Names for Nothingness is about a modern family dealing with empty spaces that should be filled to the brim. In relationships that are characterised by a one-step-forwards-two-steps-back choreography, the teenage Caitlin, her mother Sharn and step-father, Liam, live with disappointment, regret and things unsaid, trying to maintain a calm surface while the feelings beneath start to surge.
Caitlin decides to be different as she enters an alternate reality to become part of the Satya Deva cult. At first she is drawn into the life of the community and then as a devotee of the guru himself, willingly seeing her own identity erased.
After dealing with her own anger on many levels, Sharn finally goes after her daughter, excluding Liam from her decision to act. Sharn's ambivalence stems from the way Caitlin came into her life: conceived in rape when Sharn was a teenager. Despite her feelings, Sharn is shocked to see Caitlin as a spaced-out young woman, now mother to her own baby girl who is obviously neglected and underfed. In the vain hope that Caitlin will follow, Sharn takes the child back to live with Liam, introducing a new set of dynamics into a relationship that is barely holding together at the seams.
Blain boldly asks the reader to tackle a difficult task; to sympathise with characters that are hard to like and whose inertia is frustrating. Reactions are muted and where there should be emotion-charged confrontations there is silence and misdirected irritation.
Sharn's accusing resentment of Liam's indolence rankles with her own failure to accept the responsibility of motherhood. Liam's reticence to assert himself as a man or as a father is at odds with his obvious emotional connection with Caitlin, who stole his heart when he first embarked on a relationship with her mother.
Caitlin's choice to leave equates to a choice for nothing. In this way the fictitious Satya Deva could describe any one of the cults on offer, demanding a total denial of self and the slavish submission to another who is to be served.
The process of Caitlin's disappearance is thus described.
"She is gone, and the way in which it happened, its very happening, is of no consequence" she has no memory of how she came to be here. No memory of who she was and no desire for who she may become. She is who they told her she was. "Your name is Nirev. Who you were, what you did, those you love; all of it is gone.'" (p225)
In contrast to the vacant nihilism of many cults, to be a disciple of Christ is to embrace life in all its substance and richness. Rather than being rubbed out of existence, Jesus enables mere mortals to be transformed as he traces over their pencilled-in histories with indelible black ink and records their names in the Book of Life. There is never blind slavery, but service inspired by the fact that he came to serve us first.
In the end, the Names for Nothingness is like the lives being led by its characters; leaving a sense of emptiness where one would have hoped for a strong conclusion. Blain does not spell out a neat resolution, offering only smudged hints about how things may play out.
While I would love to know how things work out for Sharn and Liam, the question I would really want to ask is this: Does Caitlin eventually wake up and choose life instead of nothingness?
We could ask the same question of ourselves although many people would avoid such self-analysis, preferring the anaesthetic of daily routine or deliberately choosing a way out. But what about us? Do we eventually wake up to our own blindness and choose life instead of nothingness?
Lea Carswell is a Sydney-based writer who has worked for many corporate clients over the past ten years. She currently oversees Communications at CMS NSW and is involved in recruitment of missionaries.
