Published the week before Valentine’s Day in the UK, not being one to celebrate I’ve delayed my review a bit!
The Knowing is set over the course of one Valentine’s Day, and it follows a Day in the Life and a Life in a Day of Camille, who works in the kind of establishment where Mrs Dalloway would pick up the flowers herself! Yes, she works in an upmarket florists in a posh suburb of Melbourne.
As the novel begins, the first train of Camille’s two train commute is leaving in a few minutes, when she realises she has forgotten her phone. She can’t miss her train and catch the next one, as she’d be late for work, and her boss, Holly, having reluctantly agreed to a 10am start time would be fuming on their busiest day of the year.
So Camille’s holding back tears as she finds a seat […] the train she’s on is leaveing the station, and propelling her deeper into herself; deeper into all of the places she’d rather not go.
Camille doesn’t have any money now, either. […] She’s probably going to have to ask Holly for help.
Camille just laughed out loud. Well, she kind of snorted out loud into the void of the shared public space, and no one noticed, because they were all looking at their phones.
The Knowing is written in many short chapters or vignettes of mostly 2 or 3 pages, largely alternating between Camille’s work or the things she is thinking of, her hopes and fears for the future, and memories that surface.
We quickly learn that Holly is the boss from hell. A semi-celebrity floral designer, it soon becomes clear that Camille, who is theoretically her second-in-command, is treated as her gopher, her messenger, her lackey. It’s Camille she sends into the warehouse to tell the girls who actually build the bouquets and displays that they won’t be needed after 4pm as Camille will finish up. It’s Camille she sends up to the coffee shop that she just left to collect pastries for some clients who are due. Camille had high hopes for this job, but Holly rarely lets her get close to their clients to show off her own design skills, and she never credits her employees either.
Camille’s long commute is the result of her boyfriend Manny persuading her to move to the country with him. Manny is a poet, so Camille is the main bread-winner; he tells her that she should jack the job in. Despite the commute and awful boss, Camille hasn’t been ready to become a country girl yet.
What will the rest of Valentine’s Day bring? It’s going to be stressful, that’s all I can say!
Getting to know Camille was a pleasure. With all the Valentine’s Day connections, I had been worried that the novel might over-egg the romance side of things, but Ryan doesn’t do that at all, other than emphasise the busy-ness at the shop, and mention Camille’s hopes that Manny will cook a nice meal for them when she eventually gets home, (she has no phone so can’t check in of course). Even though everything is seen through Camille’s eyes, the awful Holly is all too believable, made up for by lovable Manny. What an eventful day she has.
In fact I enjoyed reading The Knowing so much I ordered a copy of Ryan’s debut A Room Called Earth, which also takes place over 24 hrs! It was while writing her first novel that Ryan discovered her own autism, applying her own experiences to those of her protagonist. I can’t wait to read it.
Source: Review copy – thank you! Scribe Publications flapped paperback, 256 pages.
