Book review: Addition by Toni Jordan

It’s not easy reviewing a fiction work, from a first-time author, that has received more hype than this year’s Booker winner. There are two main fears: that the temptation to pan the book will be overwhelming; and that it will be impossible to find anything original to say about it. Luckily, Tori Jordan’s Addition elicited neither response.

Jordan, a Melburnian who has science qualifications and is a veteran of RMIT’s Professional Editing and Writing course, has seemingly burst onto the literary scene out of the blue, with a short story her only previously published fiction. She’s penned a novel that is funny, deft, assured and has a believable, likeable heroine with a complex inner life. There are weaknesses in the novel, but it’s still a scintillating, emotionally intelligent read.


Addition has been hugely successful: at least 10 other countries, including the USA and the UK, are publishing it or have already. ‘Literary sensation’ is probably no exaggeration, and you can almost hear the weary sighs of a thousand unpublished writers as they read of Jordan’s success and send out yet another unsolicited manuscript.

The book is structured by a love story and this, as well as its original, ironic wit, which stems from Grace’s individuality, means that a few critics have placed it in the ‘chick lit’ genre. Indeed, it cleverly slots into the genre while effortlessly moving beyond its normal limits and into the realm of literary fiction – it’s published in Australia by Text, after all. (I hate the term ‘chick lit’ because I abhor the word ‘chick’ as a description of women, but there’s no other word for this type of book.)

Grace Vandenburg, the novel’s narrator, is a 30-something former teacher who lives in a leafy Melbourne suburb and has an unusual form of obsessive compulsive disorder. Her reclusive life revolves around counting. Everything in her confined world must be calibrated or it will descend into chaos: the steps she takes from bed to bathroom in the mornings, the brushstrokes it takes to brush her teeth, the beans she buys each week at the supermarket, the bites it takes to eat the orange cake she buys from the same café every day.

She’s constructed a rigid routine that enables her to function in a limited way and keeps her shielded from the world. A lover of numbers and the order they reveal, she revels in her obsession and channels her emotional frustration into an adoration of a brilliant, long-dead inventor.

And then she meets Seamus, a football-loving Irishman with blond hair and a charming smile, and her secure little world is soon under threat. As the love story unfolds, we gradually learn the facts of Grace’s past, both recent and otherwise.

Grace is a beautifully realised character, and her ironic take on life means that on almost every page there’s some witticism, vivid image or detail that often is also wise: ‘If someone can be unexpected using words imagine how thrilling they could be using their mouth. Or their tongue. Or their teeth.’ ‘How could I have a wart on my foot? Do they come in the mail?’ ‘Stillness races through my veins instead of blood.’ ‘The numbers scattered from my fingertips and ran across the floor.’

The novel is also filled with interesting and sometimes amusing facts about numbers. And Jordan writes a mean sex scene, managing to combine earthiness with intense eroticism.

It’s a truism of literary fiction that a successful writer makes us believe in the world they have created. Grace herself is eminently believable and her world is rich with back story. Indeed, one of the novel's main strengths is that it humanises mental illness so beautifully, yet refuses to completely separate the individual from the disorder in the way that modern psychiatry seeks to do. Grace's love of counting is bound up with who she is

On the minus side, the character of Seamus sometimes seems a tad unfilled-in. I also found some of the set-up of the love story unlikely, while perfectly suited to a ‘chick lit’ novel – the one instance where the competing genres collide with rather than complement each other, although the very unlikelihood of the set-up is probably also a drawcard in this particular market.

The one aspect of the novel I had significant argument with was its portrayal of the mental health system. I think the problem here is that this section of the novel is played for laughs.

There’s a therapy group whose chirpy facilitator seems underqualified to say the least, participants who come across as sets of symptoms rather than people, and a psychiatrist whose skill or otherwise beyond the prescribing of medication is never explored. And credibility is stretched when we read about the extreme effects of Grace’s medication – why doesn’t the psychiatrist simply adjust it when she brings the issue up with him? Jordan may well have researched this area but if so her conclusions felt superficial to me.

But to its credit the main point of the story is to destroy the dichotomy between mental health and sanity. Seamus and Grace – and the reader – learn a lesson about the preciousness of individual quirks. As much as anything, the book is a protest against normalisation and a hymn to the perfection of imperfection, the uniqueness and brilliance of each human being. Jordan’s skill is that she manages to make this point without minimising the pain that Grace’s obsession sometimes causes her. The journey towards the book’s conclusion is therefore mostly a poignant, gripping ride.

Verdict: funny, vivid, absorbing