After Cynthia

by Amy Witting

Genres: Fiction

241 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2001

About the author

Joan Austral Levick was born Joan Fraser in the Sydney suburb of Annandale in 1918. She studied at the University of Sydney and later taught French and English at state secondary schools. In 1948 she was transferred to Kempsey where she met Les Levick, a fellow teacher. They were married in December 1948. In 1953 Witting was diagnosed with TB after a routine school check, and it was while she was confined to the Bodington Sanitorium that she began to write more seriously. Witting has had numerous poems and short stories published in journals such as Quadrant and The New Yorker.

Witting was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 1990 for I for Isobel and again in 2000 for Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop. In 1993 she was awarded the Patrick White Prize.

Amy Witting died a few weeks after her last novel was published in September 2001.

Reviews

[Em · Rating 1 out of 5]

I should’ve listened to the reviews before reading this. They were right, this was bad

[Pauline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amy Witting’s last book, After Cynthia, is witty and quietly moving.

Writing at the end of her life, Witting did not become tendentious, pondering, or disapproving. She remained to the last amused and intrigued by human motivations and optimistic about the possibility of goodwill.

Witting is perhaps a little like Iris Murdoch, or Alexander McCall Smith, in using novels to explore problems of morality and ethics. To do this effectively, her characters need to be very clever, and to say sometimes outrageous things, and what better setting for that than the staffroom at a girl’s high-school. The book seems to be a study of what some call ‘personal boundaries’: where does my obligation to you end and my obligation to myself begin?

Her main character Josephine is a self-reliant 32 year old woman who has placed her romantic life on hold after her earliest lessons in the unreliability of men. Her design for life gives her respectability but excludes the possibility of eating in restaurants or sharing her bed. The central problem of the book is whether Josephine has exceeded the proper limits on compassion towards a possibly suicidal student. While Josephine quietly goes about doing what she thinks is right, others are not so sure and her own position is put in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the affections of clever new German scholar Martin threaten her carefully maintained solitude.

It’s difficult to place the novel in time. A Vitara makes an appearance, yet somehow the sixties are suggested, perhaps by Miss Haseltine’s disapproval of Josephine’s dyed hair.

Of all the characters here I like to think Witting is probably most present in the absent Miss Heather McCreedy in Italy, who leaves us with a lovely postcard of gargoyles and a word of advice to the graduating class:
“Read directions carefully beginning right at top of page. Good luck all.”
 

 

[Carlos Castellanos · Rating 3 out of 5]

This an average book. The story is about a group of teachers in their normal lives working together in a school and how they interact in different scenarios and situations. The trauma about Cynthia’s suicide for one of the teachers and how they deal with it and finds redemption with another student.

Not very engaging reading, with some disorder in the way they talk about the different characters, sometimes you get lost about who they are talking about. A couple of good stories of those characters. You can think that the same situation could happen in any work environment where people share their thoughts and feelings.

In my opinion, it could be a better developed book. More drama and involvement should have been included in the different stories narrated.

[Brenda Rosser]

Lovely of course

[Tracy]

Just didn't interest me. Flicked through the rest of the book and still didn't see any parts that were very riveting. Unfair I know but just appeared boring

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

3*