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The Performance
A novel about three women at turning points in their lives, and the one night that changes everything.
One night, three women go to the theater to see a play. Wildfires are burning in the hills outside, but inside the theater it is time for the performance to take over.
Margot is a successful, flinty professor on the cusp of retirement, distracted by her fraught relationship with her adult son and her ailing husband. After a traumatic past, Ivy is is now a philanthropist with a seemingly perfect life. Summer is a young drama student, an usher at the theater, and frantically worried for her girlfriend whose parents live in the fire zone.
While the performance unfolds on stage, so does the compelling trajectory that will bring these three women together, changing them all. Deliciously intimate and yet emotionally wide-ranging, The Performance is a novel that both explores the inner lives of women as it underscores the power of art and memory to transform us.
One night, three women go to the theater to see a play. Wildfires are burning in the hills outside, but inside the theater it is time for the performance to take over.
Margot is a successful, flinty professor on the cusp of retirement, distracted by her fraught relationship with her adult son and her ailing husband. After a traumatic past, Ivy is is now a philanthropist with a seemingly perfect life. Summer is a young drama student, an usher at the theater, and frantically worried for her girlfriend whose parents live in the fire zone.
While the performance unfolds on stage, so does the compelling trajectory that will bring these three women together, changing them all. Deliciously intimate and yet emotionally wide-ranging, The Performance is a novel that both explores the inner lives of women as it underscores the power of art and memory to transform us.
230 pages, Hardcover
First published March 16, 2021
About the author
Claire Thomas
30 books33 followersClaire Thomas is an Australian writer. She has published short stories in various journals, including Meanjin, Island, Overland and Australian Short Stories. She has an Honours degree in English and Art History from the University of Melbourne where she is currently undertaking a PhD. Fugitive Blue is her first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 397 reviews
June 25, 2022
This is a work that shows fiction can be simultaneously innovative and also eminently readable. The Performance follows three women as they watch a performance of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days. Set in Melbourne during the 2019-20 bushfire season, fire engulfs the Australian countryside outside the theater while the play goes on inside. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of the three women as they watch the performance. The narrative weaves from third to first (and occasionally second) person, a change so effortless and subtle we hardly notice. Through the story, we see the many ways in which our lives, consciously or not, are fundamentally performative.
August 12, 2021
The Performance
is a novel consisting almost entirely of its characters’ interior thoughts. Three women in the arts—a professor, a wealthy donor, and theatre usher/drama student—watch Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days and their minds rove.
On stage, the actor playing Winnie is buried in a mound of dirt in a scorched, barren wasteland. Disembodied, she delivers her lines, and sparks form in the minds of our three watchers. This clever structural device really worked for me, both as a scaffold for a novel and to reveal new angles on the play that I hadn’t spotted before. (Familiarity with Happy Days is not strictly necessary, but it will enhance your experience of this novel: at minimum give the wiki a skim).
Happy Days is a really weird play, open to interpretation, so probing the audience’s minds in real time is a fantastic notion. There are lots of fun intertextual connections and references, but this novel isn’t given over to nerdy Beckettian analysis completely (alas).
The two older ladies have seen this play before, so their minds wander rather a lot. The young drama student is too overwhelmed and anxious to maintain close attention. They ruminate on domestic mundanities, past and ongoing personal traumas, existential dread. Reflecting on their various experiences of womanhood in sight of the blatant metaphor—a buried woman—on stage. In their seats, in the dark, watching the trapped-yet-stoical Winnie witter, these three characters exist as if equals; an illusion that is shattered when they are brought into contact with each other during intermission.
The novel doesn’t always live up to its terrific concept, and it misses marks here and there (for instance, a depiction of a racial microaggression that was well-intentioned but clumsily executed). It’s set during catastrophic bushfires that call to mind last year’s Black Summer, but is not centrally about the fires, which gives an impression that the real stakes are elsewhere.
The Performance is beautifully written, contemplative literary fiction, about art and still moments and the effects they have on us. Especially recommended to anyone who enjoyed Heather Rose’s The Museum of Modern Love. 4.5 stars.
On stage, the actor playing Winnie is buried in a mound of dirt in a scorched, barren wasteland. Disembodied, she delivers her lines, and sparks form in the minds of our three watchers. This clever structural device really worked for me, both as a scaffold for a novel and to reveal new angles on the play that I hadn’t spotted before. (Familiarity with Happy Days is not strictly necessary, but it will enhance your experience of this novel: at minimum give the wiki a skim).
Marie Kean as Winnie in Happy Days
Happy Days is a really weird play, open to interpretation, so probing the audience’s minds in real time is a fantastic notion. There are lots of fun intertextual connections and references, but this novel isn’t given over to nerdy Beckettian analysis completely (alas).
The two older ladies have seen this play before, so their minds wander rather a lot. The young drama student is too overwhelmed and anxious to maintain close attention. They ruminate on domestic mundanities, past and ongoing personal traumas, existential dread. Reflecting on their various experiences of womanhood in sight of the blatant metaphor—a buried woman—on stage. In their seats, in the dark, watching the trapped-yet-stoical Winnie witter, these three characters exist as if equals; an illusion that is shattered when they are brought into contact with each other during intermission.
The novel doesn’t always live up to its terrific concept, and it misses marks here and there (for instance, a depiction of a racial microaggression that was well-intentioned but clumsily executed). It’s set during catastrophic bushfires that call to mind last year’s Black Summer, but is not centrally about the fires, which gives an impression that the real stakes are elsewhere.
The Performance is beautifully written, contemplative literary fiction, about art and still moments and the effects they have on us. Especially recommended to anyone who enjoyed Heather Rose’s The Museum of Modern Love. 4.5 stars.
December 5, 2021
The plot of this novel is simple (and sparse) – while bushfires rage nearby and the City is struck by extreme heat, three women watch a theatre production of Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days” (which features a woman buried to her waist and later in waste).
The execution though is complex (and rich). The novel is divided (like the production of the play) into two uneven parts – the first much longer – and divided by an interval. In the first half each of the three women has two ordered sections (ordered in a collated fashion) – each effectively entirely set in their thoughts as they watch the play: in the second they have one section each following the same order. Their thoughts are often sparked by the words spoken – or by the characters’ predicaments - in the play – although each of them is pre-occupied with wider thoughts and so alert for the, often painful, resonances on stage.
Even more cleverly the only dialogue in the play is in the interval and is presented as a play, which Clare Thomas attributes to herself, with the three women (and a few others) as characters whose lives briefly interact – their interactions then acting as a third influence on their interior monologues in the second half, during which each grows in their understanding of their own thoughts and possible ways forward.
The three women are all of different ages:
Margot – around 60 – a successful and much loved Professor of English Literature (albeit not particularly knowledgeable about Beckett or the play – as a subscriber she has attended without knowing the play). She faces a number of crises in her life: her husband is suffering from dementia with difficult implications both physically and mentally (as she is forced to consider if his actions now represent long suppressed feelings); hints are being dropped at work about the unwelcome prospect of retirement; and her relationship with her son (and his wife and young son) are being complicated by her projection onto them of her own ambivalence of motherhood and the break it put on her career.
Summer – in her early 20s – is working as an Usher to supplement her income. She is potentially of mixed race (her white mother will not discuss her father’s identity). On one level she has her life on the bohemian trajectory she aimed for – quirky friends, a tattoo artist girlfriend, a shared house in an on-trend neighbourhood, a drama degree – but is burdened by a debilitating sense of anxiety about the trajectory of society – her anxiety not assisted as her girlfriend’s parents house is in the path of the fires.
Ivy – in her 40s – is a wealthy philanthropist – being woo-ed by the theatre for donations. A Beckett-groupie when a brilliant English literature student, she is attending the theatre with her best friend, while her second husband looks after her second child – her back story being very difficult.
I did not know the Beckett play before I read the book – but very early on I read some fairly detailed plot summaries and also watched some excerpts of online productions of the play: I would strongly suggest you do both to get a feel for the play and for the character’s experience - and if time permits I suspect watching the whole play would add even more.
The author though (naturally through the characters thoughts) does set out much of the plot and key dialogue lines and also (equally naturally) draws out copious links between the play and the lives and thoughts of the women, as well as the wider environmental background on which the play is being performed (and which is a pre-occupation of the “eco-feminist” director). These links are on both: a macro level (a play about a woman oddly trapped in which we observe her stream of consciousness which is a mix of the banal and the profound, the immediate/trivial and the longer-term/far-reaching as she struggles for meaning in her life); and on micro level with of course the lines in the play which most closely mirror or challenge each woman’s thoughts being those that strike home and on which they remark.
I really thought this was beautifully observed and thoroughly enjoyable novel – the contrivance at its centre is exactly that (contrived) but in way which for me added to, rather than distracted from, its themes and message.
Highly recommended.
The execution though is complex (and rich). The novel is divided (like the production of the play) into two uneven parts – the first much longer – and divided by an interval. In the first half each of the three women has two ordered sections (ordered in a collated fashion) – each effectively entirely set in their thoughts as they watch the play: in the second they have one section each following the same order. Their thoughts are often sparked by the words spoken – or by the characters’ predicaments - in the play – although each of them is pre-occupied with wider thoughts and so alert for the, often painful, resonances on stage.
Even more cleverly the only dialogue in the play is in the interval and is presented as a play, which Clare Thomas attributes to herself, with the three women (and a few others) as characters whose lives briefly interact – their interactions then acting as a third influence on their interior monologues in the second half, during which each grows in their understanding of their own thoughts and possible ways forward.
The three women are all of different ages:
Margot – around 60 – a successful and much loved Professor of English Literature (albeit not particularly knowledgeable about Beckett or the play – as a subscriber she has attended without knowing the play). She faces a number of crises in her life: her husband is suffering from dementia with difficult implications both physically and mentally (as she is forced to consider if his actions now represent long suppressed feelings); hints are being dropped at work about the unwelcome prospect of retirement; and her relationship with her son (and his wife and young son) are being complicated by her projection onto them of her own ambivalence of motherhood and the break it put on her career.
Summer – in her early 20s – is working as an Usher to supplement her income. She is potentially of mixed race (her white mother will not discuss her father’s identity). On one level she has her life on the bohemian trajectory she aimed for – quirky friends, a tattoo artist girlfriend, a shared house in an on-trend neighbourhood, a drama degree – but is burdened by a debilitating sense of anxiety about the trajectory of society – her anxiety not assisted as her girlfriend’s parents house is in the path of the fires.
Ivy – in her 40s – is a wealthy philanthropist – being woo-ed by the theatre for donations. A Beckett-groupie when a brilliant English literature student, she is attending the theatre with her best friend, while her second husband looks after her second child – her back story being very difficult.
I did not know the Beckett play before I read the book – but very early on I read some fairly detailed plot summaries and also watched some excerpts of online productions of the play: I would strongly suggest you do both to get a feel for the play and for the character’s experience - and if time permits I suspect watching the whole play would add even more.
The author though (naturally through the characters thoughts) does set out much of the plot and key dialogue lines and also (equally naturally) draws out copious links between the play and the lives and thoughts of the women, as well as the wider environmental background on which the play is being performed (and which is a pre-occupation of the “eco-feminist” director). These links are on both: a macro level (a play about a woman oddly trapped in which we observe her stream of consciousness which is a mix of the banal and the profound, the immediate/trivial and the longer-term/far-reaching as she struggles for meaning in her life); and on micro level with of course the lines in the play which most closely mirror or challenge each woman’s thoughts being those that strike home and on which they remark.
I really thought this was beautifully observed and thoroughly enjoyable novel – the contrivance at its centre is exactly that (contrived) but in way which for me added to, rather than distracted from, its themes and message.
Highly recommended.
November 16, 2021
The Performance is an extraordinary novel, from the beginning to the last page.
I've been struggling for a while with reading books. But I devoured this one.
This novel is about three very different women: Margot, a literature Professor in her seventies; Ivy, a new mother in her forties who's also a philanthropist; and Summer, a young usher and drama student. Their inner thoughts and backgrounds are presented as their minds drift while watching Samuel Becket's Happy Days, while fires rage on the hills around Melbourne.
The themes cover relationships, feminism, racial and sexual identity, motherhood, grief, art, philanthropy, and climate change and climate anxiety, and, of course, appreciation of art. All these aspects transpire in a natural, non-didactic, non-message-y way.
The Performance had that rare quality of being intellectually stimulating and emotionally affecting, creative but also accessible. I'm in awe of Thomas' talent.
This is one of the best novels I read this year. As far as I'm concerned, it should get all the awards.
This is why I read!
In case any publishers read this, I absolutely loved the book's design, the type, the larger than usual line spacing. Yes, I've turned into one of those people who need good design, large enough type and good quality paper. Sorry/not sorry.
I've been struggling for a while with reading books. But I devoured this one.
This novel is about three very different women: Margot, a literature Professor in her seventies; Ivy, a new mother in her forties who's also a philanthropist; and Summer, a young usher and drama student. Their inner thoughts and backgrounds are presented as their minds drift while watching Samuel Becket's Happy Days, while fires rage on the hills around Melbourne.
The themes cover relationships, feminism, racial and sexual identity, motherhood, grief, art, philanthropy, and climate change and climate anxiety, and, of course, appreciation of art. All these aspects transpire in a natural, non-didactic, non-message-y way.
The Performance had that rare quality of being intellectually stimulating and emotionally affecting, creative but also accessible. I'm in awe of Thomas' talent.
This is one of the best novels I read this year. As far as I'm concerned, it should get all the awards.
This is why I read!
In case any publishers read this, I absolutely loved the book's design, the type, the larger than usual line spacing. Yes, I've turned into one of those people who need good design, large enough type and good quality paper. Sorry/not sorry.
April 18, 2021
I didn’t enjoy the writing style and felt a little bit bored at times because of the lack of a plot line. There isn’t enough detail or character development in order to keep the reader’s interest for long.
September 13, 2021
”Wait for the day to come…the happy day to come when flesh melts at so many degrees.”
It’s interesting that this is a story within a story, so to speak. While Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days is being performed onstage, we’re led into the musings of three women who are in the audience. Two are theatre patrons, the other an usher at the theatre. Of different age groups and backgrounds, as the play unfolds, we are given a glimpse into each of their lives.
It’s so true in that the darkness of a cinema or a theatre, we have those moments completely to ourselves, to mull over things. While watching a movie or attending a play, we can allow our thoughts to wonder off.
”How gratifying it is to wallow in one’s thoughts. It’s worth keeping up the subscription for this alone, this quiet pleasure of being compelled to sit in a theatre for a couple of hours a few times each year, uninterrupted and contained.”
Set in a hot Melbourne summer, with stifling heat and the smell of bushfires burning in the background, we attend the production of Happy Days, alongside our three protagonists, Margo, Summer and Ivy.
From the opening scene where Margo is trying to carefully arrive at her seat without treading on anybody’s toes, I was totally immersed in this book. The sweat drying on her at the rapid change in temperature from extreme heat outdoors to frigid frostiness, almost freezer like conditions of the theatre. I could smell the change of atmosphere. The polite ”excuse me” to strangers, while balancing a handbag so as not to hit anybody in the small aisle space. The relief at getting to your seat. The stranger to one side hogging the shared arm rest. Hearing another patron snoring in the audience. Having the cough that just has to happen in a quiet theatre. It was all so incredibly real. Been there, done that.
”The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold.”
The story unfolds via alternating chapter per protagonist.
Margo: late 60s? early 70s?, is a Professor of Literature who is being gently “prodded” by others in her faculty to perhaps consider retirement, so that younger academics can be given an opportunity to build their careers. Happily – well, comfortably – married, she ponders on her life. If the aggression her husband has recently started to display towards her is in fact a result of his deteriorating health (with early signs of dementia), or is it something he’d kept hidden, that he'd always secretly wanted to hit her before but had suppressed the desire? And why does her grown son treat her with such disdain? Is it because she's still working and not ecstatic to be a Grandma? While sitting in the play, she replays pivotal moments of both her personal and academic life. All the highs and lows and in-betweens.
"The people I knew who were dreary at twenty are just drearier at seventy. The dynamic young people are now dynamic old people. Why isn't that more widely understood?"
Summer: Aptly named. Early 20s. An usher in the theatre. A drama student. A newcomer to the big city, with big dreams. She's moved from Perth to Melbourne. She worries why she doesn’t know who her father was and would it offend her mother to want to find out. She is of mixed race. She worries about fitting in. Being in the right crowd. This feeds her anxiety. She worries about climate change. She worries about the planet. Hate speeches in parliament, bollards on city streets, the potential for a bomb threat at a concert, urban life is making her uncomfortable. She worries about her girlfriend’s safety, as she tries to protect her parent’s property which is near where the bushfires are raging. She worries about worrying.
"Summer wishes that she were more even-tempered. She wishes she noticed less and worried less and cared less."
Ivy: Former lit. graduate, passionate Beckett fan. Early 40s. She's come into money by a fluke of fate, and is now using those funds towards the arts and creative pursuits that have meaning to her. Philanthropy doesn't sit comfortably. The lunches, the dinners, the schmoozing. With a young family, her supposed good fortune doesn't reveal a tragedy which she's never healed from.
"Ivy is uncomfortable with the way wealth generates wealth, abundance delivers abundance. She is uncomfortable with that fundamental truth. She is uncomfortable with that particular truth."
The play progresses while the bushfires rage.
”Perhaps they are immune to what is going on outside this cold bubble of culture. Maybe they already felt safe in their city of their suburbs, buffered from the threat of the distant, unpredictable flames.”
I found it wonderful that this book is set around what’s occurring on the stage with the performance of Happy Days, that certain lines of the play made it into the story as markers of something important. I saw this play many, many years ago and it was excruciating. People left the play during the first act mid performance (which is exceptionally rude). I had the grace to wait until interval and not return. It’s such a shame, as the amazing Ruth Cracknell was playing the role of Winnie. As the play progressed, her character (who was stuck in a sand mound of some sort), became more and more embedded in it. Until she was up to her neck in sand. Again, it was excruciating to watch. I’m not a fan of Beckett and cannot pretend to understand what the messages are in his plays. He relies heavily on metaphors. I’ve now seen three of them, purely because the wealth of talent in the Oz theatre scene is so rich, it’s worthwhile going. Even though I leave none the wiser.
I had to laugh when one of the characters, Margo, mentions not having seen the play to its conclusion the first time she saw it years previously. I understood completely.
As Ivy muses while watching the play unfold ”What was SB getting at with that? She's never been sure.” I concur.
So to have the play tied in with our three characters is, to me, sheer genius. For all the metaphors, it shows that life can be as absurd and inert and suffocating as the play being performed. That we’re all captives of our own thoughts, and often held to ransom by them.
And that assumptions are just that. We have no idea what's going on in someone else's head, or what they're feeling. What's happening in their lives. We just assume to connect the dots. The exterior can be just that, simply a façade, hiding inner doubt and turmoil.
Naming this book The Performance is another piece of genius. Aren't we all performing, each and every day?
”Winnie too is gazing ahead with compressed lips. She is stoic. She is having a happy day. She is buried in the ground but she endures. Things could be worse. Apparently.”
Though I feel ambivalent towards Beckett's writing, it would definitely be helpful to have at least a basic understanding of what his play Happy Days is about. Otherwise the references to it and its part in this story will be lost on you.
While reading this I couldn't help but think of Charlotte Wood's The Weekend. Another book that reaches into the female psyche and examines female friendships. Ah, these amazing Aussie writers!
”The play is nearing completion.”
This is such a brilliant book, I enjoyed it completely. The writing is crisp and I had so many "ah-ha" moments as I identified with something the characters felt or thought. I can easily imagine this making it onto the small screen, as it has that type of vibe to it. And just like when reading The Weekend, I couldn't help but wonder which of the characters I felt most empathy towards. Who I felt most drawn to. This was our Bookclub pick, and I have a feeling that it’s going to lead to all sorts of wonderful discussions.
”Heart doubts. Waverings. Confusions….is it a confession, to express doubt? An accusation? It depends on who is listening.”
It’s interesting that this is a story within a story, so to speak. While Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days is being performed onstage, we’re led into the musings of three women who are in the audience. Two are theatre patrons, the other an usher at the theatre. Of different age groups and backgrounds, as the play unfolds, we are given a glimpse into each of their lives.
It’s so true in that the darkness of a cinema or a theatre, we have those moments completely to ourselves, to mull over things. While watching a movie or attending a play, we can allow our thoughts to wonder off.
”How gratifying it is to wallow in one’s thoughts. It’s worth keeping up the subscription for this alone, this quiet pleasure of being compelled to sit in a theatre for a couple of hours a few times each year, uninterrupted and contained.”
Set in a hot Melbourne summer, with stifling heat and the smell of bushfires burning in the background, we attend the production of Happy Days, alongside our three protagonists, Margo, Summer and Ivy.
From the opening scene where Margo is trying to carefully arrive at her seat without treading on anybody’s toes, I was totally immersed in this book. The sweat drying on her at the rapid change in temperature from extreme heat outdoors to frigid frostiness, almost freezer like conditions of the theatre. I could smell the change of atmosphere. The polite ”excuse me” to strangers, while balancing a handbag so as not to hit anybody in the small aisle space. The relief at getting to your seat. The stranger to one side hogging the shared arm rest. Hearing another patron snoring in the audience. Having the cough that just has to happen in a quiet theatre. It was all so incredibly real. Been there, done that.
”The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold.”
The story unfolds via alternating chapter per protagonist.
Margo: late 60s? early 70s?, is a Professor of Literature who is being gently “prodded” by others in her faculty to perhaps consider retirement, so that younger academics can be given an opportunity to build their careers. Happily – well, comfortably – married, she ponders on her life. If the aggression her husband has recently started to display towards her is in fact a result of his deteriorating health (with early signs of dementia), or is it something he’d kept hidden, that he'd always secretly wanted to hit her before but had suppressed the desire? And why does her grown son treat her with such disdain? Is it because she's still working and not ecstatic to be a Grandma? While sitting in the play, she replays pivotal moments of both her personal and academic life. All the highs and lows and in-betweens.
"The people I knew who were dreary at twenty are just drearier at seventy. The dynamic young people are now dynamic old people. Why isn't that more widely understood?"
Summer: Aptly named. Early 20s. An usher in the theatre. A drama student. A newcomer to the big city, with big dreams. She's moved from Perth to Melbourne. She worries why she doesn’t know who her father was and would it offend her mother to want to find out. She is of mixed race. She worries about fitting in. Being in the right crowd. This feeds her anxiety. She worries about climate change. She worries about the planet. Hate speeches in parliament, bollards on city streets, the potential for a bomb threat at a concert, urban life is making her uncomfortable. She worries about her girlfriend’s safety, as she tries to protect her parent’s property which is near where the bushfires are raging. She worries about worrying.
"Summer wishes that she were more even-tempered. She wishes she noticed less and worried less and cared less."
Ivy: Former lit. graduate, passionate Beckett fan. Early 40s. She's come into money by a fluke of fate, and is now using those funds towards the arts and creative pursuits that have meaning to her. Philanthropy doesn't sit comfortably. The lunches, the dinners, the schmoozing. With a young family, her supposed good fortune doesn't reveal a tragedy which she's never healed from.
"Ivy is uncomfortable with the way wealth generates wealth, abundance delivers abundance. She is uncomfortable with that fundamental truth. She is uncomfortable with that particular truth."
The play progresses while the bushfires rage.
”Perhaps they are immune to what is going on outside this cold bubble of culture. Maybe they already felt safe in their city of their suburbs, buffered from the threat of the distant, unpredictable flames.”
I found it wonderful that this book is set around what’s occurring on the stage with the performance of Happy Days, that certain lines of the play made it into the story as markers of something important. I saw this play many, many years ago and it was excruciating. People left the play during the first act mid performance (which is exceptionally rude). I had the grace to wait until interval and not return. It’s such a shame, as the amazing Ruth Cracknell was playing the role of Winnie. As the play progressed, her character (who was stuck in a sand mound of some sort), became more and more embedded in it. Until she was up to her neck in sand. Again, it was excruciating to watch. I’m not a fan of Beckett and cannot pretend to understand what the messages are in his plays. He relies heavily on metaphors. I’ve now seen three of them, purely because the wealth of talent in the Oz theatre scene is so rich, it’s worthwhile going. Even though I leave none the wiser.
I had to laugh when one of the characters, Margo, mentions not having seen the play to its conclusion the first time she saw it years previously. I understood completely.
As Ivy muses while watching the play unfold ”What was SB getting at with that? She's never been sure.” I concur.
So to have the play tied in with our three characters is, to me, sheer genius. For all the metaphors, it shows that life can be as absurd and inert and suffocating as the play being performed. That we’re all captives of our own thoughts, and often held to ransom by them.
And that assumptions are just that. We have no idea what's going on in someone else's head, or what they're feeling. What's happening in their lives. We just assume to connect the dots. The exterior can be just that, simply a façade, hiding inner doubt and turmoil.
Naming this book The Performance is another piece of genius. Aren't we all performing, each and every day?
”Winnie too is gazing ahead with compressed lips. She is stoic. She is having a happy day. She is buried in the ground but she endures. Things could be worse. Apparently.”
Though I feel ambivalent towards Beckett's writing, it would definitely be helpful to have at least a basic understanding of what his play Happy Days is about. Otherwise the references to it and its part in this story will be lost on you.
While reading this I couldn't help but think of Charlotte Wood's The Weekend. Another book that reaches into the female psyche and examines female friendships. Ah, these amazing Aussie writers!
”The play is nearing completion.”
This is such a brilliant book, I enjoyed it completely. The writing is crisp and I had so many "ah-ha" moments as I identified with something the characters felt or thought. I can easily imagine this making it onto the small screen, as it has that type of vibe to it. And just like when reading The Weekend, I couldn't help but wonder which of the characters I felt most empathy towards. Who I felt most drawn to. This was our Bookclub pick, and I have a feeling that it’s going to lead to all sorts of wonderful discussions.
”Heart doubts. Waverings. Confusions….is it a confession, to express doubt? An accusation? It depends on who is listening.”
March 26, 2021
"To have been what I always am – and so changed from what I was." (from “Happy Days” by Samuel Beckett).I found The Performance extraordinary. It's certainly my standout read for the year so far.
The three main characters, from whose perspectives the narratives are alternately related, each (separately) view the same Melbourne production of Samuel Beckett's beguiling play Happy Days. Intertwined with their reactions to the action on-stage are their private musings. These range from the minutiae of physical discomfort due to other theatre patrons or the temperature in the theatre, to their reflections on turning points in their personal histories, massive life decisions and the challenges they're currently facing.
Margot, a university literature professor in later middle age, who has reached the pinnacle of her profession, is facing unwelcome pressure to retire, to make space for "new blood" in her faculty, while simultaneously suffering from her husband's decline into dementia and their adult son's apparent indifference to her.
Summer, a 20-something drama student, is working as an usher in the theatre to supplement her meagre income. She's preoccupied by the knowledge of a bushfire currently raging on Melbourne's outskirts, to which her girlfriend April has rushed, in hope of helping her parents save their bushland home.
Ivy, in her early 40s is attending the play as an honoured guest, in anticipation of the large donation her philanthropic organisation will make to future productions. While on the surface she appears the urbane woman who has it all, she's struggling with new motherhood, after a hiatus of fifteen years since her first child died from SIDS.
There are many common themes running through the three women's search for identity and self-fulfilment in the face of their insecurities. Each of the three characters is well-developed, multifaceted and beguiling. Unlike my reader experience with many titles using a multi-narrator format, I didn't find that I was more drawn to one story than the other(s), ploughing through one narrative to return to the more interesting one. While, in terms of age and life-stage, I have most in common with Ivy, I found personal resonances within all three of the women's stories.
I'll admit I don't have a great familiarity with the work of Samuel Beckett, and hit the internet mid-read to bring myself up to speed. While I don't feel that knowledge of the play would be necessary to enjoyment of this book, I was greatly impressed by the way Claire Thomas cleverly interwove and echoed the themes from Happy Days into The Performance.
This was an enthralling and stimulating read, and I would recommend The Performance to any and all readers who seek intelligent contemporary fiction or are interested in the lived experience of women in modern society.
My thanks to the author, Claire Thomas, publisher Hachette Australia and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this excellent title.
June 6, 2021
Watching the news it's difficult not to be consumed by an ever-present level of anxiety about the state of the world as it suffers from innumerable economic, political and environmental problems. Though it feels like the planet is on the brink of catastrophe, no metaphors for impending disaster are necessary when the ongoing bushfire crisis in Australia means the world is literally burning up around the people who live there. Melbourne writer Claire Thomas has brilliantly dramatised this in her novel “The Performance” where three women from different generations watch a performance of Samuel Beckett's 'Happy Days' while a bushfire increases in ferocity not far from the theatre. The narrative revolves between the perspectives of professor Margot, theatre usher Summer and philanthropist Ivy as they watch the play and contemplate the past. Though we get snippets of the performance which is occurring and their reactions to it, what's so engaging is how Thomas captures the real experience of being in the theatre. Of course, this novel takes on an added poignancy and even more meaning reading it now that the global pandemic has caused most theatres to shut over the past year.
Read my full review of The Performance by Claire Thomas on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of The Performance by Claire Thomas on LonesomeReader
June 11, 2022
Three women – Margot, early 70s, a professor; Ivy, early 40s, a wealthy philanthropist; and Summer, a twentysomething drama student – watch a performance of the Samuel Beckett play Happy Days in a Melbourne theatre. They each contemplate their own lives as well as (particularly in Summer’s case) the devastating bushfires blazing outside. The book is cleverly structured in three sections to match the acts of the play, with conversations during the interval, when the characters encounter one another, rendered as a script.
I found it uneven, mainly because Margot is a much more interesting character than the other two. There’s so much that’s fascinating about her ruminations, so much I wanted to explore further: her lifelong ambivalence about motherhood; unwelcome nudges towards retirement from her boss; the problem of her husband’s incipient dementia, which has turned him occasionally violent. Meanwhile, I can remember very little about Ivy without referring back to the book. And I’m afraid almost nothing about Summer worked for me – she’s totally unconvincing and her ‘climate anxiety’ is so clumsily rendered that it repeatedly made me cringe. (To be fair, after reading Alexandra Kleeman’s Something New Under the Sun, any other novel that attempts to approach this topic is automatically on the back foot; it feels pointless that anyone else should even try.) I would have preferred The Performance had it focused primarily on Margot; by including two other main characters, the story spreads its many themes far too thinly, and its treatment of most of them ends up feeling superficial.
TinyLetter | Linktree
I found it uneven, mainly because Margot is a much more interesting character than the other two. There’s so much that’s fascinating about her ruminations, so much I wanted to explore further: her lifelong ambivalence about motherhood; unwelcome nudges towards retirement from her boss; the problem of her husband’s incipient dementia, which has turned him occasionally violent. Meanwhile, I can remember very little about Ivy without referring back to the book. And I’m afraid almost nothing about Summer worked for me – she’s totally unconvincing and her ‘climate anxiety’ is so clumsily rendered that it repeatedly made me cringe. (To be fair, after reading Alexandra Kleeman’s Something New Under the Sun, any other novel that attempts to approach this topic is automatically on the back foot; it feels pointless that anyone else should even try.) I would have preferred The Performance had it focused primarily on Margot; by including two other main characters, the story spreads its many themes far too thinly, and its treatment of most of them ends up feeling superficial.
TinyLetter | Linktree
November 29, 2021
What a terrific setup: three women are in a Melbourne theatre watching a performance of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days. Margot is a veteran professor whose husband is developing dementia. Ivy is a new mother whose wealth hardly makes up for the devastating losses of her earlier life. Summer is a mixed-race usher concerned about her girlfriend during the fires rampaging outside the city. In rotating close third person sections, Thomas takes us into these characters’ inner worlds, contrasting their personal worries with wider issues of women’s and indigenous people’s rights and the environmental crisis, as well as with the increasingly claustrophobic scene on stage. In “The Interval,” written as a script, the main characters interact with each other, with the “forced intimacy between strangers” creating opportunities for chance meetings and fateful decisions.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
February 14, 2021
‘Excuse me.’
Three different women are watching the performance of a Samuel Beckett play in Melbourne. It is 40 degrees C outside, and the country around Melbourne is burning. But inside the theatre, the air conditioning makes it cool, and easy to escape from the outside world. Or does it?
The performance unfolds, as do the women’s stories. There’s little dialogue: we are readers of each woman’s internal monologue.
Margot, a professor, has just had a dreaded conversation about retirement, with the dean. Her trip to the theatre has been difficult and she is preoccupied. Her husband is ailing. The play has started.
Summer, a student, is working as a theatre usher. Because of her role, she misses the beginning of the play – again. But Summer is preoccupied, anyway, because her girlfriend April was travelling into the fire zone to help her parents.
Ivy, younger than Margot, is distracted by a man snoring in the seat next to her. She is a philanthropist who has received free tickets to the play because the theatre company wants her money. Ivy is thinking about the past.
Three women of different ages and backgrounds separately watching ‘Happy Days’, a two-act play with an ambiguous ending. And the women? What will happen next for each of them now the play is over?
I admire the structure of this novel, the way in which Ms Thomas uses the performance of ‘Happy Days’ to bring these separate stories together without constructing an artificial connection between the women. Each woman’s monologue invites the reader to think about their own life: past and present, as well as to envisage the future. Watching a play is a very solitary activity, even in a crowd. Because the audience is static, seated and focussed (in varying degrees) the play on the stage becomes a backdrop for reflection, for each of the three women whose stories we become part of. And for readers as well.
Highly recommended.
Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Three different women are watching the performance of a Samuel Beckett play in Melbourne. It is 40 degrees C outside, and the country around Melbourne is burning. But inside the theatre, the air conditioning makes it cool, and easy to escape from the outside world. Or does it?
The performance unfolds, as do the women’s stories. There’s little dialogue: we are readers of each woman’s internal monologue.
Margot, a professor, has just had a dreaded conversation about retirement, with the dean. Her trip to the theatre has been difficult and she is preoccupied. Her husband is ailing. The play has started.
Summer, a student, is working as a theatre usher. Because of her role, she misses the beginning of the play – again. But Summer is preoccupied, anyway, because her girlfriend April was travelling into the fire zone to help her parents.
Ivy, younger than Margot, is distracted by a man snoring in the seat next to her. She is a philanthropist who has received free tickets to the play because the theatre company wants her money. Ivy is thinking about the past.
Three women of different ages and backgrounds separately watching ‘Happy Days’, a two-act play with an ambiguous ending. And the women? What will happen next for each of them now the play is over?
I admire the structure of this novel, the way in which Ms Thomas uses the performance of ‘Happy Days’ to bring these separate stories together without constructing an artificial connection between the women. Each woman’s monologue invites the reader to think about their own life: past and present, as well as to envisage the future. Watching a play is a very solitary activity, even in a crowd. Because the audience is static, seated and focussed (in varying degrees) the play on the stage becomes a backdrop for reflection, for each of the three women whose stories we become part of. And for readers as well.
Highly recommended.
Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
July 25, 2021
4.5, rounded down.
A novel revolving round three audience members' thoughts as they watch a production of Beckett's Happy Days? Yes, please! This just hit my sweet spot, even though there is not much of a plot, per se - which is usually the minimal quality for me to like a book. But Thomas uses her unique précis to really dig deep into these women's past and present ... and I found it riveting. It helps enormously if one has read or seen the play recently, and to catch me up to speed, I watched the terrific 2000 'Beckett on Film' production.
Not a lot more to say, other than my GR fiends Marchpane and Ron Charles have marvelous and detailed discussions of the book in their reviews - so go read those! (I'm getting lazy!)
A novel revolving round three audience members' thoughts as they watch a production of Beckett's Happy Days? Yes, please! This just hit my sweet spot, even though there is not much of a plot, per se - which is usually the minimal quality for me to like a book. But Thomas uses her unique précis to really dig deep into these women's past and present ... and I found it riveting. It helps enormously if one has read or seen the play recently, and to catch me up to speed, I watched the terrific 2000 'Beckett on Film' production.
Not a lot more to say, other than my GR fiends Marchpane and Ron Charles have marvelous and detailed discussions of the book in their reviews - so go read those! (I'm getting lazy!)
March 27, 2021
Once seen, she cannot be unseen: a chatty middle-aged woman buried in a mound up to her waist.
“Waiting for Godot” may be better known, but for unnerving visual impact, nothing tops Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days.”
The absurdist play, perhaps the most stationary in the Western canon, has challenged actresses and viewers since it was first performed 60 years ago. How did this woman — Winnie — find herself embedded in the ground?
“What’s the idea of you?” Winnie recalls once being asked by a passerby. “What are you meant to mean?”
That is the question, as another great soliloquy notes.
Winnie’s good cheer seems alternately the best and the most horrific response to her rootedness. Even in the second act, by which time she’s buried up to her neck, she’s still exclaiming, “Oh this is a happy day!”
Is that optimism or madness?
Australian writer Claire Thomas has just published “The Performance,” a curious novel about three women watching “Happy Days.” It begins moments before the lights go down in the theater. Some 228 pages later, members of the audience file out to the parking lot.
The end. Thank you for coming.
As a plot, that sounds like Beckett squared. The fact that “The Performance” works at all is noteworthy; that it’s engaging and evocative is something of a miracle.
Thomas moves chapter by chapter around her three female protagonists sitting.....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
“Waiting for Godot” may be better known, but for unnerving visual impact, nothing tops Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days.”
The absurdist play, perhaps the most stationary in the Western canon, has challenged actresses and viewers since it was first performed 60 years ago. How did this woman — Winnie — find herself embedded in the ground?
“What’s the idea of you?” Winnie recalls once being asked by a passerby. “What are you meant to mean?”
That is the question, as another great soliloquy notes.
Winnie’s good cheer seems alternately the best and the most horrific response to her rootedness. Even in the second act, by which time she’s buried up to her neck, she’s still exclaiming, “Oh this is a happy day!”
Is that optimism or madness?
Australian writer Claire Thomas has just published “The Performance,” a curious novel about three women watching “Happy Days.” It begins moments before the lights go down in the theater. Some 228 pages later, members of the audience file out to the parking lot.
The end. Thank you for coming.
As a plot, that sounds like Beckett squared. The fact that “The Performance” works at all is noteworthy; that it’s engaging and evocative is something of a miracle.
Thomas moves chapter by chapter around her three female protagonists sitting.....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
July 25, 2021
When Summer is sitting in the audience like this, she often wishes she could get into the heads of the people around her. She wonders if they are taking any notice of the play, or if they are sitting here having irrelevant tangential thoughts, or if they are bursting to go to the loo, hanging on till intermission.
The Performance is a formally innovative novel based around Samuel Beckett's Happy Days.
Three women - a lecturer in literature nearing retirement, a middle-aged philanthropist and a young usher - watch Beckett's play, which triggers thoughts of their own lives and concerns. Cleverly the novel is structured in three parts, the first and last reflecting the two Acts of the play, told in alternating close third-person perspective of each of the women, but with an Intermission, reflecting the break of the play, told in the form of a playscript, where the three women meet each other.
The book neatly links the themes of the play, and the words of Winnie, to the back stories of the characters. Thomas has said (https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
And Thomas does the same with her meta-concerns, notably, and not surprisingly for a novel written in 2020 Australia, climate change in general, and the climate-change triggered bushfires in particular:
the false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold.
It is a fascinating re-read of Beckett's play which certain focuses on heat and even fire, as Winnie tells us in the play:
With the sun blazing so much fiercer down, and hourly fiercer, is it not natural things should go on fire never known to do so, in this way I mean, spontaneous like.
Although Beckett's novel was written 60 years ago, and Thomas account omits some of Winnie's other thoughts. On reflection, having complained about the heat, Winnie ultimately decides It is no hotter today than yesterday, it will be no hotter tomorrow than today, how could it, and so on back into the far past, forward into the far future, and in any case, when reflecting on the heat she tells herself:
The heat is much greater.
The perspiration much less.
That is what I find so wonderful.
The way man adapts himself.
To changing conditions.
My one small reservation about the novel is that I found the strongest section those that referred more directly to Happy Days than to Thomas's characters' own stories.
And I would strongly recommend watching Beckett's wonderful play in conjunction with the novel. I was fortunate enough to be able to see the 60th anniversary production directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Lisa Dwan as Winnie and it added a lot to my interpretation, including those elements that Thomas has deliberately, and justifiably given the novel is about how people interpret plays rather than about Happy Days itself, omitted.
A strong 4 stars and one I hope to see on the Booker shortlist
The Performance is a formally innovative novel based around Samuel Beckett's Happy Days.
Three women - a lecturer in literature nearing retirement, a middle-aged philanthropist and a young usher - watch Beckett's play, which triggers thoughts of their own lives and concerns. Cleverly the novel is structured in three parts, the first and last reflecting the two Acts of the play, told in alternating close third-person perspective of each of the women, but with an Intermission, reflecting the break of the play, told in the form of a playscript, where the three women meet each other.
The book neatly links the themes of the play, and the words of Winnie, to the back stories of the characters. Thomas has said (https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
The play’s formal austerity offered my novel a useful structural device to contain the swirling thoughts I wanted for my characters. The range of subjects covered by Winnie also allowed me to extract whatever words most resonated for my women, triggering their thoughts and memories.
And Thomas does the same with her meta-concerns, notably, and not surprisingly for a novel written in 2020 Australia, climate change in general, and the climate-change triggered bushfires in particular:
the false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold.
It is a fascinating re-read of Beckett's play which certain focuses on heat and even fire, as Winnie tells us in the play:
With the sun blazing so much fiercer down, and hourly fiercer, is it not natural things should go on fire never known to do so, in this way I mean, spontaneous like.
Although Beckett's novel was written 60 years ago, and Thomas account omits some of Winnie's other thoughts. On reflection, having complained about the heat, Winnie ultimately decides It is no hotter today than yesterday, it will be no hotter tomorrow than today, how could it, and so on back into the far past, forward into the far future, and in any case, when reflecting on the heat she tells herself:
The heat is much greater.
The perspiration much less.
That is what I find so wonderful.
The way man adapts himself.
To changing conditions.
My one small reservation about the novel is that I found the strongest section those that referred more directly to Happy Days than to Thomas's characters' own stories.
And I would strongly recommend watching Beckett's wonderful play in conjunction with the novel. I was fortunate enough to be able to see the 60th anniversary production directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Lisa Dwan as Winnie and it added a lot to my interpretation, including those elements that Thomas has deliberately, and justifiably given the novel is about how people interpret plays rather than about Happy Days itself, omitted.
A strong 4 stars and one I hope to see on the Booker shortlist
April 14, 2021
What an extraordinary book! It focuses on three women; all of whom have come to watch a Samuel Beckett play (Happy People) at the theatre. Three very different women indeed; Margot is a Professor, usually cosseted in the familiar world of academia but having to step out of her comfort zone as her husband’s health deteriorates. Ivy is a philanthropist, wealthy and considerate after dealing with her fair share of tragedy many years earlier. And then there’s Summer, the young usher who is trying to maintain a professional facade whilst worrying about her girlfriend’s safety as the bush fires rage.
The whole book is set over the duration of the performance, although memories and history are revealed alongside the real time events. There is a lot of time given to the actual SB play which I confess to not having heard of, but have googled since and feel all the more intrigued by it.
So this book is certainly something a little different; it’s very much character led and the three characters are multi layered and really interesting. As each of their memories and opinions are gently (and ever so slowly) revealed, the minutiae of their lives, their hopes and their dreams all become apparent.
This is a very slow and meandering book, definitely not one to be rushed. You need to sit back, relax and think about the writing before you turn each page. Savour it, absorb it, appreciate the cool darkness of the theatre while the heat soars outside, and you’ll almost feel like you’re there.
Thanks to Orion Books (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) for my ARC. All views are my own.
The whole book is set over the duration of the performance, although memories and history are revealed alongside the real time events. There is a lot of time given to the actual SB play which I confess to not having heard of, but have googled since and feel all the more intrigued by it.
So this book is certainly something a little different; it’s very much character led and the three characters are multi layered and really interesting. As each of their memories and opinions are gently (and ever so slowly) revealed, the minutiae of their lives, their hopes and their dreams all become apparent.
This is a very slow and meandering book, definitely not one to be rushed. You need to sit back, relax and think about the writing before you turn each page. Savour it, absorb it, appreciate the cool darkness of the theatre while the heat soars outside, and you’ll almost feel like you’re there.
Thanks to Orion Books (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) for my ARC. All views are my own.
January 10, 2023
This little quiet book slowly engulfed me with each chapter, the poignant revelation of how we perform our lives till the lines between reality and our inner thoughts blur. This is the case for the three perspectives we follow as they watch a Samuel Beckett play. Margot, Ivy, and Summer ( Early Seventies, Early Forties, and Early twenties respectively) as they comfortably or uncomfortably follow the play let us into their lives tinged with all the fears, hopes and everything in between. One reflects on their career path and motherhood whilst another on the overwhelming state of the world as a raging fire continues to smog the air outside the theatre but they are forced to sit and ponder their lives and values which mirror the play they consume.
This was such an innovative narrative with a depth like no other and one I won't forget any time soon.
This was such an innovative narrative with a depth like no other and one I won't forget any time soon.
Read
January 15, 2021Firstly, I loved the whole idea of this novel: that while the most extraordinary life happens onstage, three relatively ordinary women in a theatre's audience consider their intimate fears and desires. And secondly, Thomas writes these women with such wisdom and compassion, that by the end we are all transformed.
April 23, 2021
Gorgeous, meandering, suffocating.
August 26, 2021
What an absolute triumph! I was so pleasantly taken aback by how much I enjoyed this book.
Essentially told through the perspective of 3 women at a theatre performance, we get to know about their lives, their thoughts and the world around them through their inner monologue. I loved being in their head. So much wit and charm and absolute realness.
Essentially told through the perspective of 3 women at a theatre performance, we get to know about their lives, their thoughts and the world around them through their inner monologue. I loved being in their head. So much wit and charm and absolute realness.
February 28, 2021
★★★★½
The Performance is an immersive experience that truly emulates what it's like to spend a couple of hours at the theatre. Thomas brings readers into the interior thoughts, fears and emotions of three Melburnian women of different ages and backgrounds, who are watching the same performance of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. As a huge theatre fan I adored the premise and its execution, although the blurb had implied a more interconnected denouement between the characters than the one that eventuated.
Margot, Summer and Ivy are all watching Happy Days at the Melbourne Arts Centre, amid Australia's black summer of bushfires in 2019/20. Margot is an esteemed literature professor, whose husband's memory loss is starting to shake her. Summer is an acting student working as an usher, terrified for her girlfriend, whose family lives in the fireline. Ivy is a middle aged philanthropist being wooed by the theatre company, but thinking mostly about her children. All are pondering their lives, especially their fears, while reacting to the play in front of them. And as readers, we plunge into their minds for the duration of the performance.
Summer was the most vivid character for me; Thomas' descriptions of her existential anxiety about climate change and her girlfriend April's safety were so powerful against the stillness of the theatre and the drama of the play. Her voice was also the most distinctive and striking. Yet Margot also wormed her way into my sympathies, as the extent of her circumstances became clear, including the heartbreaking communication gap with her son. While Ivy's narration stood out less to me, by the end of the novel all three women felt like real people I had come to know and understand.
Thomas' writing has the immense skill of placing the reader inside the heads of these women. Think about any time you've been to the theatre. The way your mind takes some time to focus, skittering between your to do list and deeper worries, before flitting back to the action on stage, then being sent back into your memories with a line or gesture the actors deliver. Thomas captures this inner monologue with astonishing accuracy so that the reading experience is like taking your seat in a theatre. I really recommend trying to read each Act in one sitting, as if at a play.
One of the best devices Thomas uses is to literally script the intermission, and narrate the performance in prose, inverting the traditional approach. In doing so she reminds us the three women are characters we are ourselves watching as they step out of the auditorium, transitioning from the watcher to the watched. Thomas achieves this with an elegant simplicity I adored.
My only regret reading this was that I wasn't familiar with the themes and complexities of Happy Days, which I suspect would have added another layer of appreciation to the cleverness of this story. You certainly don't need to know the play as Thomas gives enough descriptions to follow along, but I suspect some of its gendered, existential struggles were mirrored in Thomas' characters - but cannot say for sure.
This is undoubtedly the sort of story I expect to see on prize lists like the Stella and the Miles Franklin - for originality, yes, but also for the deep insight into women at different stages of their lives, placed centre stage. It's also exciting to see Australian authors experimenting with form in accessible ways. Highly recommended, especially for readers who enjoyed Eleanor Catton's The Rehearsal.
I received a copy of The Performance from Hachette Australia in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
The Performance is an immersive experience that truly emulates what it's like to spend a couple of hours at the theatre. Thomas brings readers into the interior thoughts, fears and emotions of three Melburnian women of different ages and backgrounds, who are watching the same performance of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. As a huge theatre fan I adored the premise and its execution, although the blurb had implied a more interconnected denouement between the characters than the one that eventuated.
Margot, Summer and Ivy are all watching Happy Days at the Melbourne Arts Centre, amid Australia's black summer of bushfires in 2019/20. Margot is an esteemed literature professor, whose husband's memory loss is starting to shake her. Summer is an acting student working as an usher, terrified for her girlfriend, whose family lives in the fireline. Ivy is a middle aged philanthropist being wooed by the theatre company, but thinking mostly about her children. All are pondering their lives, especially their fears, while reacting to the play in front of them. And as readers, we plunge into their minds for the duration of the performance.
Summer was the most vivid character for me; Thomas' descriptions of her existential anxiety about climate change and her girlfriend April's safety were so powerful against the stillness of the theatre and the drama of the play. Her voice was also the most distinctive and striking. Yet Margot also wormed her way into my sympathies, as the extent of her circumstances became clear, including the heartbreaking communication gap with her son. While Ivy's narration stood out less to me, by the end of the novel all three women felt like real people I had come to know and understand.
Thomas' writing has the immense skill of placing the reader inside the heads of these women. Think about any time you've been to the theatre. The way your mind takes some time to focus, skittering between your to do list and deeper worries, before flitting back to the action on stage, then being sent back into your memories with a line or gesture the actors deliver. Thomas captures this inner monologue with astonishing accuracy so that the reading experience is like taking your seat in a theatre. I really recommend trying to read each Act in one sitting, as if at a play.
One of the best devices Thomas uses is to literally script the intermission, and narrate the performance in prose, inverting the traditional approach. In doing so she reminds us the three women are characters we are ourselves watching as they step out of the auditorium, transitioning from the watcher to the watched. Thomas achieves this with an elegant simplicity I adored.
My only regret reading this was that I wasn't familiar with the themes and complexities of Happy Days, which I suspect would have added another layer of appreciation to the cleverness of this story. You certainly don't need to know the play as Thomas gives enough descriptions to follow along, but I suspect some of its gendered, existential struggles were mirrored in Thomas' characters - but cannot say for sure.
This is undoubtedly the sort of story I expect to see on prize lists like the Stella and the Miles Franklin - for originality, yes, but also for the deep insight into women at different stages of their lives, placed centre stage. It's also exciting to see Australian authors experimenting with form in accessible ways. Highly recommended, especially for readers who enjoyed Eleanor Catton's The Rehearsal.
I received a copy of The Performance from Hachette Australia in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
March 7, 2022
Im Kulturzentrum von Melbourne wird Samuel Becketts „Glückliche Tage“ aufgeführt, während außerhalb in den Bergen die Buschfeuer wüten. Drinnen verfolgen drei Frauen nicht nur das Stück auf der Bühne, sondern beschäftigen sich auch mit ihren eigenen Leben. Da ist die Literaturprofessorin Margot Pierce, Anfang 70, die mit ihrem Sohn Adam und mit ihrer Ehe mit dem dementen John hadert. Da ist die Kunstmäzenin Ivy Parker, Anfang 40, die von ihrer Vergangenheit eingeholt wird. Und da ist die Platzanweiserin und angehende Schauspielerin Summer (22), die sich Sorgen um ihre Freundin April macht…
„Die Feuer“ ist ein Roman von Claire Thomas.
Meine Meinung:
Der Roman besteht aus neun Kapiteln, jeweils drei für jede der drei Frauen. Erzählt wird im Präsens abwechselnd aus der Sicht von Margot, Summer und Ivy. Durchbrochen wird dieses Schema durch den Teil „Pause“, der wie ein Drama aufgebaut ist und sich auf Dialoge und Regieanweisungen beschränkt. Eine interessante und gut funktionierende Struktur.
Auch sprachlich hat mich der Roman überzeugt. Der Schreibstil ist schnörkellos, aber eindringlich und intensiv. Die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven variieren auch in sprachlicher Hinsicht auf hervorragende Weise. Das Geschehen auf der Bühne und die Gedanken der Frauen werden kunstvoll verwoben.
Die drei Frauen sind recht unterschiedlich. Sie alle sind keine klassischen Sympathieträgerinnen, aber authentische und reizvolle Charaktere. Die Gedanken und Gefühle der Protagonistinnen lassen sich sehr gut nachvollziehen.
Thematisch wird ein breites Spektrum abgedeckt. Es geht um den Klimawandel, psychische Probleme, traumatische Erlebnisse, Gewalt und einiges mehr. Vor allem aber überdenken die drei Protagonistinnen ihre bisherigen Sichtweisen und ihre Leben, was Denkimpulse auslöst und mich ebenfalls zum Nachdenken angeregt hat. Zugleich werden sich in dem Roman einige Frauen wiederfinden können. Das Beckett-Stück bildet einen skurrilen, ja bizarren Rahmen und ist ein passender Hintergrund, der etliche Anknüpfungspunkte bietet.
Obwohl auf der Handlungsebene nicht viel passiert, entfaltet der Roman schon nach wenigen Seiten eine Sogkraft. Sie hält auf den rund 250 Seiten an.
Das künstlerisch anmutende Cover lässt sowohl an die Feuer als auch an die Frauen denken - eine gute Wahl. Der mehrdeutige deutsche Titel ist einerseits ansprechend, aber andererseits etwas irreführender als das englischsprachige Original („The Performance“).
Mein Fazit:
„Die Feuer“ von Claire Thomas ist ein eindringlicher und eindrucksvoller Roman. Eine empfehlenswerte Lektüre.
„Die Feuer“ ist ein Roman von Claire Thomas.
Meine Meinung:
Der Roman besteht aus neun Kapiteln, jeweils drei für jede der drei Frauen. Erzählt wird im Präsens abwechselnd aus der Sicht von Margot, Summer und Ivy. Durchbrochen wird dieses Schema durch den Teil „Pause“, der wie ein Drama aufgebaut ist und sich auf Dialoge und Regieanweisungen beschränkt. Eine interessante und gut funktionierende Struktur.
Auch sprachlich hat mich der Roman überzeugt. Der Schreibstil ist schnörkellos, aber eindringlich und intensiv. Die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven variieren auch in sprachlicher Hinsicht auf hervorragende Weise. Das Geschehen auf der Bühne und die Gedanken der Frauen werden kunstvoll verwoben.
Die drei Frauen sind recht unterschiedlich. Sie alle sind keine klassischen Sympathieträgerinnen, aber authentische und reizvolle Charaktere. Die Gedanken und Gefühle der Protagonistinnen lassen sich sehr gut nachvollziehen.
Thematisch wird ein breites Spektrum abgedeckt. Es geht um den Klimawandel, psychische Probleme, traumatische Erlebnisse, Gewalt und einiges mehr. Vor allem aber überdenken die drei Protagonistinnen ihre bisherigen Sichtweisen und ihre Leben, was Denkimpulse auslöst und mich ebenfalls zum Nachdenken angeregt hat. Zugleich werden sich in dem Roman einige Frauen wiederfinden können. Das Beckett-Stück bildet einen skurrilen, ja bizarren Rahmen und ist ein passender Hintergrund, der etliche Anknüpfungspunkte bietet.
Obwohl auf der Handlungsebene nicht viel passiert, entfaltet der Roman schon nach wenigen Seiten eine Sogkraft. Sie hält auf den rund 250 Seiten an.
Das künstlerisch anmutende Cover lässt sowohl an die Feuer als auch an die Frauen denken - eine gute Wahl. Der mehrdeutige deutsche Titel ist einerseits ansprechend, aber andererseits etwas irreführender als das englischsprachige Original („The Performance“).
Mein Fazit:
„Die Feuer“ von Claire Thomas ist ein eindringlicher und eindrucksvoller Roman. Eine empfehlenswerte Lektüre.
January 7, 2021
Three women attend a performance of Beckett’s Happy Days in Melbourne and while the demise (or are they already dead? That play has always confused me) of Winnie and Willie plays out on stage we follow their tangential thoughts and learn their inner secrets and fears. Australian fiction has a rich tradition of incorporating the visual arts into narrative and I’m thinking here of Miles Allinson’s Fever of Animals, Heather Rose’s The Museum of Modern Love and Emily Bitto’s The Strays just to name a few. Structuring this book around a play cleverly allows Thomas to explore these women while giving her a deliciously compressed and restricted timeframe to do so. I read it in a single sitting and was drawn in completely. The women were very well rendered but I would have liked more distinct voices for the three – Margot, Ivy and Summer are each 20 years apart after all. This is an impressive work of fiction that uses art to reveal our humanity, something so many readers will love.
May 3, 2021
A fantastic novel, I really loved this book. It’s a story about 3 women, set in Melbourne during a recent summer of extreme heat and bushfires encroaching on the city. They are attending a play, and we learn about their lives as we follow their thoughts. The play is real, a Samuel Beckett one, about a woman trapped in life, destined to repeat mundane things. There’s a lot in the play that resonates in various ways with the women. The women are very interesting in their backgrounds, present circumstances and hopes for the future.
I think the strength of this novel lies in the writing. It’s crystal clear, has an excellent pace, reveals a lot yet suggests much more. Great work by the author.
I think the strength of this novel lies in the writing. It’s crystal clear, has an excellent pace, reveals a lot yet suggests much more. Great work by the author.
June 15, 2021
At almost the length of a novella, The Performance takes place completely within the confines of a production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. Three very different women take their seats, and their stories spool out as stream of consciousness, revealing their pasts and current situations. I applaud Thomas's choice of this problematic play as metaphor for the women's lives and their reactions to it.
September 21, 2024
3⭐️ = Average.
Audio.
This was really three character studies. Telling the tale of 3 women inside a theatre as forest fires rage around them. Very descriptive and intelligent writing which I enjoyed. The ending was pretty naff though and I do think the book could have been shorter.
I see that this author has only written a couple of books and I’d like to read the other one. Not in audio format but in paperback, as I think I would appreciate the text much more.
Audio.
This was really three character studies. Telling the tale of 3 women inside a theatre as forest fires rage around them. Very descriptive and intelligent writing which I enjoyed. The ending was pretty naff though and I do think the book could have been shorter.
I see that this author has only written a couple of books and I’d like to read the other one. Not in audio format but in paperback, as I think I would appreciate the text much more.
September 30, 2021
i honestly dont know how i feel about this one,,, literally got nothing, no emotions, no reactions, just nothing
September 11, 2022
I loved everything about this book. The structure, the plot, the characters, the story, the language. Most of all the allusions, references, critique to the performance of Beckett's Happy Days. With a light touch the writer touches upon so much that is part of modern urban society - women and the choices they can or cannot make and the fallout, the trauma they have to undergo as mothers and daughters, how climate change is affecting people in the real world making some panic about it and some who ignore it or, the different kinds of violence women face and hide from others. All the while, like a bass note , Beckett 's play continues, illuminating the human condition.
April 11, 2021
The Performance is a thoughtful and deftly constructed book that turns one’s thoughts inward while contemplating how we connect to the outward world. Three women come to the theatre in Melbourne to watch a performance of Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days. Each of them is at a different chronological and emotional stage of their life experiences. Margot, approximately in her late sixties,is a literature professor nearing retirement. Summer, an usher in the the theatre, is a drama student at university in her early twenties. Ivy, a philanthropist who supports theater,is in her forties.
Each of these women represent a different stage of the life cycle. Scattered around different parts of the theatre, they maintain the outward calm and quietude required at a theatrical event. Their interior musings, though, are a cauldron of activity. The author employs phrases and scenes from Beckett’s play as a trigger for each woman , in alternating chapters, to contemplate their relationships,regrets and choices throughout their lives. There is very little external action in this novel.The action primarily comes in the ferment of each character’s mind as they sit cocooned in silence during the play.
Ms Thomas employs language in a sparse yet evocative manner.Her use of language is a perfect offset to Beckett’s play, which eschews action and maximizes imagery to stimulate audience thought.There are a host of themes throughout the book. It was striking to me how we can be physically proximate to another person yet inhabit a totally different world of sensibilities. We can have physical stillness while our thoughts quietly stampede inside. This novel explores these contradictions while revealing the arc of each woman’s journey to their current life point. This work is not to be read quickly and may not be for every reader. As I wandered through this novel, it slowly grew on me. By the end of my reading, I was reminded of a famous line in a Carl Sandberg poem where he emotes that” the fog came in on little cat feet.” If this novel suits your temperament, it just might sneak up and envelop your thoughts.
Each of these women represent a different stage of the life cycle. Scattered around different parts of the theatre, they maintain the outward calm and quietude required at a theatrical event. Their interior musings, though, are a cauldron of activity. The author employs phrases and scenes from Beckett’s play as a trigger for each woman , in alternating chapters, to contemplate their relationships,regrets and choices throughout their lives. There is very little external action in this novel.The action primarily comes in the ferment of each character’s mind as they sit cocooned in silence during the play.
Ms Thomas employs language in a sparse yet evocative manner.Her use of language is a perfect offset to Beckett’s play, which eschews action and maximizes imagery to stimulate audience thought.There are a host of themes throughout the book. It was striking to me how we can be physically proximate to another person yet inhabit a totally different world of sensibilities. We can have physical stillness while our thoughts quietly stampede inside. This novel explores these contradictions while revealing the arc of each woman’s journey to their current life point. This work is not to be read quickly and may not be for every reader. As I wandered through this novel, it slowly grew on me. By the end of my reading, I was reminded of a famous line in a Carl Sandberg poem where he emotes that” the fog came in on little cat feet.” If this novel suits your temperament, it just might sneak up and envelop your thoughts.
April 17, 2021
“There are doubts somewhere in the vicinity of her heart, she can feel them. She is holding them there. Heart doubts. Waverings. Confusions. She is hearing this declaration of doubt. Or is it a confession, to express doubt? An accusation? It depends on who is listening.”
I will just start by saying that I absolutely loved this book, I lapped it up over 2 days & loved every second. The writing is sharp, thought provoking & the structure so unique & extremely well executed.
The novel is set in a Melbourne theatre where three women are watching a performance of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, whilst a bushfire is ablaze on the edge of the city. Margot is a professor contemplating her fractious relationship with her sick husband, Ivy is a philanthropist with a difficult past while Summer is a drama student, working as an usher, anxious about her girlfriend who has gone to help her parents who are affected by the fires.
Thomas vividly evokes that feeling of anticipation, settling in your seat, sometimes slightly annoyed by noisy audience members or the territorial negotiation of the armrest. Her novel is structured so that we spend most of the time in Margot, Summer and Ivy’s heads, bringing them together neatly at the interval in a very unique way, before they return to their seats. I thoroughly enjoyed this witty, perceptive novel which hangs together beautifully as its characters unfold their stories through thoughts, memories and reflections, occasionally offering their views on the play enacted in front of them.
All in all one I would definitely recommend, this will be one I hope to revisit again one day & has left me feeling very excited to explore more Aussie lit.
(A very big thank you to the publisher for sending this gifted proof copy my way)
I will just start by saying that I absolutely loved this book, I lapped it up over 2 days & loved every second. The writing is sharp, thought provoking & the structure so unique & extremely well executed.
The novel is set in a Melbourne theatre where three women are watching a performance of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, whilst a bushfire is ablaze on the edge of the city. Margot is a professor contemplating her fractious relationship with her sick husband, Ivy is a philanthropist with a difficult past while Summer is a drama student, working as an usher, anxious about her girlfriend who has gone to help her parents who are affected by the fires.
Thomas vividly evokes that feeling of anticipation, settling in your seat, sometimes slightly annoyed by noisy audience members or the territorial negotiation of the armrest. Her novel is structured so that we spend most of the time in Margot, Summer and Ivy’s heads, bringing them together neatly at the interval in a very unique way, before they return to their seats. I thoroughly enjoyed this witty, perceptive novel which hangs together beautifully as its characters unfold their stories through thoughts, memories and reflections, occasionally offering their views on the play enacted in front of them.
All in all one I would definitely recommend, this will be one I hope to revisit again one day & has left me feeling very excited to explore more Aussie lit.
(A very big thank you to the publisher for sending this gifted proof copy my way)
March 31, 2021
I love this kind of book. A beautiful character study of three women, as a their lives intersect.
Three women, connected to The Arts (a philanthropist, a young drama student working as an usher, and a literature professor facing retirement) are watching the Beckett play ‘Happy Days’, as the terrible wildfires rage close the city.
As this strange performance plays out in real time, their minds wander, contemplating their hopes and anxieties, past and present traumas, their inner struggles reflecting the themes of the play, as the woman on stage literally becomes buried deeper and deeper into a mound of dirt and trash. I felt close to each of these women, felt such empathy for each of them.
The writing is intimate and lovely, the characters so real. The themes of identity, aging, trauma, fear and expectations are handled with such care. Such a fantastic read. Can’t wait to read more from this author.
(No prior knowledge of the play is required, but a quick browse of the wiki page definitely gave me a greater understanding of the way these women’s lives and the themes of the play intertwine)
Three women, connected to The Arts (a philanthropist, a young drama student working as an usher, and a literature professor facing retirement) are watching the Beckett play ‘Happy Days’, as the terrible wildfires rage close the city.
As this strange performance plays out in real time, their minds wander, contemplating their hopes and anxieties, past and present traumas, their inner struggles reflecting the themes of the play, as the woman on stage literally becomes buried deeper and deeper into a mound of dirt and trash. I felt close to each of these women, felt such empathy for each of them.
The writing is intimate and lovely, the characters so real. The themes of identity, aging, trauma, fear and expectations are handled with such care. Such a fantastic read. Can’t wait to read more from this author.
(No prior knowledge of the play is required, but a quick browse of the wiki page definitely gave me a greater understanding of the way these women’s lives and the themes of the play intertwine)
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