Compulsion by Kate Scott
Set at the turn of the new millennium, the debut novel Compulsion (2023) by Kate Scott is categorised by an excess of excess. We’re introduced to Lucy, an indie-hipster music magazine editor, who really wants us to know that her music taste is way cooler than ours.
From the moment you delve into Compulsion, be prepared to be swept away into a whirlwind of luxuriously written sentences:
“The sun’s last cherry streaks tore the sky with agonising slowness, and the same Lee Hazelwood album played all afternoon, both of us too heat drunk to choose another. Yet part of me was coiled in readiness because part of me always was.”
Much of Scott’s prose reads well but will often have you pause to ask, wait, what does that actually mean? At one point, she describes sex as “…a javelin thrown a great distance and landing without sound.”
We’re thrust headfirst into Lucy and her entourage’s world (which includes an older ex-husband, a vagabond too-cool-for-school non-boyfriend and a vague stalker) as she hits rock bottom, decamps her life to the middle of nowhere and tries to write her book. Scott gives characters ominous-sounding nicknames that are clung to at first but somewhat discarded partway through. The non-boyfriend, who is hailed as some sort of nighttime music scene demi-god, is referred to as The Unspoiled Monster before she switches to his real name:
“Everyone knew The Unspoiled Monster. I suppose everyone knew me too, but The Unspoiled was famous in that highly localised way passionate spectators are famous just for showing up to things. He had impeccable taste, excellent bones. And the height of his particular beauty coalesced perfectly with the times.”
Determined to conquer her demons and rekindle her creative spark, Lucy's intentions collide with her insatiable love for indulgence, drugs and attention. Weekends transform into non-stop parties as her friends flock to her coastal haven to revel in her revelry, leaving no room for her intended transformation.
Amid this hedonistic realm enters Robin, who assumes the role of a peripheral observer, providing insightful commentary on the lives of the young souls he has become intertwined with. Robin maintains a cautious distance throughout the narrative, allowing friendships and romances to unravel while intimate details of their sex lives are discussed and dissected.
Their shared obsession with 70s, 80s, and 90s music binds this eclectic group of friends. Kate Scott, herself a prior music journalist, weaves her comprehensive knowledge into the fabric of their conversations. This might be fun if it weren’t that this often takes up entire paragraphs across multiple pages. If you do not know the music Scott is desperate for us to acknowledge, it makes for tedious reading.
It all served to remind me of the short-term job I had in my early twenties working in a music shop and the daily staff breakroom conversations that simply served as one big pissing contest for who could be the most ‘niche’ in their music taste, the most knowledgable in their ability to name forgotten B-side tracks. It was a reminder I could have done without.
Lucy and Robin begin taking cliffside walks together, and I was led to believe from the blurb that their conversations during this time were more revealing than they were in the book. Despite the insistence of the intellect of these two individuals and how much they seemed to talk, they both failed repeatedly to discuss how they felt for one another. Robin has a girlfriend who we’re quickly advised is somewhat of an old high school nemesis of Lucy’s. Painted out to be an attractive but ultimately passionless bore, said girlfriend is obviously completely incompatible with the new object of our misguided heroine’s affections. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happens next:
“Robin dreams of igloos that night. Lucy’s wearing the fisherman’s jumper, and they fuck noiselessly against the concrete wall, her waist cold and blueish in the low light. He wakes overheated, cursing. It had been there the whole time, but distant, abstract. Now it contracts, droplets of water cohering to form a pool: not a fleeting want but a chest-crushing need.”
Compulsion is ultimately a story about love, yearning and trying to come right in a world that makes it too easy to self-destruct. While there were some beautiful segments of writing, I did find the plot of this one left a lot to be desired.
It’s a good read if you crave a book that immerses you in a world of chaotic excess, drugs, and sex. There’s vivid storytelling and plenty to thrill any diehard 80s music lovers. Sadly, this one just missed the mark for me.
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.
