Farrant examines sex and the lives of litterbugs
The inevitability of time and passage floats through the quietly funny and true stories collected in M.A.C. Farrant’s eighth book The Secret Lives of Litterbugs . Separately each piece amusingly dissects a compelling moment or period in Farrant’s life. Together they approach the differences and similarities among four generations of women exploring the social power exercised by her teenage daughter and the nature of senility in both her grandmother and mother-in-law. The book is not a sweet meditation on the significance of family however. Farrant’s characters are often disruptive critical hard-drinking and crass and Farrant’s handle on their flaws and attributes makes for an interesting read.
The first portion of the book is set in a time when hurling refuse out the car window was preferable to the slovenly act of letting gum wrappers and pop bottles pool at your feet between stops at gas stations. This segment deals with Farrant’s childhood and adolescence and illustrates the wonder of youth and its attempt to unravel the mysteries of adulthood. The young Farrant staunchly resists the idea of marriage and motherhood which appears as a lifetime commitment to psychotic cleanliness and unwelcome sex. She manages to avoid the calamity of teenage insemination by Mr. Puke her ever-drunk and barfing boyfriend whose wandering hand embodies “a creeping soldier with a grenade gripped between his teeth.”
Part two of the book finds Farrant having lost the war against sex and occupying the roles of women that she had once feared. There is little sense however that Farrant has sold out on her youthful aspirations. Rather than accept the conventional definitions of wife and mother Farrant tilts the axis of her world and slows its revolution enough to bask in her career as a writer and in the idiosyncrasies of her family. The section begins with Farrant’s mother-in-law reporting that despite a serious gas leak she and her elderly friends opted to continue their bridge game a decision Farrant understands saying “it’s a chance to go out with a literal bang.” This air of free will dominates the latter half of the book as Farrant raises her two teens with a laissez-faire approach to parenting intervening only occasionally to deliver condoms by the bowlful.
Perhaps because the book is autobiographical the characters in the collection are written with a generous dose of kindness. Farrant’s humour which is sympathetic and honest rarely reaches the scathing pitch of all-out deprecation but instead depends on a uniquely benevolent assessment of an unusual existence where cats eat dogs men do the ironing and baby girls are in danger of being named Fabio. The Secret Lives of Litterbugs will not make you bust a gut but you will smile thoughtfully and feel haunted by the idea that “there’s no end to this or to any of our stories.”
