Melanie ChengRezensionen

Room for a Stranger is a contemporary fiction set in suburban Melbourne about the relationship between an elderly woman and her international student boarder. The author is a Chinese-Australian GP from Melbourne, who grew up in Hong Kong before returning to Australia to study medicine.

Meg is a lonely 75 year old who has lived alone in outer Melbourne since her sister died, with only Atticus the African grey parrot for company. Shaken up by a break-in Meg decides to rent her spare room to a student. Andy is from Hong Kong and studying Biomedical Science. He is forced to move out of Melbourne city centre as his parents can no longer afford the rent. There is a definite cultural and generational gap between Andy and Meg. Andy finds Meg’s hygiene practices repulsive, and Meg finds Andy uncommunicative and disengaged. Both have their issues: Meg her loneliness, and Andy his anxiety about his upcoming exams and his mother back in Hong Kong suffering ongoing mental health problems.

This was a quiet and pleasant read but nothing earth-shattering. Meg was nice enough, and should probably have created some quirky vibes typical of the elderly rebirth lit around now, but never really had enough zing to do so. Andy also never really connected as a character. While I must admit that in part I envy Cheng for her ability to produce a novel as a medical professional, she also seems unable to let this role go and is constantly adding small but irrelevant medical details like the reminder to Andy to rinse his mouth out after using his steroid puffer. I’m not quite sure why contemporary fiction feels the need to convey a myriad of tiny details and minutiae about everything in the characters’ environment, as if somehow that equates to good descriptive writing. Overall a relatively enjoyable but fairly dull book that I gave 3 stars to.

(8.5)

There are times when a certain ‘type’ of novel is just right for your next read. This month’s title seems to fill this description for our group. Our first face-to-face meeting in many months was a very happy occasion. COVID-19 has had us meeting remotely since April, so everyone was on a collective high as we discussed Room for a Stranger. A gentle story of ageing, companionship, racial and generational coming together.
There was a general agreement that the characters were a wonderful mix of authentic and relatable. Everyone felt that the communication gap was a large part of why Meg and Andy found their relationship stalling. As readers we were privy to both sides, this helped in large part to instil our empathy for both. Atticus the parrot was a nice touch, as was Andy’s uni friend, whose misguided help with exams gave an even clearer ring of truth to the story.
A few of us were disappointed with the conclusion to this book. A more clear-cut picture of what happened to both Meg and Andy was wanted. Either way, everyone felt that the coming together of these two very different people did, in some small way, implant something in both that would have a lasting effect.
A great little Aussie novel.

I've been thinking all day about how to write a review of this book. Melanie Cheng is an award-winning author, and her debut novel Room for a Stranger, has been very widely praised, but although I found it mildly enjoyable, I'm not at all sure that it merits being termed a modern masterpiece.

Somewhere in the plethora of reviews about the book, I saw (but now can't find) something about it being an example of the 'new sincerity movement', a repudiation, it seems, of postmodernism and irony. It is certainly written in serviceable prose, with a straightforward linear plot with just occasional flashbacks, narrated by the two main protagonists, who come from cross-cultural environments but share a deep-seated loneliness.

The story is set in ordinary suburban Melbourne, about 10km from the CBD—which puts it squarely among some now very expensive real estate. Probably not Albert Park since there are cartoonish bungalows rather than elegant terraces, perhaps out west somewhere, like Coburg or Maribyrnong or Maidstone where houses sell for $800,000+. As sole inheritor of her parents' once humble estate, the central character 75-year-old Meg Hughes is almost certainly asset-rich and could downsize to a more manageable apartment, unit or townhouse and still have money left over to live a little. But she doesn't do this because she is inhibited by fear of change, she has let inertia take over her life and she is paralysed by lifelong shyness. What finally prompts her to take a young international student into her home is a visit from a prowler. Bizarrely, she thinks that taking in a complete stranger from another culture will make her feel safer. And she thinks she would like the company.

(I know that a reader has to accept the book that's been written, but I can't help thinking how interesting this book might have been if Meg had opened up her home to one of the growing numbers of homeless older women. Or the scruffy but likeable couple I met yesterday when I called in at Launch Housing with a question. Dull respectability meets Nonconformist Attitude! I think I would like somebody to write such a book).

Anyway...

Since the writing is nothing special, this kind of character-driven novel depends entirely on the reader becoming invested in these two characters, and that is the problem that I have. I think readers will judge it differently depending on their age group. Millennials and Generation X who perhaps regard anyone over 60 as elderly and past-their-use-by date may find the dawn of a May-September cross-cultural friendship authentic and heart-warming, but I think the novel paints a distorted and very melancholy picture of an older unmarried woman. Having only very recently been reading Caroline Lodge's Older Women in Literature project at the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative I am more conscious of the way older women are portrayed, and Meg Hughes as a pathetic and lonely old women doesn't fit my experience of women in her age group at all. It won't surprise anyone my age that I have more friends living alone than in coupledom: in our age cohort there are plenty of women who've never married, or are divorced or widowed. If these women have children, these adult children are often living and working far away, some of them permanently overseas. But my friends, nearly all of them older than me and some in their 80s and 90s, would be aghast at Cheng's portrait of Meg Hughes, who at only 75 gives up on life. No volunteering or pensioner travel or U3A classes or competitive croquet for her! She loves reading, but she doesn't even hang out at her library or have any virtual bookworm friends.

(BTW please don't make the mistake of thinking that all my friends are well-educated middle-class career women with comfortable superannuation funds. That's not the case at all.)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/10/19/room-for-a-stranger-by-melanie-cheng/

I have been dithering about, tweaking computer settings and looking at fuel prices, instead of writing this review. Why? Because Room for a Stranger is so good that my review won’t do it justice. The cheat’s way out would be to say, “Stop reading this review and start reading this book – now”. But a potential reader might not listen to that, so let me try to convince you.

The main characters in Room for a Stranger are an elderly lady, a university student from Hong Kong, their friends and an African grey parrot. The parrot is not only a lovely distraction with his spookily relevant English but an important part of the plot. These disparate characters create a story that is about loneliness and isolation, but also about unlikely friendships. Meg has been living at home alone since the death of her sister, but an encounter with an intruder leaves her feeling vulnerable and scared. She signs up for a home share program to let out a room to a university student. That student is Andy, who is from Hong Kong, studying biomedicine in the hope of getting into medicine. Andy’s not doing too well at university and he has worries about his parents and their situation. Meg is worried too about her health, her friends and meeting Andy’s expectations. What starts as an awkward home scenario where two strangers tiptoe around each other gradually develops into the kind of bond where they can discuss their deepest fears that they can’t reveal to those closest to them.

The story is wonderfully suburban and rather Melbournian in its descriptions of possums and trams. It’s not a ‘big’ story – when I say big, I mean that it doesn’t encompass huge travels, land or generations – but works to capture a short period of time in two everyday lives. Some may say that Meg and Andy’s problems are relatively small but they are huge to them. Fear of death, illness, failure and disappointing others. Meg is worried about not keeping up with her glamourous friends (and I thought female competitiveness might get better with age!) and she’s worried about starting a new relationship. Andy doesn’t want to disappoint his parents, so goes to extreme steps to ensure he passes his exams. Both Meg and Andy meet significant challenges and make mistakes, which is what makes this story and the characters so real. They are flawed, say stupid things and mess up. It makes the story wonderfully rich.

Small details further enrich this book. Meg’s ‘famous’ spag bol (spaghetti bolognese) is a dish she’s proud of and makes often for Andy. Andy can’t stand it and will often retreat to late night snacks of instant noodles. (I tend to agree with Andy – Meg’s additions to the dish are pretty weird for this spag bol connoisseur). Later Andy introduces Meg to the wonders of instant noodles during a late night meeting. I found this so sweet, as was the ending when Andy and Meg part and all the things are said.

Overall, Room for a Stranger is a quiet, beautiful book of what happens when we open ourselves to strangers. This is a quality Australian read that won’t disappoint.

Thank you to Text Publishing for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

Short stories

Reading short story collections is something I’ve been meaning to get into for some time. But it’s always stayed on the ‘someday I’ll get around to it’ part of my list until now. I picked up Melanie Cheng’s debut of short stories shortly after it was announced as part of the shortlist for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and…wow. I was completely blown away by Melanie’s power to capture setting, characters and tell a story in just several pages. Some of the stories, particularly ‘Fracture’ and ‘Macca’, left me wondering about the characters and outcomes for several days. I’ve now learned the power of a short story (or three) as a way to sneak in some reading on busy days and nights just to escape to another world.

Many of the stories have a medical slant to them, whether it be as a medical student (‘Australia Day’), overworked GP (‘Macca’), nurse (‘Hotel Cambodia’) or doctor under investigation (‘Fracture’). You definitely don’t need to be involved in healthcare to enjoy them. I found myself nodding with Dr Garrett as she hopes for easy appointment at the end of a day and sharing her momentary despair as she realises that Macca won’t be. The effect of a complaint on a doctor and a patient and their family is very well portrayed in ‘Fracture’. The ending is staggering and even more powerful for the short format. Melanie Chang writes prose that gets straight to the heart of the matter and tells it how it is. The good, bad and ugly of life in Australia from the eyes of different characters that not all of us will be familiar with. Think of Mrs Chan in ‘A Good and Pleasant Thing’ – living in Australia for many years without speaking English who gets to hear that her daughters want to put her in a nursing home and decides to bail. Stanley, a medical student from Hong Kong, spending Australia Day on a farm with Jess, her family and her ex – foreign, loud and a little bit odd. Leila, part-Syrian but mistaken for a British person when she’s asked for her opinion on the end of apartheid in South Africa. The stories capture all of Australia that make it the country it is – multicultural, mainly accepting but with occasional brash, unpopular opinions that lack tolerance. Racism and loneliness are explored side by side with love and family.

The more I sit here and reflect on each story in this collection, the stronger and more powerful they become. Each story holds its own, exploring the good and bad of Australian society and life in general. There are small things to be celebrated (like the nursing home residents having doughnuts bought for them one morning) and larger issues explored. The different cultures, the intriguing characters all left me wanting more. I’d love to see some longer fiction from Melanie Cheng in the future but I’ll happily accept anything and everything she writes. A fantastic talent who has nailed the art of the short story.

Thanks to Text Publishing and Goodreads for the giveaway copy. My review is honest.

A thought-provoking novella from fave author Stephen Orr in Griffith Review #54 https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/03/26/datsunland-in-griffith-review-54-earthly-del...