Silent Goodbyes is about the premature end of a relationship; about sexual desire and tension; about making choices. It raises questions of fidelity and of coming to terms with one’s shortcomings. It is about saying hello to life and falling in love.
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Silent Goodbyes is now available exclusively from C.C.'s shopping cart [www.ccsaint-clair.com] as a series of 8 ebooklets retailing at $1.45 each.
Excerpt
Excerpt beginning p. 184
Solange dropped in last night. In fact, she had already dropped in by the time I got home. A thud in my chest. Her big black Holden is parked off the street, on the lawn in front of the house, parallel to the driveway. As per her habit, so as not to block my access to the garage, when she comes home before me and intends spending the night. I idled the Jeep in front of the house long enough to consider the possible implications of that car on my front lawn.
Was I hoping she had come to spend the night? Of course not. I mean, under the circumstances, what for? Did I even want to see her? Here? Now? What if she had just dropped around for her things? The Holden wouldn’t be on the lawn then, would it? It’d be parked in the street. What if she had parked it there only for old time’s sake? Out of habit? To not have to carry her boxes an unnecessary distance?
Too many questions were forming a dense hedge I couldn’t see past. I put the Jeep into gear and drove off. I needed time to think. She might be gone by the time I came back. How did I feel about that, then? Nothing. Couldn’t think. I needed a coffee.
The little coffee shop down the road had turned out to be as good a place as any in which to settle my pulse. By the time I finally turned the key inside the backdoor lock, I was none the wiser. Except that a little voice, probably that of wisdom, had been whispering to me that, now that Solange had initiated the break in such a cut and slash way, the prudent thing for the both of us would be to roll forward and not try to turn back.
Back at the neighbourhood coffee shop, I had had time to revisit moments of our week at sea. Me, waiting for her to appear out of the waves, fearing for her safety. The moment the sun had set on Whitehaven Beach. And that other moment on the road when a terrible accident had barely been avoided. Her unbridled excitement about the other driver’s skill had confirmed that, truly, she and I were mismatched at an odd level.
“Emi! Tu es lŕ.”
Standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room, she sounded relieved. She made to come towards me but something stopped her.
“Of course I’m here. I live here.”
Her hair was loose and curled softly against her cheeks. Grey eyes the colour of the slate on which I was standing.
“What you doing here?” I asked frostily.
She swayed on the ball of her feet while her face tried to arrange itself in a smile. My heart lurched. Her lips still had the same effect on me. Her lips and her eyes.
“Mes affaires. I thought I’d better come and get them out of your way.”
Affairs. I thought her choice of words, in the plural form at that, particularly unhelpful under the circumstances but, of course, she simply meant her belongings.
Well, Saint-Clair has certainly trashed the eco-friendly lesbian stereotype. Her protagonists devour any and all forms of meat with relish throughout the course of this book. Once I could tear myself past these repeated atrocities, however, I found ‘Silent Goodbyes’ an involving and challenging read.
Not for the faint of heart, Silent Goodbyes is a book to sit down with when you’ve got a lot of time and even more space on your hands. Sure, you could give it a whirl on the bus or train, but it’s unlikely you’d get as much out of it as the prose has to offer. She has the gift of writing fluid meditations, a style that is reminiscent of a stream of consciousness.
Saint-Clair is the mistress of capturing emotions and trapping them between the lines of her work. Her ability of translating desire, pain, sorrow, longing, joy is so finely tuned the reader can feel with a gasp exactly what the characters are going through - a form of writing both addictive and painful for the intensity of feeling that can be experienced whilst reading.
In many ways, Silent Goodbyes is a read for the older lesbian who will find it much easier to empathise with the emotions and experiences of its middle-aged characters. But that doesn’t make it irrelevant to the young; for at its core is the age-old tale of personal growth as either the direct result, or cause of, love lost.
Her powerful, evocative style draws the reader into the head of Emilie, the book’s narrator. She is the cog at the center of the wheel, around which other events turn and evolve – as the story unfolds she must learn how to evolve with them, let go her grip on what she perceives as stable, becoming a more fluid, living being.
Saint-Clair peppers her text with details that seem, to the casual reader, irrelevant. However they conjure a portrait of the characters so complex and multi-layered, they seem truly to be real people. Through various idiosyncrasies, side remarks and recalled memories, she convinces us of who these people are in a fully rounded form few authors are capable of. Far from being a light read, it is more, on several levels, an intellectual exploration of the human psyche.
This is where Saint-Clair may alienate some readers. Her prose, while beautiful and compelling, is also heavy and demands one’s full attention. It will not suit everyone; there will be those who find it pretentious, cumbersome or overly introverted. It will overwhelm some and bore others.
Patience, time and peace are essentials to draw on all this book has to offer. It is worth the read simply to appreciate how intricately Saint-Clair constructs her characters.
Dyke Life
“OK. Emilie is neither quirky nor zany. Won’t make you laugh. Won’t make you cry. That’s because she’s real. She could be me, on a bad day. Or is it me on a good day? She could be my next door neighbour. If my next door-neighbour was a lesbian.” Kate M, Brisbane
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