Murmurations came my way when it was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. It's a delicate, melancholy collection of interlinked stories,—each of which could be read independently, but together they form a cohesive novella about a generation of women whose lives were constrained by the mores of the time and the isolation of urban life. The unusual title refers to connections among the behaviour of starlings which persists no matter how large the group is, but it serves to draw attention to the ways in which urban life diminishes connections between people. In these stories characters have only fleeting connections with each other—sometimes only gossip—and they do not support each other. They don't seem to know how.

For me, it is the paintings which inspired the stories that are more significant. In the author's Acknowledgments at the back of the book, Lefevre says that these original prompts are not necessary, but a quick web search enhanced my appreciation of the deft characterisation and the landscaping of the stories.

Murmurations is not set in a specific city, or country, but in the daunting urban landscapes painted by the American artist Edward Hopper. Noted for his reticence and habitual silence, Hopper's flat, saturated colours, his erasing of detail, produced pictures in which absence is as compelling and eloquent as presence. Each of these stories began as a response to one of Hopper's paintings...

The first story, 'After the Island' features a doctor's secretary called Emily, and is a response to Hopper's 1927 painting, 'Automat'. This portrait of a woman alone sets the tone for the collection: her environment is bleak, and she is troubled. It isn't necessary to know this painting to read the story, but it's easy to imagine Emily in this scene, mulling over her dilemma—her unwitting failure to respond to a cry for help.

Automat (1927), by Edward Hopper (*Wikipedia)

If you click through the links to view the paintings that inspired the stories, a pattern emerges. There is tension between the characters, there is resignation and sadness, there is quiet desperation; and there is profound loneliness.

• 'After the Island' — Automat


• 'Little Buddhas Everywhere' — Hotel Window


• 'Evenings All Afternoon' — Stairway (I can't find this one)


• 'Glory days' — Summer Evening


• 'The Lives We Lost' — Room in New York


• 'This Moment is Your Life' — Morning Sun


• 'Murmuration's — Summer in the City


• 'Paper Boats' — Women in the Sun

Erris Cleary, the doctor's wife whose death troubles all the characters, haunts the collection. Others who cross her path are not certain whether she was an alcoholic, a madwoman, an embarrassment to her husband or a victim of foul play. Each of them fails to connect, not through malice, but through the exigencies of daily life.

The bleak landscapes seem malevolent:

She had hated this place from the start, hated its weather, and the way people talked, hated its ugly houses. and the shapes of the trees; she hated the way locals stuck together, the way they were always reminding you that you didn't belong, that you would never be one of them, however long you stayed; she hated when they banged on about the natural beauty of the place when honestly it was bleak, and much of it rundown, and all of it desperately behind the times. What she dreaded most, she'd said, was being stuck here until she was old, or dying and being buried here, trapped forever in its cold and hostile soil. ('Evening All Afternoon', p.39)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/04/28/murmurations-by-carol-lefevre/