Jena Lin was a child prodigy: at age eight she was playing classical violin at an adult level, and by the time she was 14 she was performing solo at New York's Carnegie Hall. And then she had a breakdown.
By the time we meet her — in the pages of Jessie Tu's debut novel A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing — Lin is a 20-something literature graduate making questionable life decisions while trying to find her place in classical music again.
For Tu, a Sydney-based journalist and poet, the story bears more than a passing semblance to her reality: she trained as a classical violinist for over 15 years.
"I think I was very angry when I wrote this book," Tu told RN's The Book Show.
"I was writing this book and realising the … feelings I've had about what it means to be an Asian woman in Australia. And all the conflicting emotions I've had about playing the violin as an Asian woman in a dominantly white, upper-middle-class … classical music industry."
The result is what novelist Alice Pung — hosting a talk with Tu as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival — described as a "bombshell of a book", and one bursting with ideas about sex, sexism, relationships, racism, and classical music.
'The good girl'
Jena Lin is flattered by the attention and applause she receives as a young girl playing on the world's biggest stages — as well as the undivided support of the two adults who dictate her life: her mother and her mentor.
Tu — who was born in Taiwan but migrated to Australia with her family when she was five — says this is something she can relate to.
"If you grow up not having people automatically give you the microphone or turn the camera on to you — when the attention is turned to you, you are flattered."
On her way to becoming a writer, Tu worked in politics and law, and taught at a number of boys' schools.
"Often I would just find myself in a room … [where I was] the only minority person, and people would see me and they would just assume that I'm the quiet secretary with nothing to say and no opinion, because I have an Asian face," she recalls.
"When I did voice my opinion … you could tell that they were like: 'Oh, this is surprising. Why does this young woman with an Asian face have an opinion?'"
Which brings us to Jena Lin: Tu's bold, brash and opinionated protagonist. She's a mostly unlikeable character who uses the people around her — and is ill-used by them.
"I think she [Jena] is the worst part of me, but then also I manifest a lot of things that I wish I was capable of doing in her," says Tu.
"I'm so sick of the Asian woman being seen as 'the good girl'," she adds, citing Lara Jean, the protagonist of Jenny Han's To All the Boys I've Loved Before, as one recent example of the trope.
"I just wanted narratives where an Asian woman can be ruthless and a bitch."
The classical music 'bubble'
Sarah L'Estrange, producer of ABC RN's The Book Show, says Tu is amongst a group of emerging Australian novelists who are writing about young women negotiating the challenges of contemporary life — citing Victoria Hannan, Georgia Young and Laura McPhee-Browne.
Tu's setting is Australia's classical music scene, drawing on her experiences and observations from her years playing violin.
She paints a picture of a sexist industry, in which Jena is expected to wear strapless gowns with slits up the side in order to best display her bare legs on stage, and contend with the inappropriate advances of a male conductor.
"It's so fascinating, the way that often our female musicians are sexualised," says Tu.
Her novel also interrogates the reverence for the classical music 'canon' — dominated by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach etc.
"I question whether in giving so much attention to these composers who have been dead for hundreds of years … [where that leaves] newer voices and more complex, diverse, innovative composers," says Tu.
The Living Music report found that in 2019, only three per cent of the music performed by Australia's major symphonies and orchestras was written by female composers. Only 0.45 per cent of works were written by Cultural and Linguistically Diverse Australians, and 0.05 per cent by First Nations Australians.
"If you're not white, if you're not a man, if you're not straight in the classical music world, you have to work 10 times harder in order to have people see you as someone worthy," says Tu.
Loneliness and sex
Tu says her debut novel was influenced by Peter Oswald's biography Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius.
She also looked at the lives of other child prodigies, including violin virtuoso Michael Rabin.
"A lot of them just struggle with a lot of mental illness, and they crumble because they didn't have a chance to grow as human beings," Tu says.
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While Rabin died of an epileptic seizure at 35, a study of musical prodigies found a disturbingly high incidence of mental illness, addiction and suicide.
Once Tu's protagonist walks away from her child stardom, she finds herself incredibly lonely — and turns to sex that is often dangerous.
"I made this character a deep interrogation into the psychological and emotional impact that I've seen in young women, who do often reach out to sex without knowing why they do it," says the writer.
Tu says that many friends and family, after reading her book, opened up to her about their sex lives.
"That's primarily why I wanted to write this book … I want people to be more open about sex in their lives, because I feel like a lot of the loneliness that I felt is this idea that sex is taboo," she says.
"[In speaking to them] I've felt less lonely in my own life and in my own situation, because I know that other people are struggling with this issue too."
Relationships and resolutions
While Jena recklessly makes her way through a number of relationships — platonic, familial and romantic — one sticks: an emotionally and physically abusive affair with a much older, white man, who summarises his recent dating history as "TAGs: Tiny Asian Girls".
"In the last few years in Australia, we've become more aware of domestic violence … [but] I wanted to see something narrativised, in fiction, so that people can approach that issue through a different lens," Tu says.
Once again, she was drawing on her own experiences — this time, of intimate partner abuse.
"I wanted to explore it and ask myself, the stuff that I've experienced, how close was I to real danger? And I was just trying to figure out how I can avoid it in the future."
Another fraught relationship in the book is Jena's ties with her best friend Olivia, and Tu's thoughts about the nature of that friendship are intertwined with how she chose to end the novel.
"All the stories that I love never have resolutions, in the end. And the stuff that I've gone through with female friendships has never really completely resolved," Tu says.
"I never liked stories that tie up in a bow in the end. It's just not real life."
A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing is out now through Allen & Unwin
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMibWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA4LTIxL2F1c3RyYWxpYW4tYm9vay0tamVzc2llLXR1LXJhY2lzbS1jbGFzc2ljYWwtbXVzaWMtZGVidXQtbm92ZWwvMTI1NjY2MzjSASdodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTI1NjY2Mzg?oc=5
2020-08-20 17:01:00Z
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