Madeleine St John and Belle and Sebastian: style and substance

Nikki Lusk chooses apt soundtracks for classic Australian literature. Here she pairs Madeleine St Johns The Women in Black with Belle and Sebastians Dear Catastrophe Waitress

Books and records that attract the tag sparkling or charming are always at risk of being dismissed as mere entertainment; trinkets to pass the time in a pleasant way rather than weighty contributions to literature or music. Madeleine St Johns novel The Women in Black and Belle and Sebastians album Dear Catastrophe Waitress have both been given those labels, but it would be foolish to underestimate them. Beneath the shiny surface of each sits both an abrasive wit and insightful reflection of human nature.

The Women in Black was the first of four novels by Madeleine St John, and the only one to be set in Australia. A comedy of manners set in 1960s Sydney, it follows the lives of the women who work at the FG Goode department store (modeled on David Jones, whose attendants still wear black today). St Johns prose breezes along as though each chapter is written in a single gush of breath, occasionally pausing to drop a withering line such as the description of Fays husband, Frank: He was a bastard of the standard-issue variety, neither cruel nor violent, merely insensitive and inarticulate. Military metaphors for the pre-Christmas sales, when a phalanx of grim-faced viragos cantered through the breach and lives might not be lost but wounds of one kind or another would most certainly be sustained, are examples of the delight within the novel.