Reunion

Andrea Goldsmith

Fourth Estate

Otago Daily Times, May 1st 2009

Andrea Goldsmith uses the four main characters of her latest novel, Reunion, to explore a range of moral and philosophical themes: the relationship between love, obsession and religious fundamentalism; the moral dilemma of dual-use scientific research; and how language and memory define identity.

Ava, Helen, Conrad and Jack have been friends since university, despite their diverse specialties and the fact that their various careers have seen them scattered throughout the world.

Ava, a celebrated novelist, is battling a secret loss of her words, while Jack is a specialist on Islamic history and culture whose love for Ava has preoccupied him to the point where he is dispatched to the academic equivalent of Alaska; a regional university in the South Island of New Zealand.

Helen is a molecular biologist specialising in food-borne pathogens, an area with as much military potential as health benefit, and Conrad is a philosopher whose interest in new-media culture is matched only by his appreciation of the young females who use it.

When Ava’s husband, Harry, arranges for their return to Melbourne as part of an expat research network, they attempt and fail to recreate the emotional and creative intensities of their early friendship, remaining isolated within their individual existential struggles.

The unravelled connections and compromised ideals thus revealed border on tragedy, but paradoxically allow one of them to rediscover a latent potential for happiness.

I’m not sure if this is unrealistic romanticism, or a realistic reflection of the fact that our fortunes are sometimes built on the ruins of others.