Effie Carr’s debut novel Stamatia X uses Greek mythology, religion, and the study of grammar to tell the story of a strong minded intelligent girl whose family are “like birds flying backwards” to Greece.
When Stamatia’s father Vasili Elafopoulos struggles to settle into Australian life he decides to move back to Greece at the same time the military junta is in power and the book explores the ramifications of that decision.
Neos Kosmos met Carr (the pen-name of Effie Dimitrakopoulos-Carr) at a cafe in Sydney’s inner west a week after her novel was launched. While the book is mostly a work of fiction, there are parallels between her life and that of the Elafopoulos family. Like Stamatia, Carr’s parents migrated to Australia as a married couple, arriving on the ship Patris in the 1960s.
In 1975, after the junta’s demise, her family moved back to Greece and she says the experience of growing up in Australia then moving back to her parent’s homeland inspired the book.
“I picked a period of history that was important to me,” she says. “I wanted to explore how this bright young Greek Australian girl was able to deal with the weight of expectation of culture and history and how she might negotiate the spaces between the past, present and future.”
The title Stamatia X refers to how the young protagonist compares herself first to Muhammad Ali, and then Malcolm X, with the author revealing that some readers have found her to be a divisive character.
“I wanted to make her real and flesh her out,” Carr says. “I wanted the story to be both comical and a tragedy. It’s very Greek. A lot of people liked the character of Stamatia at the beginning when she seems like a nice, young, very smart girl. But then things emerge about her and her personality. As human beings we have capacity for good, as well as for some violence and bad acts if pushed. I wanted to explore the false idea that children are entirely innocent.”
One of the moments that has everlasting consequences for Stamatia is when she is no longer the only child, and uncovering how such situations affect households is a key aspect of the book.
“I was interested in exploring that hierarchy in the family,” Carr says.
“For instance, first, second, third-born children. How does the power work? Does the first child feel always alienated after the second one is born? I wanted to look at power and authority not just in a global way, but in families.
“Stamatia is particularly precocious and the birth of her brother disrupts her world view and the view of herself. It’s a crack that can never ever be fixed up. It forever stops her from being an only child. She understands that acutely at that moment. So, she is forced to consider all options.”
One of the most controversial chapters is a sexual encounter Stamatia has. The issue of consent is not clear and this is another theme which Carr, a lawyer, was keen to highlight in the book.
“That chapter divided my readers,” she says. “Stamatia is very young, 14–15 years old. Even though she is young, is she giving consent? Phillip is 18 and is an adult. But when he barges into the bathroom she is faced with this dilemma. Does she go along with it? I was interested in exploring this idea of consent. Because the law gives arbitrary cut-out dates. You can’t give consent until you are 16 years old. But children and young adults don’t all mature the same way. So far, different people are reading it in different ways. My role as an author is not to decide.”
Carr says she tried to dramatise historical conscience to help tell the story of the Elafopoulos family and that the period where the Greek junta was in power was a gift for her writing says the author.
“The way that the junta manipulated the Greek language, they had the Katharevousa, and I was fascinated by that during my research,” she says.
“My Anglo friends are very surprised to know that the birthplace of democracy – Greece – had a military junta from 1967 to 1973. The junta had these slogans and medical metaphors referring to Greece as a patient that they would administer the medicine to if they’d need to, to fulfil the dream of this great Greece they will create. This was playing beautifully into the themes of the book because to Stamatia, language is very important.”
For many Greek Australians the grammar aspect of the book will be relatable and Carr says her decision to use Greek grammar to drive the narrative was a moment of sheer insanity.
“I decided to use Greek tenses and verbs that Stamatia was learning in Greek School in Australia to try to make a path to the past, present, and future and what that might mean,” she says.
“In English, a lot of the verbs have definite endings. In Greek there is a whole bunch of irregular verbs and you have to learn them off by heart. Stamatia, in particular, finds that very oppressive. So, the story emerged in those irregular verbs. It didn’t take a predictable path.”
One Greek grammar term that is constantly referred to in the book is the continuous present tense and the author revealed that her protagonist views this state as purgatory.
“Stamatia doesn’t want to live in the continuous present, she feels caught in the grammar, she wants to change her life which she unfortunately dramatically does,” Carr says.
“Stamatia asks, ‘what is the continuous present? I don’t understand it’. She feels the continuous present is an abomination, she wants to go headlong in the future. She doesn’t want to be in the continuous purgatory of living always thinking about her past or worrying about her dead relatives. She wants to be free to forget.”
Professor Vrasidas Karalis is the Sir Nicholas Laurantus Professor of Modern Greek and Chair of the Modern Greek Department at the University of Sydney, and he says what Carr’s book does well is explore how Stamatia is always aware of the three dimensions of time.
“The past, future, and present are all converging into a powerful re-creation of the forces that made Stamatia confront the history of the country of origin, confront prejudices and ultimately her own self,” he said during the launch of the book at an event at Gleebooks in Sydney on 13 April.
“The novel begins with a return and ends with a return: it is a reverse Odyssey and a new Odyssey. It is also the gripping narrative about how an individual gains or regains her lost motherland.”
The conclusion of Stamatia X is open-ended, and Carr hopes her readers can make their own mind up about what happens to her young protagonist but hinted that the answer lies in the book.
“I’ve had people asked me what happened to Stamatia,” she says.
“I tell the reader that it is an enigmatic answer. It’s a gift to the reader to interpret what happens in their own way. I don’t want to stop a reader from their own understanding of the book. I don’t want to change the reading of the book because of something I say. My favourite authors are the ones that sit back and allow people the space to interpret the book in their own way.”