Camille has forgotten her phone; she has nothing to distract her as she travels to her job at a boutique floral business in Melbourne, aside from her own thoughts. She is not just distressed to be without her phone, to which she has, like the rest of us, developed a deep addiction: she has period pains, hates her job, despises her boss and longs “to be devoted to something bigger than her own mind”.
Although written from a third-person perspective, The Knowing by Australian writer Madeleine Ryan reads like a first-person monologue. It’s a fun, fast-paced, unfiltered journey through a twenty-something’s mind as she navigates her way through one day, Valentine’s Day, phoneless. She is forced to observe the world around her and to analyse her own thoughts, her future, and her deep resentment of her boss. Holly is an “elegant older woman wearing denim-on-denim and stylish thick-rimmed black glasses and looking glow-y, and perpetually tanned, and white-toothed and naturally grey-haired in photoshoots for Vogue Living. . .”; yet, Camille observes, “an almost psychotic loneliness seems to run Holly’s life”.
We are invited into Camille’s subconscious, where nothing is censored, nothing filtered. “And thanks to her now being phone-less, she cannot distract herself from these intolerable aspects of her humanness”. Ryan’s cynical, spot-on social insights remind me of the early work of American writer and essayist Lorrie Moore.
Not everyone will like Ryan’s profoundly introspective, self-indulgent, stream-of-consciousness writing style. At the risk of sounding misandristic, I suspect it will appeal more to a young female audience than male; the sort of man who is irritated by loquacious women will no doubt groan at Camille’s neurotic, obsessive, self-critical mind. Yet this single day of self-analysis, for once without the distraction of social media, leads Camille to make some pivotal decisions about her life and work.
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Ryan’s prose zips along at a giddy pace – it’s whip-smart, original, full of wit and glass-sharp observations, and Camille is hilarious, sparkly company. The Knowing is a timely, absorbing, fun and acutely observed study of human nature.
