I’ll admit that I bought New Skin by Miranda Nation for one reason – it’s set at Melbourne University in the nineties. Which is when I was there. So yes, references to Carlton, faculty balls and the Baillieu Library were enjoyable.
Alex and Leah meet at medical school and form an immediate connection. Over their following years at university, and then in the decades after, they pursue careers and other relationships, and are caught in the push-pull of passion and betrayal. Neither will quite give up on the relationship, even as they question whether they are good for each other.
Alas, some things haven’t changed for me since the nineties – by this I mean, back then I had very little patience for ‘on-again-off-again’ relationships and I still don’t. I recognised those kinds of relationships as toxic back then, and my opinion has not changed. So although the subtitle of New Skin might be ‘a love story’, it’s not. It is a story of people with poor personal boundaries, trauma histories (hence the extensive substance abuse and disordered eating), and some fairly manipulative/ emotionally abusive behaviour.
Nation’s writing is perfectly adequate – nothing to fault – and her details relating to time and place were well chosen but, by the end, I simply didn’t care about Alex and Leah one iota.
2.5/5
A big group of them go up Lygon Street to Jimmy Watson’s and sit out the back in the courtyard. Campari umbrellas, gently waving bamboo, red geraniums, warm pavers. Alex is not there. Leah shares cheap carafes of dry and dry with Helen and Naomi and babbles with exuberant relief.
What a pity it didn’t quite work as it sounds an interesting premise, and yes, the Melb Uni setting would appeal to me too. I agree with you: toxic relationships can get in the bin. I had a friend, who was highly strung, who was with a guy on and off for years. He was lovely but couldn’t cope with her “demands” and expectations, but when he would (temporarily) broke things off, usually because of her behaviour, I would find myself picking up the pieces and trying to calm her down. It was exhausting.
Those relationships are absolutely exhausting and invariably friends initially get caught in the trap of saying ‘good riddance’ after the first break-up and then having to back-track after that – never comfortable!
I’m a generation older than you but I was living in Lygon St for a year or two in the 90s and I enjoy fiction set in inner Melbourne generally.
Your synopsis reminded me of The Cut by Susan White, set in an inner Melbourne hospital but as it happens some decades after this.
(No one ever expects me to help with relationships)