SA JONES The Fortress. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson

The Fortress provides strong examinations of patriarchal values, toxic masculinity and the places to which these values can lead. This chilling, challenging, sexually explicit work of speculative fiction explores and eviscerates aspects of patriarchal thinking. It is powerfully written and I suspect that it will be widely read, and that responses to it will be widely divergent. Jonathon Bridge is a ‘suit’, very successful and valued by the business where he works. He is wealthy, competent, handsome, and married to a woman he loves, who is pregnant with his child. His sense of entitlement allows him to enjoy cocaine and the sexual services of young interns, whom he calls ‘poodles’. Within, but not connected to, his world is the Fortress. It is a self-sufficient place run by women whose collective name is the Vaik. Men who enter the Fortress choose to be subservient to these women unless born or sent there. The ethos of the Fortress is ‘Work. History. Sex. Justice.’ It is an environmentally beautiful place; the nearby ocean and seasonal changes in the gardens provide a sense of belonging to a natural cycle. Men go there for various reasons: punishment, atonement or a desire for change. When Jonathon’s wife Adalia discovers that his behaviour has caused extreme pain and damage to the young interns in his corporation, she organises a kangaroo court that initiates the path of ablation that he faces. She suggests that he should go to the Fortress to discover new ways of being. Because he loves her, and because he wishes to be a good father, he agrees to enter the Fortress and to accept the conditions there, which involve total obedience, subservience and unconditional sexual availability to any of the Vaik for a year. His experiences include clashes with a paedophile, an isvestyii (‘unredeemed’), who is there for punishment; a friendship with a man, Daidd, who is there for love and atonement; and friendship with a 13-year-old Vaik, Ulait. There is also hard work and the pleasures of various foods and sweet-smelling medicinal and soothing herbs:

The smell was overpowering: sweet and deep and utterly intoxicating. Jonathon tried to isolate each scent. There was bergamot. Lime. Something like rose, but a rose stripped back to its essence and amplified. Fresh-cut grass and churned earth. Cinnamon and wood smoke. Jonathon filled his lungs with it, exhaled then breathed again.

He is used for sexual gratification by various members of the Vaik. As a result of instigating a violent clash he has to face their judgement and he is confined for a period. Influenced by his experiences, he begins to face up to certain aspects of his character and his actions. And he does spend a great deal of time in self-reflection. This short effort at summarising can give little idea of SA Jones’s rich description and exposition of the world of the Fortress, or of the social and political forces which have impelled Jonathon into this situation. Importantly, the slow but vital learning that he must undergo in order to change is really at the heart of this profound novel:

It wasn’t the stockpile of weapons in the perimeter wall or the exhaustion that left men hungry for nothing but sleep and food, but the way that the mind slid around and around the same culs-de-sac. This contraction, the falling out of the habit of curiosity, was what ensured compliance. It turned a man inward, towards himself. What he found there made The Fortress seem just.

The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale are books with similarly strong examinations of patriarchal values, toxic masculinity and the places to which these values can lead. It is interesting that it is speculative fiction that provides an exceptionally persuasive format for the expression of ideas and fears about such a mindset. This novel cannot be dismissed as fantastic because it so carefully examines aspects of the zeitgeist. There are a great many philosophical challenges in this work. The Vaik are really an unknown quantity – for example, they seem to have no moral attitude to their quite obvious preparedness to exploit the men who live in the Fortress with their predatory sexual appetites. Their ethos seems in many ways to be a simple mirror to the values of patriarchy. They are not saintly. The emphasis on justice in their list of values is demonstrated and does emphasise self-knowledge, but one wonders whether the implied notion that the experience of subjection to patriarchal sexual values will automatically change male attitudes. Perhaps it is the experience of subjection that creates a space for self-reflection. There are many ideas and assumptions to be questioned in this work, not least Jonathon Bridge’s involvement with the young Vaik, Ulait. The narrative is a compelling read, stunningly well-written, clear and elegant. The recounted sexual adventures that Jonathon Bridge experiences are not prurient but they will certainly shock some readers. This is a very impressive work, in which SA Jones demonstrates enormous literary skill. SA Jones The Fortress Echo 2018 PB 277pp $32.99 Folly Gleeson was a lecturer in Communication Studies. At present she enjoys her book club and reading history and fiction. You can buy The Fortress from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here. To see if it is available from Newtown Library, click here.

Tags: Charlotte | Wood, Margaret | Atwood, SA | Jones