LAUREN CHATER The Lace Weaver. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
In The Lace Weaver the narrative twists and turns like the weave of the lace at its core.
‘Estonia has five seasons’, we are told in the opening lines of The Lace Weaver, the debut novel from Sydney writer Lauren Chater. There are the usual four that most people know, spring, summer, winter, autumn, but there is also a fifth, known as the thaw:
[a] month of water deluge when the ice floes break up to flood the land … [when] it is impossible to get from place to place … [and] food [is] scarce.
Together, the five seasons create a repetitive cycle of feast and famine, with ‘bitter winter’ and the thaw alternating in endless loops with ‘pale spring’ and summer, with its ‘rich harvest of fruit’.
Life, in other words, is cyclical. And so it proves for Katarina (known as Kati) and Lidochka (known as Lydia), two women at opposite ends of the social spectrum, both doing their best to survive as Europe tumbles into the grip of World War II.
This is not the first time Estonia has faced hardship. The scars of deprivations caused by the previous Great War are still apparent in the thin and damaged bodies of the older generation, who pass the stories of hardship onto their children along with knitting patterns and lace weaves. But good times eventually follow, as spring follows winter. Cycles turn, good comes after bad. People must learn to endure.
Katarina’s family is poor. Unlike many of their less fortunate neighbours, they have managed to retain hold of their farm near the Estonian village of Haapsalu by submitting to the Russian invaders when others would not. Even so, life is hard. Sheep can only produce so much wool, and what little they are allowed to keep is barely enough for Katarina to continue to make the traditional lace shawls they sell at market. But the shawls represent much more than just money. Hidden within the intricate patterns is the history of the Estonian people, their culture, their values and the fact that, despite current circumstances, they remain a proud people, biding their time until the cycle flicks around to ‘good’ again.
Lydia’s family is far from poor. The daughter of a high-ranking Russian official, with a nursemaid for a companion and shadowed by a personal bodyguard, she appears to enjoy life with all the trappings of privilege.
But war cares little for society or circumstance. As events take shape around them, twisting and turning like the weave of the lace that Kati knits, both women find themselves facing a stark choice: stand up for the values that you profess to believe in, or abandon them – and yourself – forever. Each could take the easy path; neither do. And both have to live with the consequences of their separate decisions, which affect their world forever.
The Lace Weaver is a first novel from author Lauren Chater, and the narrative that twists and turns like the weave of the lace at its core can, at times, be uneven. Some of the threads are also not stretched to their full narrative potential. But it remains an effective, and affecting, exploration of issues that have particular resonance for readers in 2018.
Readers of The Lace Weaver can watch the events of the novel unfold from the safety of the eight or so decades that have passed since World War II came to an end. Yet there are uncomfortable parallels to be drawn here. The Russian-German conflicts as depicted may well be in the past, but the hard-won peace of the 20th century, a peace that came partly in the wake of war, now seems to be unravelling. Like the lace shawls that Kati fights so frantically to defend, with the Estonian narratives trapped within their weave, the fabric of western society once again faces the threats that are inevitably posed when cultures clash. The message of The Lace Weaver is clear: it is up to us, no matter who we are or where we sit within society, to defend the values we say we hold dear, and ensure the lessons of the past are not lost as easily as unravelled thread.
Lauren Chater The Lace Weaver Simon and Schuster 2018 PB 432pp $29.99
Sally Nimon once graduated from university with an Honours degree majoring in English literature and has hung around higher education ever since. She is also an avid reader and keen devourer of stories, whatever the genre.
You can buy The Lace Weaver from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.
To see if it is available from Newtown Library, click here.
