SCOTT PEARCE The Rider on the Bridge. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Scott Pearce’s dreamlike second novel explores life on the edge of society.
From the opening moments of The Rider on the Bridge it is clear that we are dealing with a protagonist whose path through life has been somewhat unusual. Kitten, as he later comes to be called, is initially at pains to stress that words can’t always be taken at face value, that ‘the absence of truth does not diminish the story’, and that memory is highly unreliable. He then goes on to tell us a story about events from his mid-adolescence, all of which supposedly happened 25 years ago. Readers don’t need to be seasoned literary critics to spot they are in the hands of an unreliable narrator.
Storytellers who can’t be trusted aren’t exactly new. The oldest example I am aware of is Homer’s The Odyssey, written sometime in the eighth century BCE and featuring a protagonist who was – and still remains for many – the benchmark for a devious and creative mind. As a device, it can cast doubt on the details of what is being relayed, usually because the one doing the telling has a vested interest in controlling the narrative.
What is interesting about Kitten is that he is well aware of the problematic nature of memory, and the many reasons why the things he recalls may not reflect events as they actually happened. Unlike his ancient Greek predecessor, Kitten makes it plain that he has no clear idea how much, if any, of his story is real, and how much is imagined, hallucinated, confused or a mix of all of the above. Certainly his narrative style has a dream-like quality, with some of it quite literally half-remembered, as he finds himself becoming a stranger trying to make sense of a very strange land.
And in some ways this comes as no surprise. Kitten’s disengagement from broader society started early. He tells us of his first 15 years in the house of ‘the woman I grew up with’, a dirty, weatherboard den ‘sick with a jaundiced mildew … [and] infected with the perpetual smell of sun-baked beer cans and cigarette smoke’. The woman, who he never identifies as his mother, though it is clear that is who she is, doesn’t know the identity of Kitten’s father, nor does she appear to care, and her sole contribution to his welfare appears to be telling him a story from her childhood about a boy who would make money risking his life by riding his bike over a bridge blindfolded (the ‘rider’ referred to in the title). Instead, she stumbles her way through life, ‘trying to sort out the certain from the uncertain’ and spending her time in the company of an ‘endless collection of villains’ who substitute as male role models for her son. So it’s little wonder that, when one of these villains makes it obvious Kitten is no longer welcome in the woman’s home, he takes what few possessions he has and ejects himself into a wider world with no real concept of what to do next. After a chance decision to jump on a tram, he runs into Julia, a girl with frizzy black hair and a kindred feeling, who adopts him like the stray kitten after which she names him, and takes him home to meet her friends.
Fairytales often tell of a wanderer who stumbles through a misty forest and is transported to a different reality. Similarly, Kitten arrives at a place Julia calls the Manor:
In front of us was a wilderness, unbound and apparently impenetrable … I trailed her over a meagre path and I could see layers and layers of criss-crossing branches and a mix of leaves, oblong and ovate, deltoid and cordate. The smell of turned earth … was beguiling, and I could hear the birds as they played among the fallen leaves. The air was calm, therapeutic, inviting sleep. I thought I heard a whisper, a voice, someone telling me to wait. I slowed, but Julia had reached an opening and called for me, so I rushed to join her.
When they finally make it to the house at the centre of this labyrinth, it too seems to be from another world; it lies largely forgotten, eaten by neglect and the ravages of time. The ground floor is broken and overrun with creeping vegetation, oversized rats and carpet slowly rotting away from a leak somewhere in the ceiling. Time appears suspended here, days come and go without warning, sometimes punctuated by scavenged bread or the increasing number of tracks Kitten sees appearing on Julia’s arms.
Yet there is also a sense that their time here is only temporary, as the mould continues its creep up the stairs, the rats invade further and further and more of the house is reclaimed back into the earth.
The house’s wayward inhabitants share a dream. They yearn for the paradise of Byron Bay, which for them has taken on a semi-mythical status. It’s warm in Byron, with wide white beaches, friendly people and access to food. But getting to Byron will take money, a commodity this group can only access through means outside the bounds of normal society. So Kitten finds himself caught up in activities he is ill equipped to comprehend, much less defend himself against.
As time goes on it becomes less and less clear who is helping whom, who is using whom, and to what extent the world in which Kitten finds himself even exists at all.
Rider provides an intriguing glimpse into life on the edge of society, a shadow world that most would walk past every day without noticing. Yet this is a world of real people, real suffering, and real consequences that will follow Kitten into later life, long after his adolescence is over.
Or so he would have us believe.
Scott Pearce The Rider on the Bridge MidnightSun Publishing 2022 PB 192pp $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.
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