A few years ago, a friend asked me if I had any regrets. It was obviously a deep question but the fact that one thing came to mind immediately felt telling. And that one thing was that I’d not had the opportunity to live and work in another country. Pre-children, my husband and I had plans to do so, but 9/11 happened, which put an end to his company allowing secondments. Since that time, his work has bound him to Melbourne. But the regret, if you would call it that, was still there and so I’m hatching a plan for the future – it involves a sabbatical year in Germany, some study at a language school and a forest therapy course.

I was thinking about that plan when I read Phoebe Walker’s novella, Temper. The story follows an unnamed narrator over the course of a year, having moved from London to the Netherlands. The narrator’s partner works for a large multi-national organisation and his time in their new city is quickly furnished with after-work drinks and social gatherings with coworkers. The narrator, a freelance writer, spends her days in their flat and her few interactions are incidental (buying groceries or visiting the swimming pool). She feels on the periphery, never finding her place in her new home.

My spare hours do stack up aimlessly, slabs of white-walled afternoon spent topping up my water glass. 

In an attempt to make friends, she joins a choir. There she meets Colette, a pushy, opinionated New Zealander. Although she doesn’t particularly like Colette, she is aware that she is not in a position to be choosy given she has so few connections. When another choir member warns the narrator to avoid Colette, her anxieties grow.

I wasn’t used to confrontation and struggled at first to find its register.

Walker is a poet (Temper is her debut fiction) and it’s evident in the lilt of her sentences.

Today we had a thunderstorm. I’ve rarely experienced a storm in the morning, before the bins have been taken, and I enjoy it, the early havoc of light and coarse rain.

But what I particularly enjoyed was the exploration of the inner-tensions experienced by the narrator – her efforts to integrate into life in the Netherlands clash with feelings of apathy and boredom.

It was hot today, the last gasp before the cooler weather sets in. I felt at a loss. I’d know how to feel in this weather at home, I think – what my plans would be, who they’d be with. Heat and light bring to mind yellow grass, hasty plans, swoops onto the chiller cabinets of express supermarkets… Here, I experienced the heat only as something physical, something practical. I changed my outfit, stuck my bare foot into a patch of sunlight on the sofa. There was nobody to call.

Additionally, she realises that much of what she was escaping in London, is replicated in the Netherlands, noting that their choice of destination was ‘…the tamest and most tepid flight we could have made.’

It’s impressive that a story about boredom and loneliness can be as engrossing as Temper was. There are parts that are unsettling, and Walker uses an element of suspense to highlight moments when the narrator questions her own judgement.

I received my copy of Temper from the publisher, Fairlight Books, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

4/5 I devoured this book in almost one sitting – note it down for Novella November!

Colette’s conversation was an unsettling mix of brassy absolutism and oily self-deprecation. When we queued up to buy stroopwafels – hot-presses, gluey with cinnamon syrup, bigger than our heads – she kept up a constant uneasy chatter about her weight, about how self-conscious she felt exercising, how she felt they kind of shoved it in your face, all the sporty blondies everywhere.

As part of the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge, I’m comparing the Belfast summer and Melburnian winter. The results for the day I finished this book (June 29): Belfast 11°-18° and Melbourne 5°-12°. And, as it happened, I was in Fiji when I read this book and the weather that day was 16°-27°.