Finally my review of this marvellous book, one of the best NZ novels I have read, so pleased I have had opportunity to read and review, pass book to others, and give to family for Christmas presents. This is a greatly abridged review of that submitted for LandfallOnLine.
Dame Fiona Kidman, what a national treasure this woman is. She writes fiction novels and short stories, poetry, memoirs – yes, more than one, film scripts. She has won numerous awards and fellowships for her writing, she has been involved in the publishing and advancement of all New Zealand writing and books. A true heroine of New Zealand publishing, but more importantly of telling the stories of women’s lives in this country. It seems to me that this latest book collectively takes all these past stories, including fragments from her own life story, seamlessly stitching them together into a moving, acutely observed chronicle of a family over a sixty year plus period.
There is history too in this novel, even if
it is in the very recent past for many people in this country. Those of us
around who remember, and may or may not have taken part in protests of the 1981
Springbok tour will recall it as a pretty traumatic, divisive time, even though
it was only for 56 days. The tour has a prominent part to play in this book.
Not so prominent but of equal import in the story and plot making are a variety
of other events that were crucial to the times, if not necessarily so to the
characters. For example, the 1951 Watersiders’ Strike, the death of Prime
Minister Norman Kirk in 1974, the Ruth Richardson ‘Mother of All Budgets’ in
1991, United Women’s Convention of 1975, are just a few of the milestones that are
peppered throughout this novel, and lend enormous authenticity to the
characters, their actions and lives.
This novel is the story of a family, a family torn apart even before it had begun. A man dies during WWII leaving behind a pregnant wife, Irene. The story opens in 1952 with Irene and her now six year old daughter trying to start a new life with a tobacco picking job in Motueka. None of this goes
to plan of course, and by the end of the first chapter, some thirty pages
later, Irene has almost lost her daughter, found and lost a potential husband,
been part of a horrible death, and in her shock, found herself an actual
husband. And what a bad life choice that turned out to be. But what does one do
– barely coping with one child, and a second child on the way. Irene was hardly
unusual for her time, choosing to marry a man, Jock, making the best of what she saw as the best
of a bad situation.
Tragedy strikes again some years later, with the death of Irene. Widowhood is indiscriminate in its choices.
Little told are the stories of men widowed due to wives dying in childbirth or
of illness, leaving them unable to cope with babies and young children. Enter
the stepmother, who often started in the household as a housekeeper, or was a
widowed friend, neighbour, or just a lonely woman who saw an opportunity to
change her life. More often than not, totally ill-equipped to take on the care
and upbringing of distraught grieving children not her own. Jock and his four children, Jessie, Belinda, Grant and Janice find themselves in this very situation. The new stepmother may be Charm by name, but certainly not by nature.
Life treats each of the four children
differently in its unfolding of events over the years that follow, as the
fallout of those early days takes hold, and never goes away. There is never
any excuse for cruelty. Jock and Charm, really are the most
awful pieces of work, making the lives of each of these children a total
misery.
It is going to give too much of the plot
away to say what happens to Jessie, Belinda, Grant and Janice. Suffice to say that
collectively, there is teenage pregnancy, banishment, adoption, marriage, child
sexual and physical abuse, racism and bigotry, what would probably be diagnosed
now as dyslexia, depression and mental illness, domestic violence, drugs,
imprisonment. Wow – you hooked now? You want to read this? A phenomenal amount
of action packed into 318 pages! All against the backdrop of New Zealand’s ever
changing social and political times.
It certainly is worth reading, if for
nothing else than the documentation of change over the last sixty years or so
in our society, and how attitudes have also changed. For example, to women
working and having real careers, something that was almost unheard of in the
1970s; women having control over their reproduction, again only just getting
underway in the 1970s; changes in attitude to unmarried mothers, teen mothers,
adoption; to children with learning difficulties. Although I have my doubts if
things would really have been any better for those children living with Jock
and Charm under today’s Child, Youth and Family Service.
Admittedly the novel is a bit of a whirlwind. There are many potential plot lines that could be furthered explored and developed, many characters I would love to have known more about. But this is a minor criticism. The
fact that I wanted to know more shows how engaged I was with the novel, with
the characters, their lives, the decisions they make, what happens to them.
Dame Fiona leaves no stone unturned in her telling, with a geographical reach
as impressive as her social/historical reach – Hokianga, Auckland, Rotorua, Turangi, Wairarapa, Wellington,
Motueka, South Canterbury, even as far out as the Campbell Islands. Her
characters live in cities, farms, small towns. They are poor, middle class, protestant,
catholic, successful career people, students, teachers, marginalized,
academics, hairdressers. And this is the real beauty of this novel. She wants
people to get on, to live and work together in harmony, empathy, understanding
and kindness for each other. That despite our infinite variety in where we come
from, how we live, we what do, we are essentially the same. It would be so easy
for her to rail in anger and rage at the way women have had to fight for their
equal place in our society, at the injustice served to those who don’t quite
fit the traditional, conservative mould of much of New Zealand society in its
short history. And yet she doesn’t. She quietly gets on with telling the
stories of damaged people, always with an eye to things getting better, not
reflecting or dwelling in the past, having those four children – Jessie,
Belinda, Grant and Janice – constantly trying to make it right and do better
for themselves. So, for two of them it
doesn’t work out, which are the tragedies of this novel, as happens in many
families, but in the last pages there is a reunion of sorts, realistically
awkward, which does give hope for the future of this fractured family.
I truly hope you read this book, especially if you have lived through these times, have strong memories of what NZ society was once like, how things have changed for the better. Plus it is just such a great story. I loved it. Is this Dame Fiona's best book? I have no idea, but I certainly intend to read more of her so as to find out.
