This is condensed version of review in published in LandfallReviewOnLine 1/3/17
What
constantly stands out for me in New Zealand fiction is how our land, our
environment, our geography is such an inherent part of the narrative, almost
like another participant in the story, forming the backdrop to everything that
takes place.
It
is just so in this, Laurence Fearnley’s latest novel, her tenth, that the
landscape has its own life, its own crucial part to play in the narrative.
Wetlands are her location of choice in this story, becoming the common ground
where three very different women of various ages, stages, conflicts and
histories randomly come together. Each interacts with the surroundings
differently - the birds, the lake, the
bush floor, the rodents, the quietness, the mysterious den. At all times there is
respect, care, nurturing and being at one with the surroundings, a place of
healing and comfort. Each woman finds a strength arising from both the
surroundings, and their unusual camaraderie enabling them to begin the process
of facing down the conflicts in their individual lives.
Take
a look at the cover, impossible to replicate via an e-reader. The sheer
brilliance of colour, the delicacy of the drawings, how each leaf and flower is
so vividly brought to life. The illustrations are by Audrey Eagle, a botanical
illustrator, who has given much to New Zealand’s knowledge bank of native
flora. A spectacular woman in her own right, I wonder if she was deliberately
chosen by the author as an example of a woman quietly and spectacularly going
about her life on her own terms.
Who
then are the quiet spectaculars that people the pages of this novel? The story is
set in a provincial town, close to Christchurch. I feel that it is somewhere
like Ashburton, or Timaru. Large enough to be interesting, but small enough to
be a little suffocating. The story is framed around the three characters of Loretta,
Chance and Riva. Each third of the book is narrated by one of these women, the
links between them gradually building and evolving, coming together in the last
twenty pages.
Loretta
is in her mid-forties, a high school librarian, married, mother to a 12 year
old boy. She is going through that stage in life where she doesn’t know what to
do next. She knows her son is gradually going to draw away from her as he
enters his teen years, her marriage seems to have stalled, she loves her job,
but it seems to have lost its spark. She feels she is becoming invisible, her
youth and vitality whittling away, just another middle-aged woman whose life is
running downhill. During one of her ‘waiting for Kit’ moments, she comes across
The Dangerous Book for Boys. Randomly
opening it she begins to flick through the pages.
Loretta’s
lightbulb moment. What has she done that is dangerous in her life? What have
her friends done? Aside from giving birth it would seem not much. She wonders
what has happened to the hopeful, adventurous, curious young girl she once was.
Loretta resolves to write The Dangerous
Book for Menopausal Women, a book about women who have done dangerous
things, who will never become invisible, and in the process, maybe learn a
thing or two herself on having an adventurous life. While waiting for Kit on
yet another day, she begins to explore the wetlands, finding an abandoned den,
which becomes a haven, her place to be alone, to think.
Secondly,
there is Chance, a 15 year old girl, who is a pupil at the local high school
where Loretta is the librarian. She lives with her parents and two older
brothers on a goat farm. Like 99.9% of Year 10 girls she is unhappy, unsure of
where she fits in both at home and at school, who she is, who she wants to be, a
loner. Her one possible ally, her mother, is a most appalling woman, deeply
unhappy in her own life, taking her anger and bitterness out on her daughter.
One
day at home, she also comes across The
Dangerous Book for Boys, given to one of her brothers. As with Loretta, a
new world begins to reveal itself, her rural upbringing giving her ample opportunity
and tools to become her own intrepid adventurer. Her father and brothers’
passion for go-karting means they aren’t terribly interested in what she is up
to, and her desperation to get away from her mother takes her to the Tinker
Wetlands where she, as Loretta did, discovers the den, her own refuge, a space
where she can be entirely her own person.
Lastly,
Riva, certainly not invisible, or ever likely to be. In her early to mid-
sixties, owner of the wetlands where everything quietly and spectacularly comes
together. In the not too distant past, Riva was a successful business woman,
but returned to New Zealand to nurse Irene, her terminally ill sister. She also
bought the abandoned, rundown wetlands area, transforming it into the Tinker
Wetlands.
Riva
is grieving, still. The fourth-year anniversary of Irene’s death is coming up,
and time for Riva to put into effect a promise she made to Irene before she
died. This promise is beginning to consume Riva. She doesn’t know what to do or
how to do it. Until Loretta and Chance quite separately enter her life. Chance,
in particular, grabs her heart – a girl just leaving childhood, taking
uncertain steps into adulthood. It is never implied that Chance is the daughter
that Riva never had, but a wonderful bond of trust and mutual respect builds
between the two, centred on the wetlands reserve. Riva takes Chance’s taxidermy
seriously, helping her with trapping animals, conversing with her in that
wonderful way where adults treat teenagers like adults and not overgrown
children.
With
support from these two older and quite different women, Chance blossoms. There
are moments of doubt of course, but it is only when her mother treats her in a
most shocking and humiliating fashion that Chance does rise like a phoenix, breaking
away. What follows is the quiet spectacular between these three women, that enables
them all to see that future of possibilities.
It
is a gentle book, a story of self-discovery, self-worth, the power of friendship
and the bonds that develop between women. I loved the characters of Loretta,
Chance and Riva, all quite different, so carefully crafted and real. I can
picture exactly what they all look like, how they dress, their body language,
their stillness, their essence. The wetlands, described so vividly, sensuously,
with its huge diversity of plant and animal life, is the perfect backdrop to
the conflicts simmering away in the characters. Nothing dramatic happens, just quiet
and gradual realisations that nothing stays the same, and no reason either for
it to stay the same, but like nature continually shifting, changing and renewing.
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