Susan's Review
Many people will be familiar with the notorious cult known as The Family. Self-named by its leader, The Family operated in secret from the late 1960s for over twenty years in an isolated rural property near Eildon in Victoria. While it had many features of a typical cult, including a charismatic leader whose religious beliefs persuaded followers that they were the spiritually elite and destined for eternal life, what sets The Family apart is the fact that its leader was a woman: the glamorous, charismatic and pathologically narcissistic Anne Hamilton-Byrne. What also makes The Family atypical is the ghastly fact that its 28 victims were children, some of them illegally adopted, and all of them subjected to inhumane forms of abuse as a means of controlling their thoughts and behaviour. After their discovery and release in 1987, many of the children suffered lasting trauma and some committed suicide. To add to the horror, Hamilton-Byrne was never brought to justice for her heinous crimes. She died in 2109 in an aged care home, having amassed a considerable fortune from extorting members of The Family, which at its peak boasted 500 members.
This shocking case, already covered in documentaries and books, has now been explored in Australian writer Georgia Rose Phillips’ debut novel The Bearcat (1920s slang for a fiery woman or girl). Unlike other versions of the case, however, Phillips focuses not on the horrendous activities of The Family but on the factors – social, historical, psychological – that helped bring the cult into being. One factor, shown early in the novel, is the susceptibility of women in the 1960s to Anne’s vision of “the happy family”: an ideal to which women were required to subscribe. Discontented wives longing for validation and frustrated by the demands of child-rearing; stigmatised single mothers; and women bearing the shame of infertility were all persuaded to relinquish their child into Anne’s “care.” The novel imagines the other major influence as being the patriarchal family. As a husband, Ralph makes his wife Florence feel invisible, lacking in self-worth; she compensates by believing that her daughter is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. As a father, Ralph ruthlessly dispatches an adolescent Anne – who will grow up to share her mother’s delusion - to a boarding school and repeatedly refuses her angry demands to be released.
Despite its dark material, The Bearcat is a great pleasure to read. It’s psychologically astute, beautifully written and thoughtfully crafted. It also suspends any moral judgement of Anne. While some readers might think that this runs the risk of creating sympathy for a morally hideous individual, the novel’s use of a framing device prevents this from happening. The disclosures early in the novel of defectors from The Family insist on Anne’s cruelty, unbridled self-interest and blatant hypocrisy: she emerges as a woman who preaches self-control to her followers while spending their money on countless luxury items and extensive cosmetic surgery. The novel’s conclusion also paints her in a highly unsympathetic light; you’ll have to read it to find out what happens, and to appreciate the skill with which the ending, like the novel as a whole, is written.
I can highly recommend The Bearcat, now available in the Lane Bookshop.
Susan
Publisher Review
An intimate psychological portrait inspired by the true story of a notorious cult leader.
Bearcat: a large, tree-dwelling mammal; 1920s slang for a fiery girl or woman.
1987. Family is everything to Anne. Our Messiah. And Anne demands everything from The Family; their loyalty, their money, even their children. In return, she promises existential comfort to lost and weary women. Because Anne knows how hard it is to build a family - and how easy it is to lose one.
1921. A child is born on a sticky summer evening. Our Anne. Her mother, Florence, is trapped at home with an indifferent husband and a relentlessly demanding newborn, struggling to reconcile motherhood and her shifting sense of self. For both women, the past is for escaping, and love is impossible to trust. All they can hope is that their family will save them.
The Bearcat is a dark and nuanced exploration of longing, power and the inviolable grip of history.
Praise for The Bearcat
'A deft and lyrical exploration of the dark currents that run through family life. The Bearcat is a remarkable debut.' Stephanie Bishop
'As carefully controlled as it is mesmerising, Georgia Rose Phillips' debut upends expectations to give us a poignant double portrait of two women - one forgotten by history, the other destined for infamy - and the love and lack that made them.' Laura Elizabeth Woollett
'Georgia Rose Phillips is a talent' Amanda Lohrey
