Water Lily - The Literary Review
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It is evident from her first two novels that Susanna Jones has a penchant for subversion. Not only does she use her characters to explore the dynamics of subversive behaviour, she also subverts the notion of genre fiction and – along with it – the expectations of readers. Is she a crime writer, a mystery writer, or a ‘literary’ novelist?
The range of prizes she won for her debut, The Earthquake Bird, suggests that she straddles the divide between mainstream and genre fiction, and her new novel is in the same mould. I was a judge on last year’s Betty Trask Awards and, while Hari Kunzru and Rachel Seiffert were the main contenders for the top prize, Jones’s writing earned rich praise during the deliberations. Her lean but lyrical prose, her evocation of place and atmosphere, the subtle undercurrent of menace and a page-turning storyline were all recognised. Comparisons with Lesley Glaister, Barbara Vine and Helen Dunmore spring to mind, although Jones is too original, too unusual in her sensibilities, to be easily or usefully pigeon-holed.
Her boldest risk, perhaps, is to give her work the guise of a genre – the psychological thriller I would say – in which convention requires us to be able to root for the main protagonist and then to offer us no such hero [...]
Runa is a twenty-something high-school teacher in rural Japan who goes on the run before the scandal of her affair with a sixteen-year-old pupil hits the media. She steals her sister’s passport and, travelling under a false name, takes a boat to Shanghai. During the crossing she is befriended by Ralph, a middle-aged Englishman on the lookout for a subservient Oriental bride. A previous marriage to a Thai girl ended disastrously – she left, he says, but we suspect foul play – and hopes of finding a new wife through an agency in Japan have come to nothing. Ralph’s last hope is a Chinese girl he has contacted on the Internet, but en route to meet her he falls for Runa. In her desperation, Runa sees him as a ticket to a new life and plans to use him, then ditch him. Initially, we like Runa and empathise with her predicament – is her affair with the boy really so wrong? – but gradually, as we know her better, we have to revise our assessment. As for Ralph, we find him creepy at first, then rather pathetic and pitiable – isn’t he just a lonely man in search of his idea of love? Only at the end do we discover just how loathsome he really is.
It is this undermining of expectation, and the repeated reappraisals Jones teases out of us, that make Water Lily so captivating [...] Runa and Ralph evoke a range of emotional responses: more antipathy than sympathy, perhaps, but they are human and knowable and, as a result, involving. Their sense of morality might not be ours but we come uneasily close to an understanding of it. And we are made aware of our own moral ambiguities, our own capacity – in action or thought – for misdemeanour. This insight into ourselves is one reason why crime novels, or novels about crime, are so enduringly popular – even those that subvert the genre.