Polyphony

Laura Elizabeth Woollett demonstrates her mastery of the polyphonic novel in West Girls. The book, Woollett’s fourth, comprises eleven nimbly interwoven chapters that explore origin, agency, and delusion in a patriarchal society.

The central character is Luna Lewis, whom we first meet as a pre-teen visiting family in Malta. Luna projects an innate confidence that often belies – or is belied by – her own naïveté. We learn that her mother has whisked them away from Perth to Europe following her ex-husband’s remarriage to Indah, a former ‘Princess of Indonesia finalist’. Luna boasts of her unusual family dynamic to her sheltered and religious younger cousin, Stefania: ‘I’m a bastard’, she says proudly, showing her a picture of Indah ‘in a sunshiny kebaya with a jewelled black bun’ nestled in the pages of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. She goes on to list the worldly things that fascinate her – squat toilets, amputees, and the Dark Arts in Harry Potter – an early suggestion of her governing principle where living an artful life means embracing the unconventional or the macabre. It’s a salient portrait, one that shadows Luna as the reader follows her into her many lives across continents and decades.