But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
“I was obsessed with remembering the moment before everything had changed. Lot’s wife had sinned by looking back for half a second and was punished by being turned into a pillar of salt – so she would be looking back forever, stuck in that attitude of longing. A longing she could never come any closer to fulfilling – a sickening feeling of tasting nothing. That was me.”
The debut novel from Jessica Zhan Mei Yu, But the Girl (2023), explores “belonging, alienation, and the exquisite pleasure and pain of girlhood.” Charting the experiences of our unnamed narrator, a Malaysian-Australian PhD candidate embarking on a writing fellowship to London and Scotland, we learn about the complexities of acknowledging and tending to pain in her life – both physical and emotional.
The novel opens in an “undecided and hazy spring, the spring that MAS370 disappeared,” as our narrator arrives in London for a week of cultural engagement before heading to Scotland to complete a month-long residency to write her book.
Being in London brings many personal beliefs and ideas to the forefront of our narrator's mind as she ponders the Commonwealth, privilege, diversity and heritage. These are shared through short reminisces about her childhood and early experiences:
“Much later on, Ma told me that when I was young, I thought I was white. I didn’t want to be white or anything like that. I just thought that was what I was because I knew I was real … I knew that I was non-fiction.”
Alongside writing a book as part of her residency, our narrator is writing a PhD thesis on the poetry of Sylvia Plath, something she is both fascinated by and in horror of, knowing the connotations often associated with an attachment to Plath. In her desperation to be considered a “Plath Scholar” and not a “Plath Groupie,” our narrator indexes the differences between the two:
“There was a silent yet clear idea that Plath scholars had to continually distinguish and distance themselves from this other group that had also dedicated their lives to studying her work – the Plath Groupies.”
Our narrator meets several other artists from various disciplines during her residency, including the enigmatic Clementine. With her careful yet eccentrically put-together outfits and seemingly undying confidence in her craft, Clementine captures our narrator’s attention – even if she knows to be wary of such a character:
“It felt as if she was dressing herself like a parody of a person as if to question the very idea of clothes. They drew your attention and then made you realise that by giving so much clear information about what it meant, they were giving you nothing at all about the wearer.”
Clementine invites our narrator to sit for her portrait, and, lacking both the commitment and motivation to write her book, she agrees. She begins spending all her time sitting for Clementine, neglecting her work, and it’s through the tense, wary relationship that develops between the two that we learn the most about our narrator and her interior life. Clementine is a clear representation of whiteness, privilege and performative allyship, but she is also someone who is easily threatened by her own ignorance. She is unaware of the depth and nuance of the challenges others around her have faced and continue to experience and of her role in perpetuating these challenges.
Despite her desire to exert herself as a Plath academic, Mei Yu sets up a narrative arc that sees our narrator pursuing an oddly similar path to Esther's in The Bell Jar. In London, she shuns cultural activities and writing in favour of wandering Oxford Street and shopping. Her writing is only further abandoned when she meets Clementine (a Doreen stand-in), and she allows herself to be distracted not only by Clementine’s art and character but also by questions of whether she is Esther or Doreen.
Our narrator continually struggles with back pain, and in sitting for Clementine, her pain worsens, yet she doesn’t speak up about it. When she finally reveals just how much pain she is in, advising she didn’t “want to burden” Clementine, she’s met with anger rather than empathy:
“‘Oh, you’re so brave and refined. You’re so strong and smart,’ she said with venom that I didn’t expect.
I was caught off guard, but then I felt like the anger she had was towards the idea that she couldn’t help me more than at me.
‘Come on. You know better,’ she said.”
The truth of this last line is deeply felt by our narrator, but it is more complicated than simply knowing better. For most of her life, it has been insisted that she be brave, refined, strong and smart by all those around her, including her family and teachers.
Family dynamics, fitting in, mother-daughter relationships, and (dis)attachment to place are all strong themes throughout. I was especially moved by the sections exploring our narrator's relationship with her mother and grandmother. In the final moments, she finally relents to writing her book, embracing the only story she can – and should – be telling: her own.
This wasn’t a completely perfect read for me, but that doesn’t mean to say it isn't an incredibly insightful and engaging debut. Moments within this book will continue to find you long after you finish reading, and there’s much to be explored and reflected upon in the questions our narrator's experiences will undoubtedly raise for readers.
Elaine Chennatt is a writer, educator and psychology student currently residing in nipaluna. She has a special interest in bibliotherapy (how we use literature to make sense of our lives) and is endlessly curious about the creative philosophies of others. She lives with her husband and two bossy dachshunds on the not-so-sunny side of the river (IYKYK). Find her online at wordswithelaine.com
