, but they have been moulded into little clones of their parents’ Green Left beliefs. Beyond the scope of this novel is the inevitable teen rebellion, or the younger generation becoming Liberal voters.

At the heart of Resistance are the stories people tell about family, as observers or participants. Motifs recur: difficult children, selfish adults, shame and secrecy. Parenting is hell on everyone, yet people persist. Through these narratives Halloran addresses the matter of old and future Australia, the inability to come to terms with a problematic past.