Everything Changes

Stephanie Johnson

Vintage  

Otago Daily Times, April 10th 2021

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In Everything Changes, a black comedy that will keep you hooked to the last page, Stephanie Johnson takes Tolstoy’s immortal words and adds the rejoinder that unhappy families can complement each other’s sadness in the most unexpected ways.

Colette Seabrook has known for a long time that her family is broken, held together by little more than the accumulation of history and inertia. Her husband Doug has lost his job as a set builder, her daughter Liv has returned from LA heavily pregnant with an apparently fatherless child and, after years of writing TV soaps, her creative well has run dry. Now Col dreams of running a Wi-Fi-free oasis – Skywriters’ Retreat – where guests will check their cell phones at the door and spend their days reading by the fire and contemplating the view. The fact that her rescue dog, Muzza, has murdered the neighbour’s pedigree cat is merely the final catalyst for a change she has been contemplating for some time. Doug and Liv are less than pleased at the prospect of trading the Auckland suburbs for a derelict motel high in the hills above Waipu, but with the family home sold to finance Col’s new venture, they have little choice but to follow her.

Reality bites as soon as they step over the threshold and realise exactly how run down the property is, but Doug (assisted by the exotically-named Choirmaster, a local teenager on home detention) gets stuck in setting the place to rights. Much to everyone’s surprise, the first guests arrive even before they have finished repairs, although they turn out to be every bit as dysfunctional as their hosts: Nicky and her anorexic daughter Julia have unsuccessful sampled therapeutic retreats everywhere from Germany to Nepal and can’t afford anywhere else, while fantasy writer Aidan McConochie, who is travelling incognito and has told nobody of his terminal illness, intends to end things as far from the attention of the press as he can get. The intersection of these seven disparate lives is dramatic and transformative, breaking some and remaking others in surprising and satisfying ways.

Although told entirely in the first person, the narrative switches from character to character, providing alternative perspectives on events and hinting at backstories redolent with violence, grief and loss. Liv’s petulant self-absorption is tempered by her desire to confess the shocking details of her unborn daughter’s conception. Col is consumed by the awareness of her own failings and haunted by grief at the death of her son decades earlier. Muzza observes events with the eyes of a poet, while Choir, who has his own illicit ties to the old motel, just wants his dog back.

The plot is similarly chaotic and fast-paced, veering from tragedy to farce and back again. Liv and Julia elope, pursued by Nicky in a chase reminiscent of Goodbye Pork Pie or Thelma and Louise. Aidan’s death, which sees Skywriters’ trashed by grieving fans, presents a marketing opportunity par excellence. And the untimely arrival of Liv’s baby paves the way for a reconciliation of sorts, although with the Seabrooks it pays to take nothing for granted.