Heather Lewis took her own life in 2002, aged forty. Having published two well-received noir-ish novels – ‘House Rules’ and ‘The Second Suspect’ - her star was ostensibly in the ascendant. Like many, however, her private suffering was a far different matter entirely and it was a battle she ultimately lost.

’Notice,’ though published posthumously by Serpent’s Tail, was written ten years before her death. Even so, it reads, as novelist Alan Gurganus says in his Afterword, like a ‘suicide note’ of sorts.

’Notice’ follows the misadventures of an unnamed young prostitute. Working the commuters as they pass through the train station in the small suburban community in which she lives, she tells us she doesn’t do it for the money - she has a ‘real’ job - but for another un-pin-downable need.

She is picked up and brought home by a sadistic John, where she is made to act out some unsettling family drama with him and his suffering wife. While there, she forms a relationship with the wife, one that is marked by the considerable neediness of both of them. In a Kafkaesque twist, she ends up in an asylum where she is periodically raped and abused. Once again, solace comes in the form of an older woman. She forms a relationship with a counsellor, who then helps her get out. Once out, she is soon back at the train station. But that’s only the start of it all.

The most startling thing about ‘Notice’ is the tone. The anonymous (anti-) heroine recounts her appalling mishaps with the somnambulant tone of utter, utter dislocation. It’s like she is narrating a silent, black-and-white movie in a darkened theatre, the monochrome events on the screen possessed of an unsettling, detached unreality. Like the voice of a ghost, disembodied, speaking from another realm.

While the haunting tone is laden with dislocation, it is testament to the power of the writing that by the end of the book, the reader is completely emotionally involved in the situation. Lewis’ gift is to draw us in, without appearing to be bothered whether we care or not (but secretly knowing that we do.)

She writes with such an economy of language as even Beckett would be rightly jealous of. Her taut, lean prose has the skinny-ribbed quality of Hemingway, but packs a more knowing punch. The narrative reads like a monologue. Or a poem. A beautiful, fucked-up confessional, imbued with a melodic minimalism.

However much of Lewis is in the narrator will probably never be known now, but as she leads us through her ever-worsening situation, she maintains a passive aloofness from both the reader and the events of her story with all the hardboiled stoicism of a film noir heroine. Sex is the only true succour she finds. Thus her prostitution is partly about her need to be made feel alive. Numbed by whatever bitter experiences of her past, she needs sensation to stave off the‘blackness’ she fears will devour her.

The ambiguous title appears throughout the text. On numerous occasions she mentions being noticed, or not, as the case may be. She is looking for notice, to fill the void perhaps? The title could also mean the giving of notice, as in resigning from something.

One of the novel’s bigger themes is the oppressive burden of depression. The narrator is afflicted and it drives her to extraordinary lengths to avoid it. She calls it a ‘heaviness,’ a ‘blackness,’ a ‘weight.’ It is a thing which she fears will devour her if she is not careful. With drink, drugs and sex, she can hold it off, but she knows it is never far away. Of the many frightening monsters she comes up against in the course of the book, it is this one which she demonstrably fears the most.

In his revealing Afterword, Alan Gurganus, describes his first meeting with Lewis. He was working in a university and she was a freshman student. They immediately hit it off and became good friends. He says he felt a connection instantly and on discovering that she also wrote, the bond was strengthened. They stayed in touch in the intervening years and he recounts phone calls from her, where she was paranoid and spinning wildly out of control. He speaks of her drug addiction - to OxyContin - and of her having been sexually abused as a child. The Afterword works as a chilling coda to the novel, illuminating it somewhat. Making it even realer than it already was. More harrowing even.

And it is a harrowing ride. It is drenched in a tragic mist of anguish, foreboding ennui and pain. All kinds of pain. Physical, mental and emotional. But it is also an intensely beautiful book. Lewis’ words are sure and assured. It is poetic, poised writing, wrought from the depths of despair. Truly, a bittersweet symphony.

A very American writer, Lewis had that elusive and rare ability - Raymond Carver had it also - to write with economy and an unflinching poker face, irrespective of what is being said. From a selfish perspective, fans of quality, fearless writing will lament the loss of Lewis as a writer who did not shirk from the darker recesses of humanity. A writer who faced into the void and instinctively knew what it contained. Sadly the burden of such knowledge was too much and it ended up breaking her.

Sean Walsh is 30 years old and lives with his wife and two children near the town Killala in Co. Mayo. As a music and arts writer his work has appeared in publications such as artswest, CAFE News, Céide Review, magpie magazine, Hot Press and Irish Music magazine. He is also currently film critic with the Connaught Telegraph newspaper. After dropping out of college while studying Philosophy, he blagged his way into working in arts administration, which he still does. Currently completing an Open University Hons Degree in Humanities (one more module to go), he hopes to get down to serious writing soon.

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.