Risk and Resilience in Catherine Bush’s Minus Time

• Published in: Journal of Commonwealth literature Vol. 41; no. 2; pp. 101 - 120
• Main Author: MacKinnon, John E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Thousand Oaks, CA SAGE Publications 01.06.2006; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Anxiety; Bush, Catherine (1961- ); Literary criticism; Novels; Time; trauma; anxiety; autonomy; ambiguity; vitality; Catherine Bush; scepticism
• ISSN: 0021-9894; 1741-6442
• DOI: 10.1177/0021989406065774

In its preoccupation with the prospect of harm and its determination to avoid risk, what has been variously called our culture of fear, trauma, or warning presumes particular views about human beings, our future, and what we take to be the good life. Catherine Bush’s novel Minus Time provides an intriguing context in which to consider these views and the obsessions in which they are grounded. The novel’s main protagonist, Helen Urie, is a young woman consumed by anxiety and estranged from her family, the world, herself. While she imagines her astronaut mother, Barbara, suspended in space, caught in a state of pure isolation, Helen is suspended in time, unable to commit herself to an independent course in life. Bush masterfully conveys a sense of the pace and panic of modern existence and the unnerving effects these have on Helen, convincingly tracing Helen’s efforts to overcome her scepticism and discover new sources of enthusiasm and trust.