Seeing Other People by Diana Reid
Following the success of her 2021 debut, Love and Virtue, Sydney-based author Diana Reid is back at it with her second novel, Seeing Other People (2022). Compared to the likes of Sally Rooney, Reid has an astute ability to articulate the voice of our younger generation, with her latest work focusing on how morals come into play when it comes to love. It follows the lives of three young women – Eleanor, Charlie and Helen – as they navigate the boundaries between friendship, sisterhood and romance in a fresh take on the classic love triangle.
The story opens with uptight business analyst Eleanor learning that her boyfriend Mark has cheated on her. Distraught by the indignity of being cheated on (not by the breakup itself), Eleanor blames the patriarchy for Mark’s indiscretions, “the physical and economic dominance of every man over every woman,” instead of taking stock of what may have gone wrong in the relationship.
“She could cope with the idea that her relationship was over. What humiliated her was that she hadn’t been the one to end it. She hated that he had the power to hurt her: that she could behave perfectly, and treat him with respect, and still emerge undignified and small.”
Eleanor leans on her sister Charlie for moral support, ingratiating herself into Charlie’s world of artistry, share housing and drugs as a way to cope. Charlie is a young actress who flats with Helen, a director she is also secretly in love with. They sleep together on a few drunken occasions, but Helen isn’t interested in a romance with Charlie, setting her sights on Eleanor instead.
True to her judgemental ways, Eleanor tries to maintain her sense of superiority over Helen, even though, “Helen was just the type of person who rendered Eleanor insecure. Her very existence made Eleanor feel narrow-minded and conformist.” But soon enough, she takes to the effortless way Helen is “charming first, and pretty later,” and secretly starts seeing Helen behind Charlie’s back.
Eleanor defends her betrayal of Charlie to herself by reasoning that she’s always been good to her sister and deserves to have her fun, as long as she doesn’t get caught: “…she could cope with the knowledge that she was a bad person, as long as nobody else thought she was.”
The romance continues until Helen feels morally obliged to tell Charlie. Eleanor reluctantly agrees but lies to Charlie about how the relationship started, as a way to play down her betrayal. When Charlie discovers Eleanor is lying, she holds it over her sister, using it as justification for some of her own sinister behaviour that is revealed later.
Reid does an excellent job at painting three complex women who question their morals when it comes to love. The omniscient point of view does make it hard to connect with any one character, but that may be intentional so the reader doesn’t take sides and is forced to consider each one’s wrongdoing. It’s easy to immediately dislike self-righteous Eleanor or self-absorbed Charlie, but the reader can quickly see through the veneer when their layers of insecurities are revealed. Eleanor is so obsessed with not appearing weak that she ends up destroying her relationship with Helen, while Charlie nearly crosses a line for the sake of satiating her own vanity.
As seen in Love and Virtue, Reid has a knack for capturing the nuances of Gen Z, from the thought that goes in to dressing for a festival (“Crop tops and little sunglasses and shit. Just dress like you love yourself sick”), to what a green reusable bag says about you (“It looked nonchalant — not in a studied way; more in a grocery-shopping way”).
Helen, that ethereal beast that everyone is drawn to, sums this up best with her effortless style and morally righteous ways that feel authentic compared to her counterparts. But eventually Helen starts to question how love can blur the lines, once believing:
“…that if you loved someone, you saw them as they were, in all their infinite complexity. She was always trying to explain people: to see their faults and account for them,” and then later deciding, “that love — a devoted, committed love — could also mean closing her eyes. She saw Eleanor’s faults, and she chose to look away.”
Ultimately the reader is forced to question if being deceived can atone for one’s own bad behaviour. The three women eventually find their way and realise their wrongdoings, vowing to be better versions of themselves, and to change. Whether that change can sustain future reckonings is the biggest question of all.
Marisa K Jones is a freelance writer who grew up between Hawaii and Australia, though if anyone asks, she doesn’t surf. Her love for travel has taken her across the world where she has written for Australian House & Garden, International Traveller and Paradise Magazine. She currently lives in Papua New Guinea with her husband and three children where she writes historical fiction novels set in PNG, exploring the truly unique country she now calls home.