Nomansland Book

Recently a reviewer on this site in response to my novel, Nomansland, and I think in some exasperation, put a question directly to me: "Lesley Hauge, what is your point?"

I felt I had to try to answer her question.

On the whole novelists do not have "points" as such because a novel is a capacious, complex art form full of ambiguity. "Points" are perhaps better made in lectures or essays or some other form. But of course novelists do have something to say. Well, this is what I wanted to say:

The world of Foundland is a post-apocalyptic all-female world in which widespread destruction has obliterated almost everything familiar. The survivors have had to make do with fragments of the past on which to build their isolated, closed, defended little society. Because they have few markers or references and life is so hard, their rules are harsh and skewed. The rules they have internalized are the rules of a half-remembered feminism mixed up with a patriarchal-military society of their own devising that grows further distorted on this bleak, windswept island.

This was my attempt to satirize and to characterize what I often think of as "the matriarchal mafia" of strict, humorless headmistresses, mother superiors of convents, madams running brothels, editors of magazines and, most especially, grim, militant feminists--the kind that young women in the 21st century laugh at and reject. That is to say, I wanted to make a grotesque, distorted version of how women in power rule when they internalize male constructs of how power is to be wielded. But over time, as in all closed societies, their goals and their idealism warps into dogma and a kind of feminist totalitarianism sets in.

Pitted against this is another kind of distorted world, the world of our own era as portrayed by all the objects that a group of teenage girls (known as Trackers since they are in training to patrol the borders of the island) discover when they come across a hidden house buried in the undergrowth. The things that have the crucial impact are the contents of a teenage girl's bedroom: clothes, makeup and fashion magazines. The distortion in this case comes through the lens of the Trackers themselves because these things are so deeply unfamiliar. But the Trackers have another reaction to these things--and it is an entirely natural reaction. They like this stuff! It's fun; it's colorful; it's exciting. And, tragically, they become fatally competitive with one another once they get their hands on it.

Keller, the main character, begins to see that these are two extremes. There is the joyless, colorless, controlled world of Foundland, where a warped feminist dogma has shaped a cruel and hypocritical society--yet it is also a society where the women are tough, independent and active. Contrasted with this, she now has a narrow glimpse into this other strange, smooth, bright world of the past where women seem to be so gorgeous yet passive, sexualized to the point of absurdity.

And so, by telling a story, I wanted to get my readers thinking about a central question for young feminists today. No one wants the grim world where you can't have fun with clothes and makeup but the other "world" where young women are so intensely pressured to ONLY express themselves through their sexuality is equally unappealing. So how you do you navigate your way between these two extremes? How do you figure it out? How do you become the courageous, honest, celebratory, funny, competent young woman you want to be? And Keller, who is rapidly rejecting all that she has ever known, discovering so many hidden truths about her own society, is left with that question in the same way as you or I. How do you become who you want to be? I can't say I have really figured it out but it's so important to try and you do it in part by exploring hard questions to which you don't really have actual answers ... and so, here I am, trying to answer your hard question because, in the end, perhaps I don't have the answer for you. All I have is my effort.

Lesley Hauge.