THE LAST TIME WE SPOKE by Fiona Sussman

Copy of book for review provided by the author.

Two boys, born two years apart in Auckland. One, Jack Reid, born to white middle class parents, Carla and Keith, teacher and farmer respectively.  A much longed-for only child, born when his parents had long given up hope of ever becoming parents. Now 18 years old, Jack works in a bank in the city, has a girlfriend and has come home for the night to help his parents celebrate their 27th wedding anniversary plus to break the dreaded news that he doesn't want to be a farmer like his dad.

Not too far away geographically, but very far away in every other respect, lives Ben Toroa, 16 years old, survivor of an abortion attempt, living in poverty and chaos with his younger siblings, under the care of his mother who is a punching bag for her latest partner. Unlike Jack, for Ben there is no hope, little education or skill set for adult life, no order or structure, no love. Belonging to a gang, and proving yourself to that gang are the major sources of self-esteem, belonging and making it in this world.

 It is on the night of Carla and Keith's wedding anniversary dinner that these two widely opposing   worlds collide in the most brutal of circumstances leaving one person dead, and another who may as well be. Carla is faced with her world, everything she has known, loved, and given herself to completely destroyed; Ben is facing a life in prison.  What follows unfolds over eight or nine years, as both Carla and Ben deal with the enormous fall out of this arbitrary act of violence. The process, as you can imagine, is fraught. For both of them. Carla is overwhelmed by grief, anger, hopelessness, fear, loss. Ben, only 16 we must remember, is also overwhelmed by the violence in his prison world, the impact on his mental health, the hopelessness of his situation. The one thing, however, deep inside his memory that might, just might offer the slenderest of hopes for him, is that he does remember a mother who once loved him, when he was very small, before the endless cycle of pregnancy, poverty and punching bag took over.

And yet, in small baby steps, some forward and some back, both Carla and Ben rediscover life, a purpose for living, make connections, and begin to find a way forward. One would think this would be easier for Carla living outside the physical confines of a prison, but it is actually Ben who grows the most, finding within the close confines of the prison system the basic human needs of love, respect and in turn self respect that enable him to create a life of value and meaning.

This novel has been some years in the making. A number of rural home invasions in New Zealand in the 1990s were the catalyst for Fiona Sussman's immersion into the violent world of youth offending, gang initiations, prison life, childhoods of deprivation, violence and dysfunction. She spent time visiting prisons, meeting with prisoners, speaking with police, victim impact organisations,  It must have been very confronting for her to spend time in the underbelly of our society, an underbelly that the vast majority of us do not want to know about or ever had any exposure to. It is easy for most of those who read this novel to identify with Carla and her grief, but not so easy to begin to have any understanding of the world that Ben comes from. Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff was very confrontational for many people, lifting a veil from what most of us either chose not to see, or simply did not think existed. This novel takes us deeper into the violent and despairing life of many Maori in this country, essentially a result of colonisation by the British in the 1800s, forfeiture of land, and breakdown of traditional mores, cultural and family bonds.  It is not a novel written in anger, but there is a certain despair and powerlessness that has allowed such a deprived strata of society to develop. Fiona Sussman digs deep into the essence of the wounded and damaged themselves, in this case Carla and Ben.  Time may not heal, but it certainly dulls and softens the pain, suffering and despair, our natural healing processes allowing for hope and optimism to enter and begin to work their magic.

This really is a remarkable book, I cannot praise it enough. It touched something deep inside me. As a 6th generation NZer, who has had a very comfortable and easy ride in this country, I am ashamed that at the same time my predecessors have done well in this country, there are many who have not. The author is a new citizen of this country, and yet she has such insight and compassion into such a big issue. New Zealand is of course not the only British colony to have its indigenous population decimated, the author's own country of South Africa with its more turbulent and disturbing history. But New Zealand is her country now too, and she has done what good writers do  - educate and inform, open our eyes, show us a different way of looking at things and ourselves. Transport us. Read this, be humbled and see how we can all make a difference.

THE LAST TIME WE SPOKE by Fiona Sussman

Copy of book for review provided by the author.

Two boys, born two years apart in Auckland. One, Jack Reid, born to white middle class parents, Carla and Keith, teacher and farmer respectively.  A much longed-for only child, born when his parents had long given up hope of ever becoming parents. Now 18 years old, Jack works in a bank in the city, has a girlfriend and has come home for the night to help his parents celebrate their 27th wedding anniversary plus to break the dreaded news that he doesn't want to be a farmer like his dad.

Not too far away geographically, but very far away in every other respect, lives Ben Toroa, 16 years old, survivor of an abortion attempt, living in poverty and chaos with his younger siblings, under the care of his mother who is a punching bag for her latest partner. Unlike Jack, for Ben there is no hope, little education or skill set for adult life, no order or structure, no love. Belonging to a gang, and proving yourself to that gang are the major sources of self-esteem, belonging and making it in this world.

 It is on the night of Carla and Keith's wedding anniversary dinner that these two widely opposing   worlds collide in the most brutal of circumstances leaving one person dead, and another who may as well be. Carla is faced with her world, everything she has known, loved, and given herself to completely destroyed; Ben is facing a life in prison.  What follows unfolds over eight or nine years, as both Carla and Ben deal with the enormous fall out of this arbitrary act of violence. The process, as you can imagine, is fraught. For both of them. Carla is overwhelmed by grief, anger, hopelessness, fear, loss. Ben, only 16 we must remember, is also overwhelmed by the violence in his prison world, the impact on his mental health, the hopelessness of his situation. The one thing, however, deep inside his memory that might, just might offer the slenderest of hopes for him, is that he does remember a mother who once loved him, when he was very small, before the endless cycle of pregnancy, poverty and punching bag took over.

And yet, in small baby steps, some forward and some back, both Carla and Ben rediscover life, a purpose for living, make connections, and begin to find a way forward. One would think this would be easier for Carla living outside the physical confines of a prison, but it is actually Ben who grows the most, finding within the close confines of the prison system the basic human needs of love, respect and in turn self respect that enable him to create a life of value and meaning.

This novel has been some years in the making. A number of rural home invasions in New Zealand in the 1990s were the catalyst for Fiona Sussman's immersion into the violent world of youth offending, gang initiations, prison life, childhoods of deprivation, violence and dysfunction. She spent time visiting prisons, meeting with prisoners, speaking with police, victim impact organisations,  It must have been very confronting for her to spend time in the underbelly of our society, an underbelly that the vast majority of us do not want to know about or ever had any exposure to. It is easy for most of those who read this novel to identify with Carla and her grief, but not so easy to begin to have any understanding of the world that Ben comes from. Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff was very confrontational for many people, lifting a veil from what most of us either chose not to see, or simply did not think existed. This novel takes us deeper into the violent and despairing life of many Maori in this country, essentially a result of colonisation by the British in the 1800s, forfeiture of land, and breakdown of traditional mores, cultural and family bonds.  It is not a novel written in anger, but there is a certain despair and powerlessness that has allowed such a deprived strata of society to develop. Fiona Sussman digs deep into the essence of the wounded and damaged themselves, in this case Carla and Ben.  Time may not heal, but it certainly dulls and softens the pain, suffering and despair, our natural healing processes allowing for hope and optimism to enter and begin to work their magic.

This really is a remarkable book, I cannot praise it enough. It touched something deep inside me. As a 6th generation NZer, who has had a very comfortable and easy ride in this country, I am ashamed that at the same time my predecessors have done well in this country, there are many who have not. The author is a new citizen of this country, and yet she has such insight and compassion into such a big issue. New Zealand is of course not the only British colony to have its indigenous population decimated, the author's own country of South Africa with its more turbulent and disturbing history. But New Zealand is her country now too, and she has done what good writers do  - educate and inform, open our eyes, show us a different way of looking at things and ourselves. Transport us. Read this, be humbled and see how we can all make a difference.

LIE WITH ME by Sabine Durrant

Review copy provided by Hachette NZ via Booksellers NZ.

Ambiguity and double entendre are rife in this novel, on almost every page, with every character seemingly guilty of some sort of lie, flexibility with the truth, cover up, or self-preservation tactic. Starting with the title, even before you open the cover. Who is lying, who isn't, who is lying with who, who is sleeping with who, who is pretending, who isn't? The intrigue is absolutely bursting out of the pages, and the reader simply does not know what is going on.

This novel is the latest in the amnesia/psychological thriller genre that first started with ‘Before I Go To Sleep’ by Susan Watson way back in 2011, coming into prominence with ‘Gone Girl’ by Gillian Flynn a couple of years ago, then Paula Hawkins’ ‘The Girl on the Train’. And I expect this one will also take off and be just as successful as these other novels. Because,  just as we may be starting to have amnesia-overload, the protagonist in this novel is not a young woman victim, caught between a rock and a hard place, confused, cornered, either manipulating or being manipulated. No, in this novel, we have a man, Paul Morris, 42 years old, supposed master of his universe, who finds himself in a net that may or may not be of his making. From page one – ‘How much do we collude in our own destruction? How much of this nightmare is on me?’ And the reader does not know either.

Paul is not an appealing character - arrogant, lazy, bludger, heavy drinker, broke, string of broken relationships, hedonistic. He calls himself a writer, and had some success with a novel some twenty years earlier - his best friend calls him The Great Literary Success. On the second page Paul, who is the first person narrator, tells us that ‘Plenty of friendships, I am sure, are based on lies’.  Warning bells... that are not heeded by Paul or the reader. But since that novel, he has done very little with his life, continuing to dine out on this success, with no literary follow-up, is now living with his mother, no job prospects and his latest fling over.

By chance, Paul meets up with an old university ‘contemporary’ as he calls him, Andrew, whose sister Paul has vague recollections of dating at one stage when they were all at Cambridge together. Paul finds himself invited to dinner to Andrew’s, where he meets Alice, a young widow in her forties, with two teenage children. Things go swimmingly well between Paul and Alice, and before long Paul is invited to accompany them all on a two-week holiday to Greece - Alice and her children, Andrew, his wife Tina and their three children. Alice has another mission on this holiday - it is ten years since Jasmine, the fourteen year old daughter,  of another holidaying couple disappeared, and Alice has worked tirelessly over the years to keep the search for this girl alive. Alice and Andrew's families were all holidaying in the town when the girl disappeared, and got to know her parents. Now, ten years later, the three families are meeting again to mark the anniversary.

Into this complicated web of relationships and history, Paul bumbles his way through, lying through his teeth about what he does, how much money he has, his life, digging bigger and bigger holes for himself. But as he slowly discovers he actually has much greater things to worry about.

This is a tightly held thriller, with the web tightening in very surprising ways around Paul. He is a walking time bomb, completely delusional about his place at the centre of his own universe, the reader figuring out fairly early on that his walk is taking him into a whole heap of trouble, largely of his own making. But his hazy memories of just about everything of course make it impossible to tell what the big reveal will be. There is not one single likeable character in this book, with the exception perhaps of Tina, Andrew's wife. The manipulation, the cover ups, the denials, the lies, the tit-for-tats, the furtiveness, the perversions - it is a never ending feast of nastiness. But what a great read. Don't take it on holiday, especially to Greece, you might find you never leave....

LAB GIRL by Hope Jahren

I just love taking a punt on a book that in any normal circumstance you wouldn't even look at. Although that cover is certainly worth a second look, extremely appealing. A bookseller, at a bookclub night such as many  independent bookshops run, told us about this book that he had recently read. What at first looks like a scientific geeky nerdy heavy handed botany text is anything but. Lab Girl is the author, Hope Jahren. Hope has spent her whole life in a lab. Growing up in the freezing climes of Minnesota, in a very closed off, emotionally distant Scandinavian family, Hope's life was in the community college laboratory that her father taught physics and earth science in. This was her happy place, her playground, her world, where her passions for discovery, experimentation and problem solving first came together.

From those early beginnings, Hope Jahren is now a tenured professor at the University of Hawaii. She is what is called a geobiologist, applying "the principles and methods of biology and geology to the study of the ancient history of the co-evolution of life and Earth as well as the role of life in the modern world." (Thanks Wikipedia - had no idea where to start defining that.)

She is  very highly regarded and respected in her profession, having won many awards and scholarships. widely published and influential. Her career has taken her from Minnesota to Berkley, Atlanta, Norway, Hawaii. It  hasn't, however, been without its difficulties. Widespread sexual harassment and discrimination have arisen from her working and being successful in a male dominated profession. She is very candid about the difficulties and frustrations in getting funding for research projects, space to build her labs, staff, recognition, and has become somewhat of a spokeswoman for women working in the science/research sector.

But the above is only a very small part of this wonderful book. Not only a memoir, she humanises her science - we feel her love for her work, her sheer passion and joy and in what she discovers - it all comes shining through in this marvellous memoir. Every alternate chapter takes the reader away from the lab, the trials and stresses of Hope being who she is, and takes us into the life of the plant - the backbone of all life on earth. From the soil, the roots, to the leaves, the trunk of the tree, the flowers and the fruit, the tree also becomes as human as we are. Not only is Hope Jahren a gifted scientist and researcher, she is also a most gifted writer.

It's not all test tubes, microscopes, and hours of hard research slog.  There is some raw reading in this: mental illness, depression, and bipolar as well as a harrowing account of childbirth! Reminded me of being back in ante-natal groups having to look interested and engaged listening to other women's accounts - new meaning to sharing and caring.

Most wonderful of all in this memoir is her relationship with fellow genius scientist Bill, who remains her most constant and reliable companion through all these years. I doubt she would have achieved all she has without Bill's constancy. A most unusual man, happy to take second seat, he looks out for her, and she in turn looks out for him. Together they are unstoppable.

Educational and inspiring, this is an unusual book. It may well take a chapter or two to get into as the writing is intense and the style takes a bit of getting used to, it is sort of all over  the place, but it just makes it that much more memorable. One of my favourites this year.