(courtesy Text Publishing)
Have you ever been rolling along in life, thinking everything is okay and then woken up one day to realise you’re actually a bit player in your own life?
In other words, if there were awards for your life, and why the hell shouldn’t there be, you’d likely only score a supporting player nod and not the lead award?
Gertrude aka Gertie certainly has, but as Side Character Energy by Olivia Tolich kicks off its wholly engaging and thoughtfully compelling, not to mention very funny, story, she is still trapped deep within the orbit of her best friend, Bee aka Bianca.
That might sort of kind of maybe be dealable with if Bee actually acknowledged that Gertie has wants, needs and desires of her own, but she doesn’t, with Bee treating her bestie as if her only reason for being alive is to support everything single thing her friend does.
Bee thinks nothing of walking into Gertie’s room at 6 a.m. – as well as BFFs they are housemates but of course they are; there is a friendship boundary Bee won’t blur in the endless narcissistic servicing of her own welfare – of ignoring a plea for help or advice from Gertie in favour of turning the focus firmly back on herself, and of demanding Gertie gut her nascent friends circle, her work shifts at a hospitality company and her social schedule to meekly follow in Bee’s unthinkingly social whirl.
Before Bee, no one had chosen me to be their person.
As the end of high school loomed, I spent a lot of time wondering what I might do with the Bee-shaped void that would soon be my closest companion. This, in the end, was wasted time because if anything our lives became further intertwined, like inosculated trees. Bee is a proactive type, always organising, buying tickets, securing a great deal. I couldn’t have let go if I wanted to.
Having been rescued in high school by Bee from isolationist social purgatory, Gertie doesn’t think she has any choice but to tail along whenever she is so ordered, and she thinks nothing of it; well strictly speaking not true because part of the blistering comedic charm of Side Character Energy is Gertie’s unspoken internal commentary about what Bee says and does.
Gertie is firmly of the opinion that she owes Bee everything and that no matter how unhealthy the demands, Bee deserves, as Gertie’s social saviour, to be given everything she wants whenever she wants.
That all begins to change when a series of events, triggered by Bee getting the long-term(ish) boyfriend of her dreams in the highly attractive and highly successful William, drags Gertie along on a series of weird chaperoned dates where Gertie and William’s sweetly librarian-handsome bestie Arthur have to sit by while William and Bee very conspicuously become more and more into each other.
As she gets to know Arthur, who is most assuredly JUST a friend and nothing more (haha he’s not but it takes Gertie a good long while to admit that to herself as is de rigeur in almost every romcom), she asks him to become her life coach and to help discover who she is when she is catering to Bee’s every want, need and whim.
It’s a bold gamble for someone who has always been happy to sit in someone else’s shadow and let them call the shots, with any questions about what she might or need not even entering into the equation.
Gertie’s uncharacteristically brave gambit kicks off a slow burning revolution of sorts which gives Side Character Energy not only some fizzy, dialogue-rich romcom fun, but also a soberly incisive exploration of what happens to a friendship when the original reason it came into existence is no longer for purpose.
Tolich is a rare and special new talent; while this reviewer normally regards backcover blurbs and bio as little more than beautifully worded marketing hype, I’m inclined to agree with the declaration that Tolich is “a brilliant new voice in Australian fiction”.
One key reason this praise has a pretty solid basis in fact is that Side Character Energy never once feels like it’s attempting to bite off more than it can narratively or thematically chew.
The balance between long-overdue dysfunctional friendship reckoning and lighthearted, swoony romcom banter and ever-growing attraction never once slips out of whack, with the joyously nascent romantic and the emotionally aspects of the story feeding int each other rather seamlessly.
A lot of that has to do with the character of Gertie herself who, as she comes alive and realises she is far more than the sum total of Bee’s vacillating interest in her, admits to herself, very slowly as it turns out (bit fair’s fair; look at the long and exhaustive journey to self realisation she is on) that is lovable by a man and that maybe doesn’t have her best interests at heart after all, and could in fact be the one thing hindering her growth into much-delayed proper adulthood.
He’s nice enough to wait until I’m cocooned within his dark green sheets, clutched all the way to my chin, to ask me what happened. He’s also smart enough to place a box of box of tissues between us before I begin. This is good. It’s very good and very normal. I definitely don’t cry again. Much. Arthur doesn’t say anything, just keeps stroking my hair, letting me talk until I run out of steam, and we both fall asleep.
Gertie begins to morph from doormat to sensationally self-advocating human being, and Side Character Energy brings us right along with her every step of the way, her journey peppered with witty commentary, dark moments of the soul and a growing sense that she has a long going for, regardless of whether Bee affirms that in her or not.
Side Character Energy is the kind of book you will race through because the plot is lushly and wonderfully told, sparkling with bonhomie, fun and some really serious introspection, but while there’s a lot of really good romcomy stuff going on, the novel is not afraid to take time to go deep and dark and counter the frothiness with some grindingly hard real humanity.
It bounces between the two with fire and lightness and the kind of dialogue that is begging for a movie adaptation starring the likes of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, people who can be light and banter-ish but who can then go as deep and dark into the nether reaches of the soul as needed.
Side Character Energy is a soberingly intense but buoyantly fun joy, elevated by dialogue that zings and amuses, characters who are absolutely worth caring about and a plot that ticks all the romcom boxes but which does it with a freshness and emotional substance that doesn’t grace all the literary members of the genre, and which, in so doing, underscores that stepping out from the toxic darkness of someone’s shadow may be hard but that it’s absolutely worth it and could very well change your life for the empathetically wondrous and loved-up better.