Sad, broken silence

Press, 3 August 1985, Page 20

Sad, broken silence

Porky. By Deborah Moggach. Penguin, 1984. 221 pp. $7.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Diane Prout) There aren’t too many novels about incest around, in spite off periodic media coverage of “the conspiracy of silence.” Social workers admit it occurs in New Zealand in numbers disproportionate to the population. It is hardly the stuff of fiction, yet Deborah Moggach has managed to create a chilling psychological study of the emotional damage done as a result of

the betrayal of childhood trust that incest involves. Heather recounts her experiences as the only daughter of two ill-suited parents. Her father, an ex-sideshow man, at the insistence of his ambitious, embittered wife, squats on waste land near Heathrow Airport where he raises pigs and dreams vaguely of making it in the haulage business. Her mother, a shadowy figure fraught with tension and resentment against her husband’s laziness, works as a skivvy at Heathrow Terminal. Heather performs the roles of wife and mother to the family in the absence of the mother. After a childhood of guilty despair through her feeling of corruptness in failing to resist her father’s pathetic physical demands, Heather finds the power to escape and become a creature in the social limbo she craves — as an air hostess. Blessed with looks that attract men, she finds no joy in her various relationships, only a kind of vicarious revenge for the abuse endured for so many years. Her one opportunity of finding an enduring and meaningful relationship is wilfully destroyed with horrific and tragic results. Deborah Moggach has handled a sensitive and controversial subject with skill, intelligence and insight.