SNAKE

This is the story of a marriage between polar opposites, dissatisfaction snaking through it from the start. Rex is a solid man of earth, accepting of disappointments, and simply looking to settle into his own corner of land. Irene is flighty as the air and soon resentful of the man and life she has tied herself to. As the children grow up, Rex and Irene grow further apart under a scorching, suffocating sun.This deceptively simple story is built up through a chain of vividly realised images - the stark landscape, the hollow lives, the hope and the melancholy. Jennings effortlessly portrays a sense of looming darkness and stultifying claustrophobia under the expansive horizon of the outback. Her characters come alive through perfectly judged, vividly visual images of moods that are instantly recognisable, yet full of surprises and unexpected humour, too. Each chapter is titled as though it stands alone as an individual prose poem, and they do: the chapters are short, concise, pointed, but utterly earthed, and each illumining a thought or deed which shapes the emerging story."Irene's moods filled the house; there was no escaping. Rex was pinned by them to the walls, pushed into corners. Leaving the house did not make it any better; everywhere, sweeping blue sky, an horizon that stretched to the back of beyond, and yet he was suffocating."Reined in by the social expectations of the post-war period, Irene is tethered by somebody else's idea of domestic bliss. She is young, selfish, restless, and unable to grasp the bigger picture. Rex provides stability and the wrong kind of freedom. He is equally trapped, incapable of reacting against his hostile environment where the children, too, are foreign animals to him.'Snake' is a portrait of the protracted disintegration of a marriage and the increasing desperation of the people within it. Bleak though it sounds, this novella is startling in its clarity and power: the ultimate anti-love story.

I bought this book on a whim and had never even heard of Kate Jennings. I began reading it one night in the bath and by the time i stepped out, the book was finished. Jennings prose is wonderfully economical and so fluid that the story simply flows. The simplicity of the way in which this book is written serves only to magnify the impact the book has upon its reader. Jennings may appear to say little, but in doing so she is actually speaking volumes.I could not put this book down. And once I had, I still found myself drawn to it. It was a quick read but I was left feeling that I had just experienced something very very major indeed.