As she shifts from Chelsea’s perspective on to those of other characters’, Prendergast reveals the reason Annie has descended into such a severe depressive state. Through Annie’s friend, Pelts, and eventually Annie herself, a long narrative of abuse and heartbreak becomes apparent. Annie has been subjected to cruelty, sexual assault and, most horribly, the death of her eldest child, and it is these things that have caused her to become the woman Chelsea must drag along the floor to bed each night. This makes for tough reading at times – Chelsea’s is a grim life, full of responsibilities she shouldn’t have to know at such a young age.
Some of the best moments of this book are those in which Chelsea accepts help. This help first comes in the form of an aged care nurse who approaches Chelsea on the street after witnessing her struggle with one of her grandfather’s episodes. After accepting this stranger’s act of kindness, Chelsea is able to redirect her energy from caring for her grandfather to finding help for her mother. She contacts Pelts, who brings Annie and Chelsea to his home and takes care of them. His is a very ordinary kind of care – he cooks dinner, runs baths, lights fires. But for Chelsea, something as simple as walking along the beach on her own is a luxury. Eventually, Pelts coaxes Annie out of the haze of grief she has been living in, and Chelsea finally learns the truth about what has broken her mother so grievously. The reality of Chelsea’s situation is that many people, young people and children included, live through this each day. While Chelsea is eventually able to find help for her mother and grandfather, it’s impossible to forget that this is something that really happens and getting help is not always so easy.
Even the most devastating losses cannot stop life from happening, and although we may lose the ones we love, there are still people left behind to lean on.
While reading this book, I felt it was a meditation on grief loss, and the consequences they bring. However, after mulling over the novel as a whole, I have changed my mind. This is a novel about healing. The title of the book comes from a proverb that says the earth will continue to consume bodies until the end of time, its hunger never to be satiated. This is a haunting phrase that conjures up quite a grim image. But you could choose to look at this proverb in a different way – the earth may continue to take people away from us, but it remains unchanged. Even the most devastating losses cannot stop life from happening, and although we may lose the ones we love, there are still people left behind to lean on.
Grief, trauma and misery are well-worn themes in literary fiction, especially Australian literary fiction. It can be exhausting to see these tales of small-town woe crop up again and again. While Annie’s is a miserable situation, Prendergast writes with a purpose. Seeing these traumatic incidents build up while Annie, much like Chelsea, hides the unpleasant facts of her life from the world shows the reader that human emotion is an iceberg – the things that make themselves apparent are only a tiny fraction of the whole. Books like The Earth Does Not Get Fat remind us that it is near impossible to know what is going on in another person’s life and that empathy is necessary to help those who may be suffering in a world that won’t stop for them.
The Earth Does Not Get Fat is available now at Readings.
