In recent years, dozens of books both fiction and nonfiction have been released about the negative effects of bullying. Probing children's capacity for cruelty, these works denigrate the sometimes unspeakable actions young people engage in to become more popular or preserve their own self esteem. But rarely are these stories told from the perspective of the bullies, rather than the bullied. Memoirs and moralistic exposes abound, but seldom do these tales allow the bullies to explain themselves. Myla Goldberg's new novel, "The False Friend" released Oct. 5 takes a different approach.
Celia Durst, the novel's protagonist, is a successful 30-something professional living a peaceful existence in Chicago with her longtime boyfriend, Huck, and two dogs she treats like children. Her life is settled, even stagnant or so it seems.
Walking to work one day, she is caught off guard by the sight of a vintage Volkswagen bug. The car conjures memories of her dearest childhood friend, Djuna, who disappeared when the girls were only 12. And Celia thinks the disappearance was her fault.
Suddenly, she is plagued by guilt and haunted by memories of leaving Djuna behind after the young girl fell into a ditch in the woods. The two girls had a volatile relationship, we learn, often feuding violently. Celia remembers making up a story about Djuna getting into a car with a stranger, rather than telling everyone about her sudden fall. She becomes obsessed with this memory and embarks on a trip to her childhood home, where she plans to enlighten everyone her parents, her childhood friend and Djuna's aging mother about the events that transpired so long ago.
But memories are often permeable, and Celia's quest for expiation is not as straightforward as she anticipated. In short, no one believes her. Her mother, so many years ago, looked on as Celia told the police about Djuna getting into the stranger's car, and she is certain Celia was telling the truth. Even more unsettling, two of Celia's childhood friends claim to have caught glimpses of the car themselves. Celia's memory, it seems, is somewhat suspect.
Although leaving Djuna for dead would, if true, be quite condemnable, other childhood actions Celia has blocked from her memory seem even more damning. Djuna, we learn, was not a good influence on Celia. Completely confident and eternally unkind, Djuna was an expert at making mischief often at others' expense, including Celia's. Together, the pair ruled with an iron fist over a small group of girls. In particular, they took great pleasure in torturing a poor, tomboyish girl named Leanne, admitting her to their "club," but forcing her to undergo graded "inspections" each day on qualities such as "appearance" and "presence."
The contrast between Celia's memories of her childhood group of friends, which gloss over the specifics of her relationship to Leanne and the other girls, and the adult Leanne's lasting bitterness is immense. Celia can hardly remember her cruelty, whereas Leanne who attempted suicide for the first time the summer after fifth grade remains haunted by it daily.
Rarely do we find out about Celia's unkindness from her own memories. Instead, a complete picture of her as a child popular, powerful and capable of great cruelty is revealed gradually, by the various childhood "friends" Celia tracks down. None of them believe Celia left Djuna to die, but this hardly seems to matter in light of what the stories actually do reveal about Celia.
Goldberg explores the disjuncture between the reckless, unkind child version of Celia and the compassionate adult she has become. As we learn more and more about the young Celia, she seems to take on a life of her own we almost can't believe that these two versions of Celia are the same person. We are trapped in a web of uncertainties where both memories and people seem to blur and fade.
This is Goldberg's point. The author told the Winnipeg Free Press that she was inspired to write the story when she unearthed a childhood memory of throwing scissors at another girl. Shocked and shamed by her actions, she contacted the childhood friend to apologize only to discover that the girl had no memory of the incident.
Goldberg makes this point about memory and identity as shifting constructs well but almost too well. The adult Celia is an interesting character in an interesting situation. But Goldberg, more concerned with capturing Celia's childhood self, doesn't imbue her with much personality. So far removed from her past, Celia can sometimes seem sterile and empty, leading the reader to wonder if she was lost along with Djuna so many years ago.