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Passing Remarks
Two things happened to Rosemary that early summer; she won $30,000 playing Keno at the Hakoah Club and she fell in love with a woman much younger than herself. Thus, laden with luck, she entered her fifty-first year. . . .
When middle-aged, academic Rosemary meets twenty-seven-year-old Billie--a woman with a tough bike and an even tougher attitude--she goes weak at the knees. Yet when Billie speeds off on a soul-searching bender through the Australian outback, Rosemary is left to ponder love and longevity, and weather a few adventures of her own.
Cooped up for the summer with the eccentric Daphne--who is busy transforming her body into a tattooed biography of her mad mother's life--Rosemary unwittingly winds up with a leading role in a lesbian porn flick, loses her car to a shears-wielding murderer, and still finds time to compost her garden and miss Billie to no end. Yet as each woman's path twists through a hilarious comedy of manners and mishaps, one fact relationships lie in the sometimes capable--sometimes careless--hands of coincidence.
When middle-aged, academic Rosemary meets twenty-seven-year-old Billie--a woman with a tough bike and an even tougher attitude--she goes weak at the knees. Yet when Billie speeds off on a soul-searching bender through the Australian outback, Rosemary is left to ponder love and longevity, and weather a few adventures of her own.
Cooped up for the summer with the eccentric Daphne--who is busy transforming her body into a tattooed biography of her mad mother's life--Rosemary unwittingly winds up with a leading role in a lesbian porn flick, loses her car to a shears-wielding murderer, and still finds time to compost her garden and miss Billie to no end. Yet as each woman's path twists through a hilarious comedy of manners and mishaps, one fact relationships lie in the sometimes capable--sometimes careless--hands of coincidence.
215 pages, Paperback
First published May 12, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 14, 2013
Passing Remarks is the 4th novel by Scots-born author Helen Hodgman. An Associate Professor of Early Childhood Studies, Rosemary is a lesbian lottery winner in her fifties who is beginning to feel insecure with her latest lover, confident, young Harley-riding Billie. Billie rides off up north to see her hippy mother Heather and then her wheelchair-bound friend, Lorraine who runs a resort for the gay and the dying. Rosemary encounters a school friend with a dying mother and eventually, with her cat Kristeva, heads to the Blue Mountains to witness friends committing to each other, a colleague transforming her body into art, has her car stolen by a secateur-wielding murderer and becomes the unwitting star of a movie. Hodgman uses an economy of words to convey the feel of 90’s Sydney: her descriptions are vivid and powerful. She touches on a myriad of subjects: femocrats, shoulder pads, gender inequality, elderly parents, roses, penises, boys, underwear and female genital mutilation. There is some marvellous prose: “It worries her to see her friend getting so set in his ways and closed to everything new. Is it to do with aging, this intellectual hardening of the arteries, and will it happen to her….” And “Why should Rosemary spend what remains of her life…watching these people trampling through the well-worn thickets of déjà vu to reach a forest of foregone conclusions?” This novel is peopled with odd, eccentric characters who are, nonetheless, easily recognisable from everyday life. Rosemary’s inner monologue is dry and witty; plot is filled with believable coincidences; there is plenty of humour, a fair bit of angst and irony in liberal doses. Enjoyable.
November 12, 2007
The story had some interesting characters and ideas, but the author tried to do too much. Some subplots didn't have complete, or convincing, resolutions. Some didn't have any at all. A bit confusing as to what was happening at times.
November 23, 2023
At 196 pages, Passing Remarks by Helen Hodgman (1945-2022) only just scrapes into my definition of a novella but I read it anyway for Novellas in November, hosted by Cathy of 746 Books and Rebecca of Bookish Beck. Passing Remarks (1998) was Helen Hodgman's penultimate novel (1945-2022), and it is quite different to her other books that I've read.
Blues Skies (1976) is, despite its title, a sardonic portrait of marriage and motherhood in Tasmanian suburbia; Jack and Jill (1978) is a macabre twist on Tasmanian Gothic; and Hodgman's last novel The Bad Policeman (2001) is a tragi-comedy about an anti-hero with an heroic streak. (See my reviews here and here and here.) Though impossible to read now without the awareness that its preoccupation with ageing foreshadowed the author's own long, slow descent into dependence on others due to Parkinson's Disease — Passing Remarks is, as I showed in this Sensational Snippet, often outrageously funny.
Passing Remarks is also a novel of lesbian love. There is not much about Hodgman's private life in the public domain, but she married young and had a daughter within a marriage that appears to have lasted quite some time. (His Wikipedia page makes no mention of his personal life, except that he re-married in 1984). But in an interview at the SMH on the reissue of Jack and Jill in the Text Classics series, Hodgman revealed that she had fallen in love with a woman in what was described as a catastrophic affair that consumed her emotionally. Whether there were autobiographical elements in Passing Remarks or not, Hodgman writes convincingly about the lesbian milieu, and the problems that confront a May-September relationship.
The story is narrated mostly from the intimate perspective of Rosemary, whose breakup with Billie has precipitated a mid-life crisis; but told also from the point of view of Billie, the much younger lover who has left her.
For Rosemary, the break-up is a catastrophic moment of truth. It's not triggered by any dramatic moment, only Billie's desire to visit her mother who's living a hippie lifestyle in Bundagen on the NSW north coast, and then to travel north, to work perhaps in Byron Bay, or even go as far as Cairns. Billie sets off on her Harley insouciant about this departure, but it sends a chill down Rosemary's spine. She worries that it is her minor signs of bodily ageing that remind Billie of her mother.
But Hodgman doesn't dwell on it, Rosemary's inner dialogue undercuts itself.
As she reflects on major problem in the relationship — the age difference — Rosemary revisits incidents from their time together that hint at other issues.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/11/24/p...
Blues Skies (1976) is, despite its title, a sardonic portrait of marriage and motherhood in Tasmanian suburbia; Jack and Jill (1978) is a macabre twist on Tasmanian Gothic; and Hodgman's last novel The Bad Policeman (2001) is a tragi-comedy about an anti-hero with an heroic streak. (See my reviews here and here and here.) Though impossible to read now without the awareness that its preoccupation with ageing foreshadowed the author's own long, slow descent into dependence on others due to Parkinson's Disease — Passing Remarks is, as I showed in this Sensational Snippet, often outrageously funny.
Passing Remarks is also a novel of lesbian love. There is not much about Hodgman's private life in the public domain, but she married young and had a daughter within a marriage that appears to have lasted quite some time. (His Wikipedia page makes no mention of his personal life, except that he re-married in 1984). But in an interview at the SMH on the reissue of Jack and Jill in the Text Classics series, Hodgman revealed that she had fallen in love with a woman in what was described as a catastrophic affair that consumed her emotionally. Whether there were autobiographical elements in Passing Remarks or not, Hodgman writes convincingly about the lesbian milieu, and the problems that confront a May-September relationship.
The story is narrated mostly from the intimate perspective of Rosemary, whose breakup with Billie has precipitated a mid-life crisis; but told also from the point of view of Billie, the much younger lover who has left her.
For Rosemary, the break-up is a catastrophic moment of truth. It's not triggered by any dramatic moment, only Billie's desire to visit her mother who's living a hippie lifestyle in Bundagen on the NSW north coast, and then to travel north, to work perhaps in Byron Bay, or even go as far as Cairns. Billie sets off on her Harley insouciant about this departure, but it sends a chill down Rosemary's spine. She worries that it is her minor signs of bodily ageing that remind Billie of her mother.
What's the matter?' But Rosemary cannot tell Billie she is scared of being alone, not necessarily in the immediate future but in the longer term. Old and alone. Ill and lonely. This morning it seems possible people she's always dismissed as pathetic have a point. Stay married and live longer. Stay together and live.
But Hodgman doesn't dwell on it, Rosemary's inner dialogue undercuts itself.
They'd be printing it on bumperstickers next. Rosemary tells herself to stop it. You get a cat and you cope, Rosemary tells herself firmly. Or a dog, if you must. A dog is always pleased to see you when you get home from work. What she needs is a drink. She knows alcohol is a depressant, but, quite honestly, in the short term at least, it does the trick. Luckily there's still a bottle of champagne in the fridge. She opens it, hands a glass to Billie.
'To your travels,' she says and drinks.
'Cheers, lover,' says Billie. And Rosemary reminds herself that she'd rather be dead than totter handcuffed and in tandem towards the grave. (p.16)
As she reflects on major problem in the relationship — the age difference — Rosemary revisits incidents from their time together that hint at other issues.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/11/24/p...
December 18, 2019
It's been a while since I've read a book this bad. The writing style was all over the place, there was no real story line or plot, I didn't find any of the characters relatable, I'm not even sure why or how I finished it. I just wanted to see if at any point it would redeem itself, which it did not. I wouldn't recommend it.
October 16, 2008
I will let this book speak for itself. It is not for everybody. But it is great.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews