Various Positions

by Martha Schabas, Doubleday. 361 pages.

Being a former theatre school brat, I couldn't help but be drawn to Various Positions, an affecting first novel by Martha Schabas that deals with adolescence, broken homes and the fact that when you're dealing with the artistic world, the "rules do not apply". This, at least, is the conclusion reached by Georgia Slade, Ms. Schabas' engrossing main character, who is accepted to the Royal Toronto Ballet Academy and promptly begins both an artistic and sexual awakening. A bit of Black Swan meets Fame, Various Positions took me back to my own days in dance school and successfully captured the tense student rivalry and unfortunate eating disorders that are the undercurrent of any artistic training. 


In many ways this is a classic first novel: the coming-of-age-narrative has all the usual ingredients (first-person narrative, a broken home, sexual awakening, more then a few awkward metaphors). Ms. Schabas, though, brings to it a fresh perspective, mostly because of her decision to question the usual cliches. The central issue of the book - the main character's obsessive crush on her charismatic teacher - reminded me a lot of David Mamet's Oleanna,  in that we are presented with a relationship and then asked to pass judgement on who was actually wronged. I suspect the answer will be as divided for readers of Various Positions as it is for those who watch Oleanna, especially because in both cases we're dealing with accusations of sexual impropriety between teacher and student. Ms. Schabas, I think, eventually reveals her own sympathies much more then Mr. Mamet ever did (Oleanna thrives on ambiguity) but she succeeds in revealing the way a young girl's confusion can lead us all to question the identity of predator and prey.

But ambiguity still thrives in other parts of Ms. Schabas' book. Georgia Slade's future is not entirely clear, nor are the other characters given neat and tidy ends. She also performs an interesting trick in her tackling of anorexia which, given the novel is set in a dance school, sadly had to make an appearance if the book was to have any verisimilitude. Like the old ABC After-School Specials, Ms. Schabas does make the unfortunate decision to reduce the problem into a single, representative character, thereby creating the impression that the problem is an aberration, rather than a rampant concern. But she counters this by not ascribing blame to any one party (the Evil Media, the Weight-Obsessed Stage Mother). There are no pretty solutions for the anorexic in Ms Schabas' world which, sadly, echos our own.

Ms. Schabas is a lovely writer and there are more than a few haunting paragraphs, especially when discussing the difficult areas of sex, lust and obsession. There are a few over-poetic images (I agree that "autumnal mermaid" sounds nice; I'm not sure as a reader I know what it means), but ultimately Ms. Schabas successfully captures her character's voice, which somehow manages to sound both mature and adolescent, as if the character is recording her story years later while refusing to let hindsight inform her writing. All of which is to say you probably don't need to be a theatre school brat to like Various Positions - and the book may prove a good warning for anyone who wants to know what to expect from a career in the performing arts.

A side note: I picked up this book because Ms. Schabas' name sounded familiar. After rifling through my memory, I'm almost certain that she's the same actress who I cast in a play I wrote in 1999. If memory serves, she attended one rehearsal and then dropped out (I don't remember why). If this is the case, and she's reading this, then she should know that I suffered many weeks of frustration at having to recast the part with someone less suited for the role then she was. I'm hopeful that none of this influenced any of the above thoughts.