Today I have a novel of Sydney that has become a favourite already of my reading this year.
Kavita Bedford is an Australian-Indian author and freelance journalist. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, The Guardian and Griffith Review. But it is Kavita’s debut novel Friends & Dark Shapes that I want to talk about today.
In Friends & Dark Shapes four friends move into a share-house in Redfern. Over the course of four seasons the group must navigate communal living as both a necessity of their late twenties existence and a reality of the increasing inaccessibility of the gentrifying city.
From toilet rolls and the dishwashing roster, share-house living is opened up and the reader is invited to navigate space in a city that is always shifting and seemingly forever out of reach.
The narrative of Friends & Dark Shapes is comprised of vignettes taking us around Sydney and into small moments of life. The narrator welcomes the reader into her world and juxtaposes people and places with their parallels in her past.
Negotiating between the contemporary and a kind of nostalgia is a necessary battle as it is in these past moments that the narrator vividly recollects her father. Their bond and the ways they traversed the city through exploration and ritual make the seeming patchwork of streets and suburbs a comfortable terrain.
As we move around Sydney, in space and in time, we are confronted with the ways people live their lives, often siloed from neighbours in nearby suburbs. Within the share-house there is a sense of permanent impermanence. The group knows this is not their forever home but cannot perhaps conceive of what such a place might look like.
The uncertainty of place and belonging is explored the various communities we visit. While working on a story the narrator takes us to Villawood and the home of migrants who have settled in a house overlooking the temporary home they occupied when they first arrived. The detention centre is now a space shut off and barricaded to serve as a deterrent.
In some ways it seems that the novel is posing a question of who can belong. Whether through barbed wire fences or sky rocketing house prices home and belonging are strictly controlled and for many Sydney is a liminal space.
Ultimately though Friends & Dark Shapes is a gorgeous meditation on movement. The novel had me reflecting on the ways I move through life, through relationships and yes through this city.
As I record this just outside of Sydney in the Blue Mountains, I find Friends & Dark Shapes takes me back to the streets and the people that I have loved.
When I spoke with Kavita for Final Draft she compared our conversation to a virtual walk through Sydney. I think that’s a good metaphor for the experience of reading Friends & Dark Shapes
This is a soulful novel that I would highly recommend
