The Anniversary

Stephanie Bishop’s novels are atmospheric, with complex characters and subtle clues as to what lies ahead for them. Her novels have a dream like feel at times to me with reveals that bring me crashing back to earth. The Anniversary is very emotive, with twists that were unexpected and a narrator that pulls at your heartstrings. It also asks questions of creativity and its ownership.

J.B. is an author on the rise. Her latest novel has won a prestigious prize, but her husband Patrick doesn’t know yet. They’ve planned a cruise for their wedding anniversary and J.B. will fly on to New York to accept it at its conclusion. The problem is that for J.B. and Patrick, the cruise ends early and abruptly after Patrick falls overboard. J.B. is show more taken off the ship in northern Japan to view the body and make her own way after that. As she meanders through the tough days ahead, she reflects on how they fell in love and their marriage. The story continues with more and more revealed about how they worked and lived together. J.B.’s own childhood losses are explored as well as how they made her into the adult she is and her decisions for life. It’s the type of novel where you can easily get away with saying that a main character dies, but can’t reveal too much more for fear of spoiling some of the twists that are to come.

Bishop has once again written characters that are complex, with some very unlikeable traits and actions. But she also creates them in a way that you can emphasise with them and continue reading because you want to know what happens to them. Both J.B. and Patrick are great examples of this. Both experts in their fields of writing and films, they can be pretty nasty at times (particularly to each other). But J.B. is left adrift by his passing and you can’t help but feel sympathy for her, for having to present to the media after such a tragedy. For people that ask soulless questions and that still want a piece of her professionally, despite her falling apart. As J.B. negotiates her way through life alone, things get increasingly uncomfortable as her suspicions begin to rise and taking solace in her sister’s family doesn’t help at all. It’s a slow burn as J.B. is finally shaken out of the dream like state she’s been in, but as the fog clears the truth begins to dawn on the reader. The sentences are sharper and J.B. as the narrator is more direct.

During J.B.’s grief, there is a lot of thought put into describing scenes, not just their contents, but how they felt. How they smelled, and the little quirky touches that left an impression like a character’s eye brow. The weather also plays a role as a character, from the storm on the ship disturbing the peace to the humidity of a Sydney summer as J.B.’s time begins to run out. Other themes, such as who owns real life experiences and whether they should be fictionalised run through the novel. Status is another big one, with J.B. and Patrick having an imbalance through their marriage, tipped on its head as J.B.’s own star begins to eclipse Patrick’s. Is creativity a power struggle? How much should be based in truth? Do we owe it to the other players to seek their permission? These questions are asked during the novel, with various emotions from the characters. It’s interesting and plays well against the situation that J.B. finds herself in.

Overall, this is a novel that hides many of its secrets from the blurb, but it is well worth reading to find them out.

Thank you Hachette for the copy of this novel. My review is honest.

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For some bizarre reason, the library has put one of its 'crime genre' stickers on it, a symbol of a pistol. (I'm a bit baffled by the cover art too.)

In Book One, we meet Lucie a.k.a. J B Blackwood en route to collect a major literary prize. She's on a cruise ship with her auteur-husband Patrick, trying to revive their May-September marriage which is a bit rocky lately as her career blooms and his is fading. She's been sworn to secrecy by her publisher Ada, so Patrick doesn't know about the prize because, says Ada, he is a total gossip, and because he loves you so much. The plan is that she will fly on to New York for the awards ceremony at the end of the cruise.

And that's what she does, when the cruise comes to a premature end for her show more because Patrick is washed overboard in a ferocious storm. And then she does the publicity events at bookshops and on TV.

Yes.

That is not what a grieving widow is supposed to do.

The narration is brilliant. Are we reading the confused, distraught, occasionally drunken muddle of events from someone in shock? Or are we reading the words of a woman who mines her own life for her next novel? Or, is the whole thing a smokescreen designed to hide the truth of what happened on that night — from the authorities and from those whose love and respect she wants to keep?

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/05/11/the-anniversary-2023-by-stephanie-bishop/ show less

Author, J B Blackwood, learns that she has won a major literary prize but she can't tell anyone, even her husband Patrick, who can be a gossip, although she does tell her sister who is not really very interested and claims not to have read her books. Patrick is twenty years her senior, was her lecturer when she was a student and is the man she fell deeply in love with, her desire for him being quite without end. They have always enjoyed reading each other's work and commenting, even writing and suggesting ideas when the other one is stuck. But it is J B who is hit with the accusation that she would never have achieved so much without his help. No one ever comments on the help and writing that she has done for him.

J B books a cruise for show more their fourteenth wedding anniversary so that they can get away and try and overcome some of the mounting problems they seem to be having in their marriage. And so, it is onboard this ship, during a storm that Patrick goes overboard with his body turning up several days later. J B is questionned by the police but then it all goes quiet.

As we move through the book we realise what an unreliable narrator J B is, how memory and what she has written become muddled. Slowly, the layers are peeled back until we see a marriage that started with an unequal power balance and now the balance of power has shifted as wife becomes more successful than the husband.

This is a story of seduction and resentment with a very large dose of desire, both creative and sexual and a meditation on marriage. It incorporates what it means to be an author who has success - book readings, interviews and televison appearances - and where betrayal seems to lie at every turn. It as these appointments appear that we get the true desire of J B to be a winner. show less

A prize winning novelist and her film director husband go off on a cruise to celebrate their wedding anniversary. He fall overboard and dies. Or did he jump? Or was he pushed? The remainder of the book is inside the novelist's head as she comes to terms with her husband's death and its consequences. She has a disconcerting habit of noticing small, irrelevant details of her surroundings even when she is in a stressful situation that you might think demanded her attention. Her mind wanders, she digresses, uninterestingly. Despite the length of time we spend with her and the sympathy inducing situations in which she finds herself she is such a flat, unengaging character we really end up not caring what happens to her. Which is just as well show more given the ending. Disappointing. show less

Very difficult to review this book. Right away it captured me: the storm, the tragedy, her writing about writing, the long well-written descriptions, and the analysis of her relationship with her film-maker husband. Somewhere in the middle it slowed down, with her time in Australia with her sister and pervy husband, and I did not care for or really believe the ending.

Thank you to Grove Press for this ARC.

This book starts out with J.B., who's a writer and her husband Patrick on a cruise. Things happen and he goes overboard. She tries to get away from the press by going to her sister's house in Australia and then abruptly leaves due to an inquiry due to Patrick's drowning. Was it her fault or not? I didn't see what happened coming believe me. Maybe to others it would be obvious but not to me.

This book is very verbose with a lot of sentences that I had to reread to try to understand them. Also, there are no quotations in it which for some reason bothers me but I knew who was talking of course.

It was a pretty big book for my liking but it went faster than I thought it would. I enjoyed it though albeit a show more little too long like I said. show less

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

I found this book difficult to read. There were no speech marks, it jumped around in time, I was frequently unsure if the protagonist was narrating what was actually happening, what she was imagining, or what had happened in the past. She was unemotional (OK, for some of the time frames she was in shock) and unsympathetic, and no one's actions made emotional sense to me.

Not for me.