We Were Never Friends, Margaret Bearman, 2020
I found this title through a list of 'great 2020 books that you might have missed' and I am so glad that I picked up this book to read. We Were Never Friends is Margaret Bearman’s second work of fiction and is the story of the Coates family: acclaimed Australian painter George, who is an ex-doctor, his wife Claire, and their children Lotti, Luke and Alice.
Told through the eyes of the eldest daughter Lotti, Margaret Bearman has written a powerful exploration of family dysfunction, family violence, notions of friendship, and perceptions of artistic genius.
Taking place across two time periods, Charlotte (Lotti), now an adult surgeon, returns to Canberra to complete her internship. Adolescent memories are triggered when a major posthumous retrospective of her father’s work is staged, featuring new controversial paintings of Kyla, a waif-like classmate of Lotti’s, who is damaged in a myriad of ways, including a life-threatening heart condition. Kyla is the school outcast, and the popular group that Lotti joins at her new school are mean. They bully Kyla and are dismissive of her health problem. Kyla responds with disdain and malevolence which does not make her situation any less tragic. When she comes to stay with Lotti's family, it becomes the catalyst for the disintegration of the family.
"A powerful exploration of family dysfunction, family violence, notions of friendship, and perceptions of artistic genius"
- Jane Cowell
Bearman brings the notion of friendship, the total sense of self-involvement of the ‘group’, and the complete lack of empathy for those on the outer that the adolescents can demonstrate to life on the page, even if it can be tiresome at times for the reader. There is an eerie and unsettling atmosphere to this book, as Bearman only hints at the trauma in Kyla’s life, and because she comes across as so tough and 'in your face', the reader is almost confident that she will survive.
This is a dark and unsettling book with a spotlight on family violence, what remains unseen even after it has been seen, what constitutes art, and at what point it spills over into manipulation and exploitation. Reviewers have compared We Were Never Friends to Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You, and Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things. If you enjoyed either of these novels, then definitely give this one a go. We Were Never Friends is deftly written and will stay in your thoughts for weeks after you finish it.
You can read more about Margaret Bearman and this novel in a conversation with a Canberra Times reporter from February 2020.