Evermore' : a novel and accompanying exegesis

Abstract

Novels generally rely on suspension of disbelief and on techniques of suspense to involve the reader in the story. The exegesis of this thesis will explore these issues and related questions in relation to crime fiction, while the creative work explores these issues and questions in the context of a crime novel. The thesis poses the questions, how is suspense created and sustained for the length of a crime novel? Technically, how are crime fiction narratives shifted and shaped so that their trajectory encompasses successful resolution of the story and the discourse? What makes an ending work? What is the relationship between loss and sense-making in the narrative and the place of stories in relation to this? The exegetical work examines three very different crime novels that create and sustain suspense and the ways in which they do so: Agatha Christie's A Murder Is Announced, Neil Cross' Burial and Garry Disher's Chain of Evidence. Detailed reference will be made to these works, with others referenced as appropriate. The thesis contrives to reveal how craft is consciously deployed to bring together elements in the text in such a way that they combine to form a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. The creative response to these questions aims to show a crafted whole, encapsulated in the crime novel which forms the greater part of this thesis. A synopsis for the novel is as follows: It is nearly ten years since Ella Ravell disappeared from a Sydney bushland suburb. It is also ten years since a baby died in its cradle. But at least with that death there was a body. In this novel, the shadowy underside of the cosy world of Sydney suburbia is shown through ordinary interactions between friends, neighbours and strangers. The novel follows the lives of Ella Ravell's family and neighbours ten years on from her disappearance, and the developing action highlights the fracture lines already running through people's lives; lines that it takes little further stress to break. As the cracks appear, the ways in which we invent and construct stories of our lives and give them meaning to resolve our disconnection are laid bare. By the close of the story, the characters must face the randomness that is part of nature and that happy endings are unlikely. The use of animal motifs-dead, dangerous, domestic and fantastic-acts in tandem with the Sydney settings to emphasise gothic elements in the story. These elements connect to overall themes of lost loves, of lost illusions, of extinction of hope and of species and the danger of nature. The Australian Museum and its specimens naturally belong in the realm of the fantastic, and this story places them at centre stage, along with showcasing parts of the city of Sydney that add to this fantastic element. The contrast between the darkness of the themes and the lightness of tone effected by the narrative techniques used to unfold the story of Ella Ravell's disappearance contrives to mirror the ways in which narratives impose an illusion of the orderliness of events. The choice of a multi-narrator structure is intended to activate and emphasise psychological and symbolic nuances in the text, adding to the creation of a suburban gothic atmosphere. Under the surface of a Sydney and people that we think we know lies something darker and more complex, a space where loss and vanishing and dark, sometimes long-held, secrets and sorrows dominate people's lives.

Date of Award	2013
Original language	English