Aljce In Therapy Land

Alice Tawhai

Lawrence and Gibson

Otago Daily Times, January 22nd 2022

Aljce is an optimist who believes that we, as observers, can create our own reality and her new job at the Therapy Hub begins on a high note. The sky has a salmon pink tint, she likes everything about her boss, Jillq, from the way she speaks and smells to her name; “the clear glassiness of the I and L’s in the middle…smeared between the jammy apricot of the J and the deep plum of the Q”. But it soon becomes clear that everything is not as it seems and she finds herself trapped in a nightmare of Kaska-esque (or Carrollian) proportions. Her workmates oscillate between friendliness and outright hostility at random, and Jillq turns out to be a sociopathic narcissist who exploits Aljce’s desire to be liked and accepted against her. She is censured for the way she dresses and summoned to meetings where people take turns telling her how unlikeable she is. Her suitability to be a councillor is questioned, and she is forbidden to undertake any form of professional development or see any clients, preventing her from achieving the contact hours she needs to complete her counselling degree. Not that anybody at the Therapy Hub seems to have a caseload; they spend their days writing brochures, making PowerPoint presentations, cleaning the building and accompanying Jillq on fruitless hunts for the source of the rabbits and golf balls that infest the property.

For a time, Aljce maintains her self-belief through careful separation of her work and home life, sustained by the novel she is writing and an online relationship with a fellow author, Lewis, with whom she can share her most intimate self. But when Lewis abruptly rejects her too, no place feels safe and she must draw on every weapon in her arsenal to escape her situation.

The position Aljce finds herself in will be familiar to anybody who has experienced bullying. The list of rules that apply only to her (and which she is expected to know without being told), the unpredictability of her co-workers, and the constant messaging – both overt and covert – that it is all her fault undermine everything she believes and values about herself. What if everybody else is right and what she believes to be strength and confidence is actually self-absorption and hardness? Perhaps she really is everything they say she is: ugly, unlovable, and unwanted? Although Aljce remains determined not to give in to the negativity, and her distress is leavened by moments of surreal absurdity at work, dope-fuelled philosophical conversations with her friends, and encounters with her delightfully bonkers Mad Neighbour, it struck uncomfortably close to home. There is a great deal to unpack in this novel, from its multi-layered reinterpretation of Alice in Wonderland to its recursive exploration of the relationship between fiction and reality, and the therapeutic potential of marijuana. As Aljce tells Lewis in one of their late-night conversations, “I want … people to wonder whether my characters are real, or whether they are just figments of the main character’s imagination”. In this, Tawhai has succeeded admirably. I’m not sure I enjoyed this novel – my emotional response was too complex – but I certainly admired it, and I will rejoin Aljce in Therapy Land at some point in the near future, probably more than once.