The Pyramid of Needs, Ernest Price’s debut novel, has two alternating narrators. There’s Jack, a wry and weary high school teacher who hides his “bitterness” and “existential dread” behind a “display of bonhomie”, both in his classroom and his life. And there is Linda, Jack’s 70-year-old mother, a longtime devotee of a range of lifestyle supplements – sold through a multi-level marketing scheme – who is intent on revitalising her own position within its pyramid of sellers by becoming a wellness influencer on social media. Jack is accustomed to watching his mother’s videos and livestreams, mostly for the wicked sense of schadenfreude that they bring him – but this is the limit of their relationship. The pair have not spoken since Jack’s transition, now over a decade ago, although the rift between was much longer in the making.
Linda takes pride in, even insists on, her good health and capacity – she is, she claims, “routinely mistaken for a 65-year-old” – and considers this evidence of the efficacy of the supplements she spruiks. But when she breaks her hip in a sudden fall, Jack and his sister Alice are forced to fly to her Noosa home to help out while she recovers, and it quickly becomes clear that all is not as it seems. Not with Linda, nor with her business, and definitely not with her husband Peter, whose vague forgetfulness is veering into a steep decline.
Jack and Linda’s alternating voices, working in counterpoint, are what give Price’s novel much of its madcap energy. Both characters are compelling, in their very different ways, and both are, to differing degrees, unreliable as narrators – intently focused on their own travails, and constrained by their firm worldviews. Linda is wilfully optimistic and unable to countenance anything that doesn’t fit within her plans; Jack’s wounded cynicism undercuts her flights of fancy. But these two voices also allow Price to finely draw the complexities of their family dynamic – there is so much that they cannot say to each other, and so many ways in which they both want to be seen and supported, despite their radical opposition.
The book is sharpest in its humour when skewering the wellness industry and influencers, especially in their careful curation of their bodies and lives on social media. Linda tries constantly to get her visiting children to take her to the local beach, because it makes for a good backdrop for her posts. Included in her range of products, all with terrifically ridiculous names, is a Supreme Energy supplement which has, since she stocked up on it, been banned because it contains amphetamines. Price explores some of the fascinating overlaps between the wellness community and conspiratorial thinking, especially around the pandemic: Linda chides her children for wearing face masks on their flight, and has refused a Covid vaccine.
What is most refreshing about The Pyramid of Needs, though, is its treatment of Jack. The reader knows from the opening chapters that Jack is trans, and while this fact is important to his experiences, and to many of his interactions with his family – Linda believes, for example, that she has been supportive by giving Jack Supreme Man supplements shortly after his coming out – it is never the sole feature of his character. This is not a story about identity, and it is still, unfortunately, rare to see a trans character treated with this level of dignity and deep complexity.
The Pyramid of Needs is a wickedly funny book – and while none of Price’s characters are spared the sharpness of its satire, he is nonetheless generous with their foibles, because the greatest failing they all share is a willingness to believe in, or put their faith in, something that gives them some sense of control within their lives. This is its tragedy, as much as it is the fodder for its comedic material, and it makes for a book with a great deal of heart. It is very much about betrayal – both the betrayal of the faith that pyramid schemes foster in and demand of their operators, and of the ability of the family to understand each other as they grow and change and age. It is an assured debut – fast-paced, funny and compelling, and deeply affecting too.
The Pyramid of Needs by Ernest Price is published by Affirm Press ($34.99)
