Wildflowers by Peggy Frew
Wildflowers (2022) by Australian writer Peggy Frew is an affecting and beautifully written novel that follows three sisters as they each struggle in different ways to carve out a space for themselves in the world. Jumping between the present, the past and ever-lasting memories, Wildflowers explores the limits of love and the extent of responsibility with commendable nuance.
Peggy Frew’s debut novel, House of Sticks, won the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript, and her second, Hope Farm (2016), was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin and Stella Prize. Wildflowers is the third in a line of novels detailing various aspects of contemporary family life, often focussed on the experiences of women and the fickle nature of love within families.
Meg, Nina and Amber couldn’t be more different from one another. Growing up, they were labelled ‘bossy,’ ‘flaky,’ and ‘wild’ respectively. While these labels start out as a way of differentiating themselves, they soon begin to stick, seemingly marking each of them for life.
“They were still who they always had been, still those sisters, but on this afternoon, in this car, driving with the windows down between cane fields under a deepening sky with purple cut-out mountains in the distance, they were wearing it so lightly, their bossiness and flakiness and wildness; they were wearing it like they used to, like it was supple, slippery, not completely fixed. Like it could be taken off.”
Amber, the youngest, is a promising child prodigy until a traumatic incident changes her life and pushes her into addiction. Meg, the eldest, blooms from bossy to caring as she tries to fall pregnant, a lost cause that leaves her struggling to fill a void. Nina, the narrator, and flaky middle child, never quite feels like she belongs – her loneliness, melancholy and crippling self-doubt see her not speaking her mind when it comes to family matters or her failed affairs, and even when it comes to asking for help.
“It was a circular activity: she went inside her mind to a place that she did not want to share, and what she did in there was think about not being able to share it. Will I? Won’t I? Should I? Can I? You could measure out a whole life – or stave off the actual lying of it – trundling these considerations round and round.”
Wildflowers switches between the present, the near past, and the past of the girls’ childhood. The result of which is a narrative of contemplation and remembering, before it is allowed to move forward within the present. In this present, Nina has completely isolated herself from the world. Her mind wanders back to a holiday gone horribly wrong five years prior, during which Meg and Nina attempt to purge Amber of her addiction. As Nina considers their upbringing, years of childhood, and everything that came after, she is thrust back into the call of the present and decisions that need making.
Wildflowers poses some difficult questions about responsibility. The girls’ parents, Gwen and Robert, are omnipresent spectators of the girls’ lives, never quite intervening or stepping in. Both Meg and Nina recognise this as “unparently:” that is, they don’t seem to care enough about their daughters to exercise control over them as kids, or to protect them from the fates they're seemingly destined for. This reveals an imbalance of power, where Meg consistently has to step up to look after her younger sisters – a role that gives her purpose, but also one that drains her own emotional resources.
“How can you say that?' she cried at last. 'It's always been my problem! I've always been the only person who's tried to do anything about it! Where were you, back when she was fucking up? When she couldn't pass school? When she was so lost?”
And while Amber is lost, and her journey from prodigy to addict is devastating, as a character she is only seen through the eyes of her sisters and so remains elusive to the reader. As a result, it is actually Nina who takes centre stage in this novel.
Nina’s inability to stand up for herself, to step in when she’s needed, to ask for what she needs or to support her sisters when they need her is debilitating. Frew’s writing is the glue that holds her together, that subtly feeds us the many pieces of her personality to form a fascinating, sorrowful whole. In the process of losing a sister to addiction, her life gets put on hold – but with the help of Meg, as always, she begins to fight her way up from the ashes. This is both a testament to her capability, and to something she owes those around her.
“And it would seem that it was possible to want more, to feel resentful, to question one’s commitment, and at the same time to enjoy being, right now, with someone – a particular person, the same person that the resentment, the wanting more, the questioning all pertained to. It would seem that these things could exist simultaneously, that they did not cancel each other out.”
Wildflowers promises a study of human frailty and fragile love, and it delivers both with compassionate nuance and an understanding of how, together, we can always achieve more than by ourselves.
Fruzsina Gál is an aspiring writer, born in Hungary but living in Australia. She has been a reader all her life, and her first short story, 'The Turul' was published in Griffith University's 2018 anthology, Talent Implied. Her writing is often focussed on identity and the effects of immigration on the self. You can find her online at www.fruzsinagal.com or @thenovelconversation.