Book review: Rosetta Allan's Crazy Love

Rosetta Allan. Photo / Supplied

Crazy Love
by Rosetta Allan
(Penguin, $36)

The alluring, bright cover of Rosetta Allan's third novel features a photograph of her husband, James Allan, as a young man. It also contains two very necessary words apart from the title and author's name: A novel. Without them, the book could read as the memoir of a seriously dysfunctional relationship between two people who meet as teenagers in the 80s and remain married today.

After a deprived childhood, narrator Vicki lands in an old building in Napier, along with an urban tribe of misfits and desperadoes, either on the dole or barely able to make a living wage. The building is decrepit, possibly condemned, but provides a roof and party venue for many. Allan's scene-setting is consummate, deceptively simple — her evocation of Napier of the 80s, the building itself and its dire straits inhabitants never falters. Ghastly loser-boyfriend is Vicki's partner at this time of her life - and only because she can't afford to survive on her own. Allan is apposite on this — how young women may find themselves forced into violent relationships just to survive.

Rosetta Allan's third novel features a photograph of her husband James Allan as a young man. Photo / Supplied

Vicki is tough, but also biddable, insightful but also easily led, tender but also capable of cruelty. She is a survivor, blessed with a dry sense of humour and an instinct for optimism.

She falls in love with Billy, a dealer in fake cheques, able to intimidate doctors to get drugs and buy luxury cars and houses he cannot afford. But then, as Allan so devastatingly demonstrates, he suffers from serious mental illness. At one point in their midlife, after losing a grander house and generally going down the tubes, Billy takes to living in the garden while Vicki is in the house. He uses legal and illegal stimulants, smokes heaps of dope and cigarillos, glugs back red wine and is generally abusive to his wife.

In long, bad relationships a kind of amnesia may take over, where we forget the fights and arguments. This groundhog state of mind is skilfully duplicated in the reader — as Vicki and Billy battle it out, the themes of the arguments blur and lose definition, then slip again into hard focus.

Billy is intent on making money in the corporate world and does well, in bursts, as an advertising executive. Despite her self-castigating refrain—"Bad wifey. Bad, bad wifey"— Vicki's faith in him never wavers. On the day he is released from a psychiatric hospital, she believes in him enough to trust his next hare-brained business venture, going with him to buy a Mercedes with money they do not have.

Vicki is a character we don't meet so often now in literary novels. Women totally and utterly devoted to their men, no matter what, are not part of the zeitgeist. But women like her exist and likely always will. Allan winningly demonstrates the resilience and determination of that mindset, how bad relationships will drive away friends; and the isolation that comes with the dedication. Vicky has "tried friends, Lotto, tears, blame, prayer, sulking, hiding in closets with my dog, running away, staying in bed, a little alcohol, a lot of alcohol, marijuana, fights and storming out. All of it works. None of it works."

If this vividly written and compelling novel has a message, it is surely that love can conquer all. It just depends on how consumed by it you want to be, and the price you're willing to pay.

Reviewed by Stephanie Johnson

Stephanie Johnson's most recent books are the history/biography West Island: Five twentieth-century New Zealanders in Australia (Otago University Press, 2019) and Jarulan by the River under the pseudonym Lily Woodhouse (HarperCollins 360, 2020). A longer version of this review will appear on www.anzliterature.com.