‘Auē’ by Becky Manawatu

Raw and compelling, Auē is the assured award-winning debut novel from New Zealand writer Becky Manawatu.

It’s an expertly crafted tale of loss, grief and domestic violence; of fractured family and gang culture; but most of all it’s a narrative of love, friendship and hope as the eight year-old Ārama (Ari) settles into a new life without his brother Taukiri and without his parents. Now, living with the loving Aunty Kat, he must navigate the aggression and violence of Uncle Stu.

Manawatu choses to tell several perspectives of her story in a fractured, non-linear way, swooping patiently between a struggling Taukiri in Wellington and his younger brother on the farm on South Island. As their separate narratives, past and present, unfold, so a sense of one is slowly revealed. With an overriding guilt of abandoning his brother, Taukiri attempts to make sense of the events that have left them as virtual orphans – the violent gangland killing of his father, the subsequent disappearance of their mother as she fled into hiding, looking to escape a terrifying drug-related history.

As Taukiri finds a degree of stability in the city, a confused Ari befriends the tough but vulnerable Beth, daughter of a neighbouring farmer. Home-schooled together by Kat (when she hasn’t been beaten senseless by Stu), she and dog, Lupo, are loyal to their new found neighbour. Exploring the neighbourhood together, the adventurous trio create a powerful bond – even if Ari would trade it all to see Taukiri to come back for him.

Aue (a te reo Maori word meaning to cry, howl, groan, wail or bawl, as well as an interjection expressing astonishment or distress) is a beautiful, almost indefinable, book that incorporates incredible violence resulting in the destruction of family with unconditional love; juxtaposes an innocent and childlike take on character with murderous revenge, personal atonement with heart rending forgiveness. Sad, moving, buoyantly funny, Aue was, understandably, winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, New Zealand’s richest literary award and, for two successive years (2020 and 2021), the country’s top selling novel.

‘The Bone People’ by Keri Hulme

A novel of extraordinary vitality, of beauty and cruelty, of passion and provocation, Keri Hulme’s debut is set in the harsh, isolated landscape of New Zealand’s South Island. Combining Maori myth and contemporary social attitudes, The Bone Peopleis a soaring yet relentless narrative of three unique characters and their relationship with each other.

A fiercely independent Kerewin, reclusive and virtually self-sufficient in her isolated tower, is an artist running away from her past. Joe is isolated in his recent grief with the sudden death of his wife and young son. And then there is Simon, an autistic child locked into his mute world, unofficially adopted by Joe, having been washed ashore during a terrible storm. Intelligent to the point of precociousness, Simon is a child who tries the patience of a saint: a petty thief with a fierce and almost uncontrollable anger that has landed him in trouble throughout his young life.

A reluctant bond forms between the tough-talking Kerewin and a feral Simon, leading to a gradual breakdown of the barriers she has erected to protect herself from her memories. A reliance evolves, a reliance that eventually encompasses Joe. But there are secrets of violence so shocking and distressing that a wedge pushes this alternative family unit apart.

Complex in its simplicity, The Bone People is, on the one hand, a sincere narrative of a country, a landscape, a culture, of love, death, friendship, abuse, relationships within its everyday. But it’s also a story of myth and fable, a metaphor of change as a European Simon clashes with the traditions of Maori Joe. Part Maori, part ‘Pakeha’ (a white New Zealander), it is Kerewin who represents the future, a hybrid unity of the two cultures.

For all its ambition, heightened sense of grandeur, poetic beauty and visceral, unrelenting violence, The Bone People sadly unravels towards the end as Hulme is seemingly driven by the sense of a utopian ending, a catharsis for all that has come before it and all that will follow. It all becomes a little too laboured and absurd. Which is a pity, as the first two thirds, whilst at times difficult to read, is a haunting narrative with its evocative language and deft storytelling.

Having been rejected by virtually every New Zealand publishing house, Keri Hulme was finally accepted by Spiral, the small feminist publishing house. The Bone People quickly sold its initial 2,000 print run, a pattern that continued and which led to exposure to the UK publishing world and, eventually, the Booker Prize panel. The Bone People was awarded the 1985 Booker Prize, beating such as luminaries as Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch and Peter Carey.

‘The Luminaries’ by Eleanor Catton

Convoluted and confusing, The Luminaries is certainly challenging. The fact it’s 832 pages long adds weight [sic] to the argument. But this Gothic monster of a book is also a joy of storytelling, characterisation and language.

The 2013 Man Booker Prize winner does, in its first 300 pages or so, require considerable investment.

Newly arrived in the southern New Zealand port of Hokitika in 1866, barrister Walter Moody, looking to make his fortune prospecting for gold, inadvertently stumbles into a secret meeting of 12 respected members of the local community.

What unfolds is an extraordinary tale of murder, mayhem and mischief as each man tells their tale of events of the past few weeks. Behind a series of unsolved crimes is a complex mystery. All appear to be connected but, like a difficult jigsaw puzzle, needs to be painstakingly put together. And it’s apparent there are still a few pieces missing.

It’s the sheer number of strands revealed at this initial meeting that require attention and the patience of Job.

The banker, the chemist, the court clerk, the shipping agent and more have their say. And the evidence of those not present at the meeting is also crucial. The politician, the whore, the sea captain, the missing entrepreneur all have a role to play in events in the rough and ready gold rush port. Suspicions abound, but what’s not clear – to anyone – is what’s going on!

The second half of the book is set in real time – and advances at a cracking pace. The unexplained events and unsolved crimes start to fall into place as the jigsaw nears completion: The Luminaries becomes a page-turning gold rush tale, its finale a Hollywood-style courtroom scene.

But Eleanor Catton hasn’t simply written a Wilkie Collins-esque, nineteenth century potboiler. Her fascination with astrology and the signs of the Zodiac pattern the intricate structure of the novel.

Each section (twelve in all) is exactly half of its predecessor, mimicking the waning of the lunar cycle: the twelve men are each assigned a sign of the Zodiac and display the characteristics of their sign: the luminaries of the title – sun and moon – are the whore (Anna) and the missing entrepreneur (Emery). It is the movement of the heavens that determines the interaction between the characters.

The mimicking of the lunar cycle certainly adds to that thrilling page-turning as the reveal gains momentum. But in all honesty, the significance of the planetary configurations passed me by. This astrological framing adds little – whether the shipping agent, Balfour, is a Libran or Piscean matters not: I did not dwell on the horoscope charts at the start of each section or take note of the chapter titles referencing zodiac signs.

As a thriller, the meticulously plotted The Luminaries is compulsive. But its problem is the beginning, the first (long) section. The sheer number of characters resulted in a confusion of the crowd, each becoming indiscernible from the other. This is where that investment of effort, energy and time is needed. It is worthwhile – but understandable if the decision is that it’s all too difficult.

 

 

‘Mister Pip’ by Lloyd Jones

The value of stories and storytelling is the core of New Zealand author Lloyd Jones’ award-winning novel, Mister Pip. Charles Dickens and Great Expectations has enormous impact on the life of a young Matilda growing up in Papua New Guinea: her impromptu teacher Mr Watts, like Scheherazade in 1001 Arabian Nights, spins tales to save lives. There’s also more than a nod in the direction of Biblical stories as well as traditional island folklore.

The outbreak of civil war on the small tropical island of Bougainville has left the young Matilda and Dolores, her God-fearing mother, stranded in their isolated coastal village. With her father working overseas and most of the young men joining the rebel army, Matilda and the remaining villagers find themselves at the mercy of fate.

Living among them is the eccentric Mr Watts, the only white person, and his wife, the crazed Grace, native of the village. As the deprivations of the civil war bite deep, so Mr Watts becomes the self-appointed teacher to the village. But there is only one book – Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The children are transported to nineteenth century Victorian London and an alien language as Watts reads aloud the novel and struggles to explain ‘frost’ and ‘rimy morning’ to the islanders.

Rumours and stories of the fighting reach the villagers, yet their daily lives are not unduly interrupted. Many of the children become transfixed by the fate of the orphan boy Pip and his benefactor Abel Magwitch. But Dolores becomes deeply suspicious of the non-Christian teachings and beliefs of Watts. She sets in motion a chain of events that have devastating consequences for the whole village as rebels followed by government forces followed by the return of the rebels kill, rape and maim.

Years later, now a Dickens scholar, Matilda visits New Zealand to explore the earlier life of her teacher and mentor. There she discovers the extent Watts had fictionalised his life story in its telling to the rebel soldiers and how two fictions – his own and that of Charles Dickens – were deeply intertwined.

Mister Pip received rapturous critical acclaim on its initial publication in 2006, referred to as “magical”, “poignant” and “haunting”. It collected the overall Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for 2007 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (it lost out to Anne Enright and The Gathering).

In its remarkably short 220 pages, the award-winning novel is broad in scope, deeply symbolic yet deceptively simplistic. Scenes on the island and the fear of the civil war are powerful and compelling. Yet, towards the end, Mister Pip loses its way, as Matilda, having survived the civil war, has become an academic scholar living in a bedsit in London. The warmth and honesty is strangely missing from a novel that throughout has been full of charm (if occasionally erring on the patronising side).