Hold

by Kirsten Tranter

  The salt of the water was strong on my tongue when I opened my mouth to breathe out, and I felt it in my nostrils. It was so far from the wild salt of the beach: this was alkaline, domesticated, gently antiseptic. It did not feel cleansing or purifying, although maybe that was what I had been searching for, and the experience of submersion was not terrifying. The bright, cool difference of the water surrounded me. It was an element I could sink into — at the deep end, the bottom dropped away to a panicky, vertiginous depth — but I kept my eyes up, and felt my body more as a floating engine in motion than a weight that could fall.

  There was one direction to go in, or possibly two: forwards, backwards. Up, down, covering the same ground. I swam back and forth in the loop of the lane, but it felt like traversing a vast distance. I swam all across the harbour and through the heads, out into open water. There wasn’t much time left, but I swam until it was used up.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks as always to my parents, especially my mother Lyn who is still my first and best reader, and the best agent an author could hope for. Thanks to Catherine Milne for being the best kind of editor, one who truly gets it. Geordie Williamson and James Bradley offered much-valued encouragement when this project was in an early phase. I am grateful too for the support of colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, including Melanie Abrams and Lyn Hejinian. Hold was completed with the assistance of a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts: I couldn’t have done it without this support. The idea that turned into this novel first formed in a small windowless office in the Bon Marche building at the University of Technology, Sydney. Thanks to Debra Adelaide and other UTS colleagues for finding a space for me there. I am indebted to Delia Falconer’s book Sydney, which provided inspiration at a time when I needed it most. Thanks to Penny Betts, Hillary Emmett, Tina Lupton and Pam Newton for their sustaining friendship. And thanks to Danny Fisher, who always believes in me and in the work, to Henry for his patience, and to Max, who arrived just in time to see the final proofread through.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KIRSTEN TRANTER grew up in Sydney and studied at the University of Sydney. She now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kirsten’s first novel, The Legacy, was published to international critical acclaim in 2010. It was selected as a Kirkus Reviews Best Debut Novel of the year and was shortlisted for the ABIA Literary Fiction award, the ALS Gold Medal, the Indie Debut Fiction award, and longlisted for the Miles Franklin award. Her second novel, A Common Loss, was released in 2012. Kirsten’s novels have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, and Polish.

  ALSO BY KIRSTEN TRANTER

  The Legacy

  A Common Loss

  PRAISE FOR THE LEGACY

  ‘[Kirsten Tranter’s] first novel, The Legacy, shows her to be a novelist with a commanding talent – a tough plain-stylist who can people her fictional world with characters of great vivacity and vigour . . . Full of suave and stunning evocations of Sydney and Manhattan, this sparkling and spacious novel captures the smell and sap of young people half in love with everyone they’re vividly aware of, and groping to find themselves like the answer to an erotic enigma’ – Peter Craven, The Monthly

  ‘This hypnotic debut from Australian author Tranter pays homage to Henry James’s A Portrait of a Lady while offering a suspenseful story line worthy of Patricia Highsmith . . . While Tranter’s sedate pacing avoids typical thriller antics and conventional crime plot twists, she raises some wickedly keen questions about art world wheeling and dealing’ – Publishers Weekly

  ‘An intelligent and engaging novel that is dense, intricate, detailed, acutely observed, and beautifully written in a voice that is measured and consistent from start to finish’ – Debra Adelaide, author of The Household Guide to Dying

  ‘The Legacy never lacks self-assurance or narrative drive’

  – Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘[Tranter is] an innovative revisionist unafraid of challenge and more than up for the risks, tempering the satisfaction of the known with the surprises of the new . . . The Legacy is an entertaining literary thriller that skilfully describes the almost pleasurable pain of love and life denied’ – Weekend Australian

  Praise for A Common Loss

  ‘even better [than The Legacy] . . . a contemporary anatomy of grief, played out between four friends in the wake of a fatal accident, that tightens around the reader like a vice. Tranter makes most other psychological thrillers seem simple-minded’

  – Weekend Australian

  ‘like a Barbara Vine novel, or Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. It’s compulsive; it sucks you in’ – Evening Standard

  ‘Tranter’s achievement is considerable; her writing polished and assured, her evocation of the nuances of friendship finely delineated’ – Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘The acute insights into human behaviour and the excellence of the writing – she never writes a dull sentence, and some of them stop you in your tracks – undoubtedly classify her novels as literary fiction, but they are also compellingly good reads’

  – Australian Book Review

  ‘a richly textured novel, a real page-turner that you’ll want to read in one or two sittings . . . an absorbing journey’

  – Canberra Times

  ‘A potent story of secrets, love, friendship and the bonds that keep people close . . . Brimming with blackmail and deception and laced with grief, poetry, simmering emotional tension and relationships both budding and exhausted, Tranter’s second novel does not disappoint’ – Bookseller+Publisher

  ‘marvellously astute and complex about the subtleties of friendship’

  – Adelaide Advertiser

  ‘Against the sleaze and tackiness of the Strip, Tranter is able to hone in on the complex nature of grief and weave a clever and emotionally charged narrative within the bars and casinos of a famously shallow destination. The ordinary characters then emerge for what they truly are: believable, nuanced and fascinating’

  – Daily Telegraph

  ‘richly allusive and subtly musical yet limpid, quicksilver prose’

  – West Australian

  COPYRIGHT

  This book was completed with the assistance of a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts

  Fourth Estate

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  First published in Australia in 2016

  by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

  ABN 36 009 913 517

  harpercollins.com.au

  Copyright © Kirsten Tranter 2016

  The right of Kirsten Tranter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

  A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India

  1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF, United Kingdom

  2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada

  195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA

  Tranter, Kirsten, author.

  Hold / Kirsten Tranter.

  ISBN 978 1 4607 5165 7 (paperback)

  ISBN 978 1 4607 0645 9 (ebook)

  A823.4

  Cover design by Hazel Lam, HarperCollins Design Studio

  Cover images: Girl and wallpaper by Joseph E Reid / Arcangel Images; light by Alison Burford / Arcangel Images

 

 

 
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