New Zealand Listener – August 24, 2019

52 LISTENER AUGUST 24 2019

BOOKS&CULTURE

by BRIGID FEEHAN

D

ebut author Lisa Taddeo spent

eight years writing Three Women,

her attention-getting and inti-

mate look at the lives of three

American women.

Taddeo chose them for her study of

female desire because she considered them

to be open and relatable. She moved to

the towns where two of them lived “to

better understand their day-to-day lives”.

The result of her dedication is a book that

extensively and vividly captures the expe-

riences of each woman. But it’s a book

that feels strangely unmoored in time.

The fi rst is Maggie, a 17-year-old high-

school student who has a relationship

with her English teacher, Aaron Knodel.

He is married with children and writes her

love messages on Post-it Notes he sticks

in her favourite book, Twilight. To Maggie,

they are Twilight’s star-crossed lovers. She

has troubles at home – alcoholic parents;

he offers comfort as well as sex.

Until he doesn’t. It ends in court.

Knodel is found not guilty, seemingly

because of an inept prosecution and a

by GRAHAM REID

A

t the narrative axis of this

digressive second novel by

Wellington writer Craig Cliff is one

of the more idiosyncratic saints

in the Catholic hagiography: Joseph of

Copertino. The 17th-century friar was

known to levitate when in a state of grace

or ecstasy, according to contemporary

accounts.

It is this aerial Joseph, the famously

dim-witted patron saint of

aviators, who LA-based expat-

Kiwi fi lm-maker Duncan Blake

is given the chance to nail

down.

Despite Blake’s Hollywood

dreams failing to match reality,

he is, improbably, offered the

opportunity to do location

scouting in Joseph’s Italy

(“he’d never really scouted

locations, not properly”)

for acclaimed director Frank

Motta, who has long harboured the desire

to make a movie about this odd character.

Blake’s marriage is fraying, his young

son, Zeb, is uncommunicative and his job

prospects are grim (he works at a mediocre

chain restaurant where Motta occasionally

eats), so he leaps at the opportunity to

go to Italy, and with old school friend

Mack – a woman with a big personality

and plenty of secrets to reveal – hires a car

and heads off in search of the

fl ying saint and the mysteries

of his life.

It’s an interesting

premise, which comes with

speculations on Joseph and

Blake’s own fl ying dreams.

There’s a digression into a cult

(coincidentally headed by

another expat Kiwi), which

has elevated the idea of

levitation into quasi-scientifi c

investigation.

There’s a lot to assimilate – oblique

conversations; characters are

encountered, then vanish; strained calls

home; attempted murders – more so

when, throughout, the writer peppers

references to famous and obscure fi lms

Lust in

America

Lisa Taddeo’s vivid

study of female desire

feels like it’s lagging

behind the times.

The Italian

job

A novel inspired by a

levitating saint fl ies

off in some strange

directions.

Lisa Taddeo: the

powerful exploiting

the vulnerable.