Reading room
The Geography of Friendship
by Sally Piper, Penguin Random House (available early July). Review by Juliet Rieden
There’s a hint of Big Little Lies about this deft and powerful study of female friendships under pressure, but don’t think Sally Piper is jumping on the Liane Moriarty bandwagon. No, this lyrical Queensland-based author has a style and tone all of her own which sucks you in and holds you in its seductive embrace. This is a page-turner, a thriller which we suspect early on can’t end well. But it’s also a book dripping in the raw beauty of the Australian landscape. You can touch and feel every rock and tree and smell the salty ocean and the damp soil as our three protagonists, Lisa, Nicole and Samantha, embark on their five-day bushwalk. It is 20 years since the friends first walked this trail. Then something unspeakable happened that caused their bond to crumble. Can this pilgrimage heal the pain and bring them together? And what was it that the trio buried so deep? Sally says she was inspired to write the book to investigate the limitations she feels women still face. “I think a lot about how, as women, we are made to feel that there are places we shouldn’t go, especially alone; the wilderness being one of them. So we self-limit our free movement, build boundaries around where we think we can and can’t go, what we can and can’t do, and live smaller lives as a consequence. I’m a keen, mostly solo, bushwalker, but people, especially women, question my sense in doing this loved activity on my own.” What is also under scrutiny here is the fragility and, conversely, the strength of friendship. “I sometimes think female friendships are more insecure than male friendships, and that female friends need to be reminded of their importance to one another more often than male friends probably do,” explains Sally. “When women dispense with this sense that they’re ‘not enough’, when they can trust that they are accepted for who or what they are by their female friends, then those friendships become fiercely loyal and are ultimately life sustaining.” Will friendship pull our three through or has their tie been broken irrevocably? You won’t find out until the final page.