THE WEEKEND

Three elderly female friends reunite to clear out the home of a fourth, who recently died, in a short meditation on relationship bonds and the wisdom—and other traits—accumulated over a lifetime.

Largely observing the classical unities of time, place, and action, Wood’s new novel plays out like a small theatrical drama, a chamber piece in which the three characters, both individually and as a group, confront the limits of their friendship. The time is Christmas, the place is Sylvie’s appealing but decaying seaside home in Bittoes, not far from Sydney, and the action spans the weekend during which Jude, Wendy, and Adele, friends for 40 years, meet to empty the place of Sylvie’s belongings. Fastidious, waspish Jude approaches the task efficiently; blowsy actress Adele (“so short and so bosomy”) responds chaotically; and widowed academic Wendy, accompanied by her decrepit dog, Finn, does what she can. Rigid and preoccupied, Jude is awaiting the arrival of her rich long-term lover, Daniel; artistically impoverished Adele is probably homeless now that her latest relationship seems to be ending; while Wendy is fending off the obvious need to have Finn put to sleep. Wood consistently compartmentalizes, and limits, the women—the thin one, the fat one, the pert one; the clever one, the artsy one, the bossy one—while unraveling their separate and overlapping pasts. The present is largely static until a big bang of a finale is set in motion. The novel displays wit, insight, and some astute social commentary, especially on the topic of age, but offers little in the way of engagement or surprises. Meanwhile poor, mangy Finn haunts the proceedings, an ever present specter of decline and mortality.

A neatly observed, tightly circumscribed journey into predictable territory.