An Australian psychological novel: The Long Prospect, by Elizabeth Harrower

  I finished The Long Prospect this week-end, and I must admit that it took me a bit of time and effort to get into it. The novel tells the story of Emily, a twelve-year old girl who grows up in a small industrial town on the Eastern Coast of Australia in the nineteen fifties, raised by her grandmother Lilian while her separated parents live in Sydney and in the outback.  Emily grows up largely on her own, neglected by her cold, petty, gossipy and narrow-minded grandmother who cares little about her education and shows her no affection. One day, a middle-agend scientist named Max enters Emily’s life as he takes a room into the boarding house of her grandmother, and the two of them develop an unusual friendship, with Max constantly stimulating Emily’s intellectual curiosity and encouraging her to read and study all sorts of things. Unfortunately, in a small town, their relationship starts to raise eyebrows and exposes them to scandal. Eventually Max is forced to leave Emily, and she goes back to her family where a dull life awaits her.

  The main interest of the novel lies in the vividness of the psychological portraits of the characters, and how the dynamics of their relationships move the plot. Of all the characters, I found Lilian, the grandmother, to be the most interesting, with her selfish, confrontational, malicious, wicked and hateful nature which can only be entertained by snooping into other peoples’ lives to ruin their happiness. Her personality is even further emphasized by Harrower’s stylish prose, which goes to a great length of detail to describe characters’ emotions and reactions.

   The Long Prospect is a dark book that will appeal to readers who enjoy an atmosphere of psychological violence behind closed doors.