Thanks to NetGalley @netgalley and Text Publishing @text_publishing for letting me read Friends & Dark Shapes by Kavita Bedford.
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This novel is divided into four seasons and then further divided into short pensive vignettes that follow the narrator - an unnamed young woman mourning the recent loss of her father - and her three housemates in Sydney, Australia. The housemates are all in a period of transition and growth, knowing that this situation is going to be temporary - just a brief period of their lives and not a permanent home.
The novel is fragmented and doesn't have much of a plot, and I found the housemates as characters to be fairly forgettable.
However, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it serves the broader point that I took away from the book: that some people and places are only in brief chapters of our lives - that the housemates will pack up the possessions they have accumulated throughout their time living in this space, and they will all move out and move on and maybe stay in touch, but maybe not. They will all grow and change, and so will the places they lived in, eventually becoming unrecognizable.
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Kavita Bedford’s debut novel, Friends & Dark Shapes is an insightful exploration of contemporary life. The book features a nameless narrator, her friends, her housemates and their lucid lives.

Broken up into sections by seasons and told in vignettes for chapters, Friends & Dark Shapes is a lush examination of the truly transient and fleeting aspects of the lives of twenty-somethings. Each vignette is as introspective as the next and is written with precise and purposeful language. Bedford writes about themes of loss and friendship but she digs deeper with her characters’ surroundings and considers race, class, gender, nature, gentrification, immigration and the ultimate question of where one belongs. The narrator’s South Asian – Australian identity is also examined with memories of her two homes, her family and her parents.

The setting of Sydney, Australia is beautiful in its description and a true ode to the place these characters call home. I personally loved reading about a place entirely foreign to me.

I wish we got to know our narrator more. We know her friends and their behaviours but we don’t know how she feels about them. We know about her dark shapes but we don’t know her emotions. We know her present situation but not what she desires for herself. I wanted more exploration of the eureka moments and to dive further below the surface of my understanding.

Reminiscent of life, the book ebbs and flows and reassures the reader that we are all trying to find where and if we belong. Overall this is an enjoyable and thoughtful read!

Friends & Dark Shapes is out on March 2nd, 2021. Thank you to NetGalley, Text Publishing and Kavita Bedford for this advance review copy.

Friends & Dark shapes is a series of well-written vignettes about a group of almost-thirty friends sharing a house in Sydney. The main character is dealing with grief following the recent loss of the father, and this is somewhat explored in the story.

The story is told in short snapshots and does not follow any sort of plot. Sometimes the lack of structure made it confusing and difficult to really get into. As with most stories told in this way, some of the vignettes were powerful and engaging and some were less interesting to me.

A lot of the novel was relatable and delved into universal feelings and concepts. However, a lot of it needed a much stronger understanding of Australian culture and society than I have. So there were parts of the story and discussions among the characters that I didn’t really understand or relate to. I think there are a lot of readers who would connect more to these characters and stories than I did. This wasn’t really the book for me, but I am sure that for a lot of people it will be one that they really enjoy.

I loved this book at the beginning, but then couldn't really get into it.
It is the story of four friends sharing a house. The beginning seemed very good and I was really interested in finding out what would happen in the house, but there isn't really a plot.
The starting point is the loss and grieve of one of the characters, but the story doesn't evolve a lot from that
The writing was really very good, but I couldn't relate to the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this arc in exchange for an honest review.

FRIENDS AND DARK SHAPES is a bittersweet novel about a young woman recovering from the death of her father and the friends who surround her. The true beauty of the book is in how Bedford shows these young people supporting one another as they try to figure out who they are as adults. she captures that in-between time most of us experience in early adulthood. Lovely read.

My thanks to NetGalley, the Author and the Publisher for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Bedford's writing brings you into the day to day life of a woman who is mourning the loss of her father and all of the grief that comes with it. The writing is raw, and compelling, and so relatable. After the year we have just had, everyone is living with grief of some kind. I felt myself in the main character's place. Granted, the main character is several years older than I am, but there is a shared humanity there.

This is a collection of short stories over the course of a year or so, and I can feel the passage of time with each new story that I read. Anyone who feels lost in life, or is grieving the loss of someone they love, or an experience they were hoping for, will identify with at least some part of this piece. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

“I think about all the secrets this land holds, about the way we ignore the past and build blindly on top of it and how one day, not today, I will become a part of this earth like my father, and my bones will form a part of this city.”

A stunning debut novel – Friends & Dark Shapes by Kavita Bedford follows the protagonist as she navigates the loss of her father and subsequent abandonment of her mother. The reader is taken on a journey of past and present amongst the everchanging landscape of Redfern, Sydney.

Left with only memories, the protagonist’s recollection and comfort of the past relies on her featured surroundings, areas which have since reshaped into something new and unrecognisable.

This was a beautiful commentary on the everchanging nature of Australian community, class and sense of self. It beautifully explored the pervasive theme of adulthood and anxiety relating to checklist markers for what is deemed ‘success’.

Friends & Dark Shapes navigates loneliness through stunning prose and vignettes. Grief is beautifully illustrated as an emotion difficult to anchor and reconcile, an emotion which is only exacerbated by surroundings that are transitionary and estranged. It is a story which demonstrates the striving of connection, purpose, direction and meaning when all previous markers of significance have slipped away.

TW: Cancer, illness, death in family.

Friends & Dark Shapes is out on 2 March 2021. Thank you to @textpublishing @kavitabedford and @netgalley for this advanced readers’ copy in exchange for an honest review #NetGalley #FriendsDarkShapes #TextPublishing #KavitaBedford

#FriendsDarkShapes #NetGalley #ARC #KavitaBedford

Kavita Bedford's 'Friends & Dark Shapes' is, more than anything, an ode to Sydney. However, it is as much about how much of you reside in a city, as how much of your city resides in you. Layered in the backdrops of Redfern, a suburb that's been written off due to multiple social evils but still manage to retain a little bit of old-world charm, and of the death of her beloved father, Bedford navigates through the modern difficulties and apathies that come with trading too much soul for subsistence in a city like Sydney. The writing is artful and undoubtedly beautiful, with a strong undercurrent of melancholy and a brand of nostalgia only the youth experience when confronted with changing landscapes. Everything is the same, but a glance away and back, and everything has changed.

What I loved about this work is her fluctuating relationship with her friends. A twenty-something year-old woman sitting around a wooden table at a share-home with her housemates as they discuss the vapid nature of online dating and how even that doesn't deter them from trying and how far away they were from being where they dreamed they'd be, is a precious scene, made even more precious because of how many similar conversations I've had with my friends over a bowl of pasta and some chips. There is a sense of dreariness to it all, similar to that of someone who makes minimum wage hoping to buy a house someday. You know it's not bound to happen, but you don't stop trying. And that is essentially where the heart of the novel lies.

It is not an entirely riveting read, and doesn't make you want to zipline through it. Some bits feel a little too over-theorized and rehearsed to be taken at face value. But it is gentle and an incredibly beautiful, poignant narration of life in a city, where you toe the line between staying and leaving, belonging and intruding, friends and the dark shapes of loss and grief, and Bedford convinces you that the good lies in all the small moments of home in a large landscape of foreignness.

"How can we learn to grieve for ourselves if our country doesn't know how to grieve for it's own history?"

FRIENDS AND DARK SHAPES by Kavita Bedford started off strong for me but then fell flat. This book is about four friends living in a share house in Australia. The beginning seemed very evocative and it was intriguing to see what would happen in the house or just in these people’s lives but nothing happens. There were allusions to loss and although that was discussed it just wasn’t very in depth. I felt no connection to any of the characters. The writing was good and that kept me engaged to read but it was just little snippets of life with no plot. I don’t think this will be a book I will remember.
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Thank you to Text Publishing via NetGalley for my advance review copy!

A <b>BIG THANK YOU</b> to Text Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC of Friends & Dark Shapes
by Kavita Bedford. Friends & Dark Shapes is a timely and tumultuous ride perfectly capturing the cusp of thirty and the challenges and triumphs of that age. As someone pushing thirty, with fond memories of Sydney, and a deceased father, these vignettes pack a wallop. Every bit of praise they receive is well-deserved for this moving meditation on love, loss, and life. ★★★★★

From the publisher: The city I grew up in was elastic and belonged to me and my friends as we stretched it through the nights. We knew its contours, and when something new arrived we were among the first to be a part of it. Everything was powder pink and bendy and shiny for us. We hadn’t had time to build a lasting memory around some fixture and then watch that time fall away from under us.

A group of friends moves into a share house in Redfern. They are all on the cusp of thirty and big life changes, navigating insecure employment and housing, second-generation identity, online dating and social alienation—and one of them, our narrator, has just lost her father. How do you inhabit a space where the landscape is shifting around you, when your sense of self is unravelling? What meaning does time have in the midst of grief? Through emotionally rich vignettes, tinged with humour, Friends & Dark Shapes sketches the contours of contemporary life. It is a novel of love and loss, of constancy and change. Most of all, it is about looking for connection in an estranged world.

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

5 of 5 Stars
Pub Date 2 Mar 2021
#Friends&DarkShapes #NetGalley

Friends & Dark Shapes is a poetic and introspective collection of vignettes about a young woman navigating grief and thirty-something life against the vivid background of Sydney, Australia. This book is a love letter to fathers and daughters, It's a love letter to Australia. It's a love letter to the uncertainties and messy feelings and fragile, yet stubborn hope of something "better" that characterizes so many conversations between young adults.

While Bedford's stylistic choices (such as, forgoing all quotation marks and using few line breaks) made this book challenging to start - once I was familiar with the structure, it was easy to become invested. With over 60 vignettes spanning the course of a year, I must admit to savoring some and breezing by others. However, this was due to the particular focus of each snapshot and my investment in the subject matter (teenage friendships, Aboriginal rights, the gig economy, the uncomfortable question of privilege, etc) , as opposed to any inconsistencies in the strength of the writing.

In addition, as someone who has never been to Australia, it was clear that Bedford was either from there or had lived there. While most of her descriptions of the cities, suburbs, transit stations, and wilderness were interesting - there were moments where I felt hindered by my unfamiliarity with the landscape as she made connections between the narrator's emotional/mental state and her environment. Also, there were times where the country, it's history, and it's ever-changing face seemed to take precedent over the main characters. In those moments, I felt distanced from the story and picked up my pace to get to the next section.

Overall, this is a strong debut novel that left me feeling, simultaneously, melancholy and hopeful. While the writing style was initially a challenge and the setting occasionally overwhelmed the narrative - I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys the use of introspective characters, nonlinear storytelling, and occasional humor to explore both the mundane and striking elements of life.

CW: parental death, grief, sexual assault, sexual harassment, mental illness

The lack of quotation marks, the 'we' perspective which then shifts to an 'I' perspective that the shifts to a different point of view (still 'I'). It is all rather confusing. The book tries to be relevant but then it has the characters referring to their Asian neighbour 'Chairman Mao' (ah-ah...not). And the dialogue tries to be mublecoresque and 'real' but it sounded painfully contrived. Not an author for me...