In the suburbs, a young mother is looking after her two children. She has been a successful career woman in control of her life, sexually aware and used to attracting any man's undivided attention ... if she wanted to.
But now her control is slipping away. Motherhood is devouring her identity. Her two children depend on her and her husband adores her new role in the home. He is no longer focused on her. Her children are stealing his affection. Her own desires are secondary to everyone else's.
She wants to reclaim her sense of self, her power. Just because she is a mother doesn't mean she will protect those she is supposed to love.
For her, everything is conditional. And everyone is in danger.
Still Waters, Camilla Noli
STILL WATERS is one of those books that will stir endless debate on a number of topics ranging from the oppression of women to the motherhood "myth", sexual inequality to co-parenting and the list goes on. Most of what is depicted within the book will strike a chord with mothers, and what may be most shocking of all is that we more than likely WON'T be shocked. The reactions of the unnamed mother of the book to her situation ARE extreme and executed with that blankness of survival instinct and sheer exhaustion that is present to some extent in all new mothers, or at the very least in those not backed up by nannies and helpful extended families. The woman of the book can no longer nurture, such is her sense of loss of self, that she seeks to remove herself from what is to her an untenable situation, in the worst possible way of all.
There is no "chilling twist" in this novel as you can see it coming a mile off; this whole book has doom hanging over it from the very first page. It is a sad piece of work, yet a highly relevant one. Australian author Camilla Noli does not play the blame game in her novel and has shown admirable restraint in backing down from the moralising and sweeping generalizations that could easily have been included, especially about the differences in social roles of new mother to new father. The incremental shift from the sane, albeit tired inner monologue to the disinterested, and then calculating, has been masterfully played by this debut author.
Included in the back of this book is a short Q & A with the author (herself the mother of two children) and helpful notes for book clubs and reading groups.
Still Waters, Camilla Noli
Normally I'd try to avoid doing this but I feel that I have to declare up front - I did not like this book. Didn't enjoy it for one second - nothing in it was interesting, appealing or even remotely engaging. So having said that, why?
One of the things that appeals to me least of anything in any books I read is blatant manipulation of a reader's emotional reactions - fortunately for me there's nothing in STILL WATERS that engendered any emotional reaction (other than boredom), so the manipulation could be seen for what it was. We start with a mother, lovingly engaging with a new baby boy. We have the difficult older child - a girl. Maybe it's unconscious but it came across as a fairly blatant juxtaposition of the sexes. Then we obviously needed a remote, cold father figure - more emotionally connected to the children than his wife, seemingly completely unaware of his wife's isolation. And finally the wife - mother, a woman with some serious psychological problems and, for good measure, her own distant and cold mother to rub in the feelings of inadequacy.
So we have our cast of the good and the bad, set up in a manner that is obviously laying out what's to come with the rest of the book. And there are absolutely and utterly no surprises. The manipulation continues on - through the unnamed mother's actions (against everything that is seemingly "right" for a mother to do); with nobody else realising what is going on - ever! We then have the final twist which is supposed to make you question everything you have understood about that unnamed mother.
Obviously none of this lack of connection was at all helped by associated publicity blurbs that come with the book where the author says the book is exploring the idea that not all women are naturally maternal or nurturing. It came as somewhat of a surprise that we'd obviously be better off being psychopathic killers.
Still Waters, Camilla Noli (review by Helen Lloyd)
A stay-at-home mother of two small children is feeling trapped in her life. As a successful career woman she was used to being in control, but now she feels that control slipping away. The demands of caring for her children leave her constantly exhausted. She resents the attention her husband gives to the children, particularly the eldest, Cassie, with whom he is especially close. She is determined to get her life - and her husband - back, to make things the way they used to be. And she is willing to sacrifice anyone in the pursuit of her aims.
The main character, who is never named, is one of the most unlikeable characters I’ve ever read. She is cold, distant, self-centred and manipulative. In fact I really didn’t like any of the characters, including her husband. This may in part be due to the fact that we only see them through the eyes of the narrator, who seems to be scornful of almost everyone else. Even her intimate relationship with her husband is based on power and control.
The themes of this book are meant to be controversial, to challenge our beliefs of what mothers and motherhood should be like. But this woman is more than an exhausted new mother at the end of her tether, she is a seriously disturbed psychopath. Anyone who stands in the way of her regaining the life she wants, is dealt with one way or the other.
Noli writes well and kept me turning the pages, almost against my will, but I was very uncomfortable spending so much time inside the head of this cold-blooded woman. This was a deeply disturbing book, and not a pleasant read.
Camilla Noli lives on the Central Coast of NSW with her husband and children. This is her first novel.