Bellies by Nicola Dinan
“I’ve been thinking about how the trunks of trees bend and curve when they grow next to each other. Their leaves twist to accommodate each other. Their closeness reads on the shape of them and you can infer the shape of one from the shape of another. When you know someone and you grow together, your shape and form become theirs.”
Tom and Ming meet at a drag night at the student union bar. Tom is uncomfortable in his borrowed leopard-print dress and sensible black loafers; Ming exudes confidence and charm in his corset, false eyelashes and heels. This is how we are introduced to the protagonists of Bellies, Nicola Dinan’s 2023 debut novel. Tom, who narrates the first few chapters, is endearingly awkward – newly out and feeling behind on all things queer, his first encounter with Ming is disarmingly unsure: “Our eyes met as we sipped. Is this a vibe? Maybe it’s just polite eye contact.”
Ming is from Malaysia, where “it’s not so hot for the gays,” and a playwright. He frequently checks his pulse, a symptom of his OCD, and is still dealing with the loss of his mother six years ago. Tom is the son of, in Ming’s words, “middle-class Camberwell gentrifiers who worship at the church of Ottolenghi and knitted alpaca cardigans.” Despite their differences, the glow of first love surrounds the pair, and they quickly fall into a relationship. Their lives become intertwined: Ming keeps a toothbrush at Tom’s flat, and their friends become each other’s.
The friends that encircle Ming and Tom are a strength of the novel. These side characters are wholly fleshed out. Tom’s relationship with Rob, his lovable best friend and flatmate, heals old wounds through platonic affection:
“When I was at school, nobody, including me, wanted to change next to the boy everyone thought was gay. And so I breathed in the suspicion that hung in the changing-room air, alongside the smell of chlorine and sweat and cans of Lynx Africa, and it clung to my insides like lead. Rob’s touch drained the old abscesses.”
Massaging Tom’s feet and cuddling up to him on the couch, Rob’s love soon extends to Ming, whom he walks with arm in arm in parks, and kisses playfully on the head.
Tom’s other best friend is Sarah, his ex-girlfriend:
“Sarah had a new monkish wisdom about all things queer, but with none of the monastic silence. She’d come out after I had, but in a few short months she’d acquired a buzz cut, found a new girlfriend called Lisa, and pretended to understand Judith Butler.”
Despite being a somewhat odd trio, Rob, Tom and Sarah form a believable found family, and alongside other friends, Ming and Tom are surrounded by support.
The novel captures the strange contradictions of being at university: at times, the characters are wise beyond their years, while other times their reflections are banally obvious. The characters discuss queerness and society through the lens of their degrees, and Rob is mocked for not knowing the term ‘comphet.’ Tom is a self-proclaimed socialist, watching Mark Fisher YouTube videos in his room, yet after graduating he takes a well-paid job at a major bank. The early twenties group of friends simultaneously know everything and nothing, and their decisions are frustratingly believable.
Tom and Ming’s relationship is put under strain after university, when Ming comes out as trans. While outwardly supportive, Tom is also shaken by the change, and his actions don’t always affirm Ming in the way she needs. In his first queer relationship, Tom is suddenly faced with a partner who is changing before him, moving towards a feminine expression which lies outside Tom’s sexual attraction. The Ming that Tom fell in love with is not the person Ming wants to be.
While finding happiness and comfort within herself that she hadn’t thought possible, Ming also faces the many struggles of living as a trans Asian woman – she often feels unsafe on public transport or in the streets, and not everybody in her life understands her transition. She is unable to return to Malaysia due to its anti-LGBTQ culture, and feels this loss of home deeply.
“Sometimes I think that I transitioned into loneliness, and I wonder if I'd have been better off denying myself what I wanted if it meant not being alone … I’m not going to have all the things which are easy for everyone else. The things that matter.”
Post-transition, Ming and Tom’s lives wind along different roads; the novel travels to New York, Kuala Lumpur and Cologne, as both characters search for who they want to be, and how they want to live.
This novel is about being seen, and how we see others. Its title, Bellies, refers to the concept of showing one’s belly: opening oneself up to vulnerability and intimacy. Through their time together, and their time apart, Tom and Ming have inescapable impacts on each other’s lives. It is through these intimate relationships, both romantic and platonic – through rolling over and exposing their bellies – that the characters are able to grow into themselves.
Macey Smart is a writer and editor from lutruwita/Tasmania. She recently graduated from the University of Tasmania with First Class Honours in English, with a research project on women and food in contemporary literature. You can find her work in Togatus, where she was the Deputy Editor for 2023, as well as swim meet lit mag and Playdough Magazine.