Blair's Reviews > Baby

(2.5) Well, this was one of the most peculiar novels I've ever read. I'm almost stumped as to what to say about it.

I'll start with the basics. Set in New Zealand, it centres on a twentysomething woman, Cynthia, who has what appears to be a passionate obsession with her yoga instructor, Anahera. Cynthia invites Anahera to run away with her, and Anahera, who happens to be in the middle of a divorce, unexpectedly agrees. Cynthia clears out her dad's bank account and the two of them (accompanied by Cynthia's dog, whose name is... Snot-head) buy a boat, the eponymous Baby. Something that Cynthia delusionally perceives as an idyllic escape is interrupted by two things: 1) the two women sort of – inadvertently – kill someone, and 2) a man called Gordon inserts himself into their relationship.

Everything about Baby is strange. The characters' motivations are completely opaque; the dialogue sometimes makes them sound like robots. (The first thing Gordon says when he meets Cynthia and Anahera is 'I am a German man'.) The bubble they exist in seems cut off from reality, and not just because they're on a boat. For all that, there's an irresistible rhythm to it and I wanted to read on – if only in some attempt to figure out what the hell was going on.

I'm surprised to see that numerous other reviewers have interpreted Baby as a comment on millennial lifestyles and Young Women Today. It's so very odd – Cynthia's (and, for that matter, the others') actions so far removed from anything that could be considered normal under any circumstances – that it feels (to me) entirely disconnected from the real world. True, Cynthia obsessively watches reality TV on her phone and treats the machinations of The Bachelor contestants as a kind of guide for life. But Cynthia also appears to be a psychopath, so I'm not sure anything she does should be treated as representative of her generation.

I might have been a bit more generous with my rating, but a few days later I read Melissa Broder's The Pisces – a similarly quirky novel, but much more successful in terms of structure, character development, use of humour, just about everything really. The Pisces is such an assured handling of a lost, idiosyncratic protagonist that it made Baby's flaws more glaring in retrospect. Annaleese Jochems is very young (she was 22 when Baby was published) and obviously very talented; what she attempts here doesn't quite come off, but I'm still excited to read more from her.

I received an advance review copy of Baby from the publisher through Edelweiss.

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