Reunion

by Andrea Goldsmith

Old friendships are expected to maintain their shape despite distance, lovers, careers, new friends. But twenty years is a long time. Ava is an internationally acclaimed novelist who carries with her a lifetime of secrets. Helen, a brilliant and dedicated molecular biologist, is faced with unexpected moral dilemmas as she finds herself drawn into bioterrorism research. Conrad is a philosopher with a popular media profile and a desire for a much younger woman. And Jack, whose career has stalled in the light of his long unrequited love for Ava, is a scholar of the history and culture of Islam. It is Ava-s husband, Harry, a man for whom the others can barely conceal their disdain, who has drawn them back to Melbourne where they first met at university. As they deal with the reality of their present lives and their memories of the past, none will be unchanged by the reunion. And not everyone will survive. Andrea Goldsmith has created a story of love, power, friendship and betrayal that is as gripping as it is exquisitely insightful.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Novels, 21st Century

414 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Andrea Goldsmith is an Australian novelist. She started learning the piano as a young child, and music remains an abiding passion. She initially trained as a speech pathologist and worked for several years with children suffering from severe communication impairment until becoming a full-time writer in the late 1980s. During the 1990s she taught creative writing at Deakin University, and she continues to conduct workshops and mentor new novelists.

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book examines the lives of 4 university friends. Their studies are a major part of their subsequent careers and public personas, however, all that academia and theory gave me a 'snowed under' sensation.

[Melinda Charlesworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this too fast, it couldn’t be slowed, so much of it needs to be revisited and considered. What an exquisite work.
Each of the main characters - Connie, Ava, Jack and Helen - are fascinating and real. And their work and their thoughts are cleverly unfurled throughout the novel.
An examination of lives led by intellectual pursuit and loves as fragile as all loves are, eventually.
I was swept up by the depiction of a Melbourne still to be found if you sit quietly enough. Friendship and fellowship. A beautiful book. I need to go back and revisit all the pages I’ve marked for further consideration. Then I need to read more of Andrea Goldsmiths work!!!!

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only gave 2 stars because this book vaguely improved in the last 100 pages. The other 300 pages were full of superflous prose and story line. The author failed to imprint a sense of deep friendship and instead wasted time showing us how intellectual the characters considered themselves.

[S.C. Karakaltsas · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel was first published in 2009 and I'd heard about this Melbourne author who has written several novels and decided to give her writing a go.

In Reunion, there are four main characters, Ava, Helen, Conrad, and Jack. They’re friends from university days and after more than twenty years in various parts of the world, have reunited in Melbourne and over the course of the novel, we learn about each of them and their relationship with each other.

Jack’s career has stalled but his deep unrequited love for Ava has never waned. Ava, a writer has married Harry whom the rest of her friends despise. Conrad is a successful academic who likes younger women and it's not a surprise to learn that he has a couple of failed marriages behind him. Helen is a brilliant scientist and her research into molecular biology is being subverted for evil rather than good putting her in a difficult position.

I enjoyed the setting of my home town of Melbourne and the descriptions and could relate to the character's university days. I found the backstory hijacked the current day too much with an information dump where the showing was minimal and the telling dominant. The characters were not terribly likable and I just couldn’t warm to them enough to care. It was a pedestrian read particularly the first three-quarters of the novel and when one of them becomes ill it stepped up a notch. However, the friendships seemed contrived and I couldn't warm to them.

Unfortunately, this one was not for me.

[Bronwyn Mcloughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a quick read, and not being a Melbournite, I did not have a strong connection to place that might have endeared this one a little more. Some interesting ideas explored in detail and with great elucidation. The characters were a set of flawed individuals bonded together through a shared youthful intellectual hedonism, who have maintained connection throughout their careers, careers that have reunited them in Melbourne. The working through of their mature lives ultimately splits them; they unite temporarily in grief only for their trajectories to take them spectacularly apart. The friendships of youth are less discerning. There is apparently less space for putting up with extremes and foibles in the Middle Ages. The word smithing skills of Goldsmith are in evidence, although sometimes it feels overdone. Certainly something to ponder, but not entirely absorbing.

[Emily Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it a bit slow and repetitive and many of the characters plain unlikeable with little redeeming qualities, I understand not all characters can be 'liked' but descriptions of them were often thin and offered little nuance. The blurb offered a much richer storyline than I feel was on offer. It took me quite a while to get into and a while to finish too. The one thing I enjoyed about it was the expansive language, and variety of contexts each story was placed, it had so many possibilities that didn't quite happen, much like our young Jack!

[Dima · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engaging, easy read but left me wondering what was the point of the story? A lot of the time I felt these characters were the very stereotypes of the "baby boomers" - life was relatively so easy for them, I was distracted by the resentment I felt towards them.

[Katherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

so boring

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final third of the book was engrossing, the first two thirds less so. It was difficult to like any of the characters enough to share their emotions.

[Joan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this to be full of pompous waffle, the characters sooooo intellectual,and self centred. Persevered with it in the hope it would improve. It did, when it ended

[Margaret Windsor · Rating 4 out of 5]

good story. well written. literary in tone, not to be read for a laugh!

[Melanie Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four friends – Ava, Jack, Helen and Connie, their bonds formed in their early, idealistic years at university – are reunited after 20 years. Ava is a bestselling novelist, Helen a world renowned molecular biologist, Conrad – 'Connie' – is a philosopher with a popular following in the mould of Alain de Botton and Jack is an expert – albeit an underachieving one – in comparative religions and, a now in demand, authority on Islam. Their careers and intellectual pursuits have taken them to institutions the globe over but with an opportunity to become part of a new all-Australian think tank, NOGA − headed by Ava's barely tolerated husband, Harry – they have all been brought back together in Melbourne, hoping the proximity will be enough for them pick up where they left off.

The reunion itself is merely Goldsmith's starting point for burrowing into each character's life as they are now, what they were 20 years ago and how they might possibly end up tomorrow. The connective tissue of the story is each character's contemplation of their present circumstances in relation to their shared pasts and uncertain futures. Their plaster-cast middle aged temperaments, insecurities and foibles feed into the dynamics of the relationships between them – particularly Jack's resilient love for the married Ava − and is what drives the narrative tension. Personable and flawed, you come to accept and understand these characters as you do your own best friends without their social veneers, but you also know when they're likely to falter on a misplaced hope or an act of self-delusion.
Each character's point of view and their back stories are entered into seamlessly, but there is not enough differentiation in style to lend each of them a completely unique voice. They are all flawlessly educated, knowledgeable and articulate − their thoughts crafted by a very competent novelist, but not a novelist who is willing to compromise the finesse of her writing technique to effect more than subtle change between characters or risk a messy, repetitive paragraph to a stream-of-consciousness of a character on the edge.

Universities provide a natural backdrop for novels that want to grapple with ideas and higher order thinking within learned domains and Reunion is perfectly at home in this setting. Linked to that, older men in academia justifying sexual liaisons with much younger women under their tutelage is almost a staple of well regarded, thinking-person's fiction. J.M. Coetzee has used it, as too, Zadie Smith. Goldsmith follows a different tact by allowing just such a relationship to be dissected without the immediacy or intensity of the present tense, or even the recent past. Through selective disclosures from Ava's memory, her relationship with a much older man while she was a teenage undergraduate is filtered through a circumspective, mature-age female lens and avoids being occluded by moral absolutism. The relationship gradually takes more primacy as the novel unfolds and its heartbreaking intimacy lingers long after the last paragraph. To cover her bases, as if perhaps the retrospective romance of Ava's relationship might condone the union and its power imbalance, Goldsmith burdens the character of Connie with a short attention span when it comes to relationships with women and a penchant for much younger ones. Unless you are a man with a similar predilection, then sympathy is too strong a word for what Conrad elicits from the reader as a character, but certainly Goldsmith allows him to be understood and pitied, and not too reviled, particularly as he is eventually met with some due comeuppance.

Reunion is equally a love story and a treatise on love − both the kind that is fossilised in long term friendships and the passionate, consuming kind. Through its characters exploratory, analytic ruminations – who are given to examining the lives of each other as much as their own − it artfully avoids being waylaid into easy sentimental traps, but neither is it dismissive of high passion and emotional extremes − just circumspect and very, very thoughtful. The book fairly teems with ideas to be mulled over and the benefit of writing about smart, high achievers with differing fields of interest is that these ideas − on friendship, memory, nostalgia, romantic love, marriage and fidelity, religion, philosophy, humanity, science, professional ethics and integrity – can be weighed up, drawn out, examined, turned over and evaluated, without steering the narrative off course. It is the discussion and play with personal, moral and ethical dilemmas that paves the way to the book's climax and as a reader you are primed to go there with both your heart and your mind well and truly switched on.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Themes of betrayal, obsession, delusion and guilt underlie Reunion, which like Goldsmith’s other novels is a novel of ideas, driven by characters with rich personalities. Babyboomers all, four friends meet again for the first time as a group after many years abroad. Their university friendship has been sustained however by regular contact, and in the case of Ava and Jack, a twenty-year correspondence. Ava’s a successful novelist with writer’s block; Jack’s a B-grade backwater academic suddenly in demand because of Islamic terrorism. Helen is a molecular biologist worried about her work being used for bioterrorism, and Conrad (Connie) is a philosopher, a sort of Aussie Alain de Botton, with books and TV shows to his credit but in a moral maelstrom of his own making.
Read the rest at http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201...

[John Hodges · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good. The characters are very well developed and convincing. I liked the setting and feel of Melbourne. Knowing Oxford extremley I was transported. The themes of longterm adult friendship, love, obession and guilt are well trodden but she does them well. The amazing thing , for me, was that the Ava develops semantic dementia, a very arre form of focal dementia that I have been working on for 20 years and have never seen portrayed before in fiction. its a great pity, therefore, that it was not better researched which is surpring given that the author was a speech therapist and should know all about language. HAving Ava commit suicide was a surprise and a bit too melodramatic for my liking.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read - well written, beautiful prose. A convoluted story of love in various forms and how it influences our behaviour. A story of a group of friends who reunite in Melbourne 20 years after meeting at university there and then moved on to Oxford. Andrea does not hold back from addressing the difficult questions around life and death. It is a long book and the attention can wander at the start but it is worth hanging in to the end.

[Genevieve · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to read this as I attended uni in Melbourne. However I was disappointed in everything but the description of Melbourne. Honestly, what kind of person obsesses over his best friend like that- to the point that they can't be best friends due to his feelings. I didn't enjoy this and wouldn't recommend it.

[Anne_MB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great novel about 4 middle aged Aussie expats, friends since uni, returning home to Melbourne and resuming their friendship in person. Complex and absorbing, especially the later part, this is a great Australian novel. I hope to read more of this author's work.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This uses the rather clichéd idea of friends (or family) getting together because of an illness or death – but it works well in this novel. It is well written and convincing. I also enjoyed the Melbourne setting - my original home city.

[Kerry-Lynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

so much to relate to in this book...read it when i was in Melb for a bit last year...and..well...the parallels were...astounding

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable...Identified with the many of the reminiscences. Loved the inner narratives and the pace. Thanks for recommending Kerry!

[Crt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I quite liked this book, maybe more so as it brought back memories of Melbourne Uni and he UK. Nicely written.

[Kylie Pyatt]

boring, boring, boring

[Ann Tonks · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really really wanted to enjoy this book. Characters of my age and experience. University focus. Melbourne focus. But I didn't find any pleasure in the first few chapters and so stopped.

[Lindy Vincent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoying it a lot. The characters are really interesting.