Lauren Roche.
Tragedy and trauma are at the core of Lauren Roche's debut novel, while Ockham finalist Brannavan Gnanalingam delves into the be-careful-what-you-wish-for trope of marriage. Happy reading.
Mila and the Bone Man, by Lauren Roche (Quentin Wilson Publishing, $38).
Reviewed by Kelly Ana Morey.
Broken families, grief, trauma, abuse, meth etc — these are not some of my favourite things to read about, so I approached Mila and the Bone Man with some trepidation. Fortunately, while Lauren Roche's debut novel is indeed all of these things, it's also so much more.
Brief synopsis: Esther, a Croatian descendent of those who came to Northland because of the kauri, has formed a happy family with her three kids with Lyin' Brian (who's long since buggered off), Tama her Māori husband, and the two kids they have together. They all live in rural Northland on the edge of the Puketi Forest.
They have a lovely neighbour, Jane, and her neuro-diverse grandson Tommy (the eponymous Bone Man) and Esther's sister Cath and mother Baka live down the road. They're a close-knit lot and although they don't have much money, they are rich in other ways. Then one afternoon a terrible accident happens and from that point onwards everything changes.
"We were like a jigsaw that didn't fit together," says Esther's daughter Mila, who does most of the narrative heavy lifting, "some pieces swollen, others shrunk — so we couldn't make a picture of a happy family any more."
Roche's settings, particularly the Northland ones, are evocative and utterly recognisable. There's a real aroha for the place here and it's obvious that Roche has spent countless hours in the native forests of Northland and driving its back roads.
But for me, the really triumphant aspect of Mila and the Bone Man is the main characters. And what good characters they are, especially Tama. What a joy and a rare treat it is to read a gentle and kind male Māori character. Tama loves Lyin' Brian's kids every bit as much as his own, even if sometimes they think he doesn't. There's nothing he won't do for them. Nothing.
Although the bulk of the novel is narrated by Mila, with a few chapters contributed by Tommy, the main characters — Tama, Esther, Cath, Jane and Tommy — feel fully fledged as they respond first to the tragedy at the beginning of the novel, then later to something that happens to Mila. Each of the characters is affected differently, depending on their innate character, by the tragedy then the trauma. Flawed, fallible, complex and nuanced. They're riddled with guilt, anger and sadness in the case of the immediate family, and quiet despair and empathy in the instance of Jane and Tommy, who are close enough to be touched by the family's twin tragedies.
Mila's three brothers are not as fully realised, and I found myself wanting to know what they were experiencing. A couple of short chapters like the Tommy-focused ones, from each at different points in the novel, could have fleshed out these thinner characters and added even more vibrancy to the others. But this is a small quibble about an otherwise pretty good novel.
Slow Down, You're Here, by Brannavan Gnanalingam (Lawrence & Gibson, $25).
Reviewed by Todd Barrowclough.
This is the seventh novel by Wellington writer and lawyer Brannavan Gnanalingam, a 2021 finalist at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for his last novel, Sprigs. That book interrogated sexual violence, rugby culture and racism among Wellington teens. Gnanalingam's latest is also packed with the stuff of life — work, marriage, family, class and race—and set in post-Covid lockdown Auckland.
Vishal and Kavita are barely getting by, raising their two children, 4-year-old Aarani and 2-year-old Bhavan, in a cramped Onehunga rental. Laid off from his marketing job, Vishal drives taxis at night, making mistakes with change and at the mercy of inebriated Englishmen soiling his car.
Kavita works in accounts and is the family's main breadwinner, carrying the household with too little help from her husband. Stress and exhaustion breed resentment, as well as the petty realities of family life: Vishal brings in the laundry but doesn't fold it. At weekends, while tired and dejected, Vishal sleeps off his late-night indignities, Kavita is on the go, doing the washing, defrosting chicken for dinner and minding the children, seething because she thinks her husband has given up on life.
Along comes Ashwin, Kavita's old flame from university, who invites her to a week away with him on Waiheke Island. Kavita, feeling unloved and unappreciated, accepts. Guilty about the secret trip with Ashwin, she hopes Vishal will rouse himself into action. "Give me something that shows you're fighting for this," she thinks, willing Vishal to get out of bed and look after the kids. If he does this, Kavita thinks, she won't leave him. But by now, husband and wife are no longer communicating.
Ashwin is a 40-year-old bachelor who pulls long hours at work, hoping for recognition, while his boss — who has a Hitler haircut and wears a T-shirt with "Helvetica" stamped across the front — favours his hotshot Māori colleague. Ashwin sees the trip away with Kavita as his chance to be with her at last after 20 years of lamenting the missed opportunity.
Kavita may see him as an alternative to the lazy, adrift Vishal, but Ashwin looks down on other people, talks over them, and seems to feel things more intensely than everyone else. This characterisation adds an interesting dimension to his and Kavita's turbocharged tryst on Waiheke. As the novel's title suggests, there's social satire here, especially on the island, and some gleeful characterisation of the drunk English passenger, the instructor at the local ashram, and Marjorie, the owner of the house where the pair stay, a kimono-wearing Pākehā who collects pan-African sculpture.
The novel is written from four points of view — Vishal, Kavita, their small daughter Aarani, and interloper Ashwin, exploring their feelings, neuroses, experiences and fears. At times, abrupt shifts between them are jarring, when — for example — we leap from Ashwin's point of view to Kavita's for just a few sentences. Little Aarani, a gentle and caring girl who loves TV, has a life-changing journey of her own after the novel's major climactic event. But her point of view often feels unrealistic. Would the average 4-year-old have a vocabulary that includes the words "co-mingled", "exhortations", "applauded'" and "conspiratorially"?
The story moves at a rate of knots and Gnanalingam manages to explore complex issues of race and ethnicity without slowing the novel's pace. At times imagery is imprecise, and sentence patterns are repetitive. A keener eye and more ruthless edit would have made the book stronger. Still, Slow Down, You're Here is a thought-provoking and action-packed novel that will leave many readers wanting respite. Gnanalingam, refreshingly, does not offer it in this new take on the be-careful-what-you-wish-for trope.
A longer version of this review will appear on anzliterature.com.
1. Your book tells of your maternal grandfather's journey across China during World War II to rescue his family in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong. Why did you choose to present it as a novel?
It was important for me to be able to bring people into the story and ensure that they sensed a maximum of the emotional extremes that the characters living these historical events were feeling — their moments of fear, uncertainty, sadness and joy. This way, I hope, at the same time that the reader is learning more about this relatively unknown chapter of World War II, they will also be able to go deeper than they would in normal war stories where concepts of "honourable self-sacrifice" and "patriotism" often stop us asking harder questions about what we would really do in a situation where our own families were at risk.
2. What do you think your grandparents, Vincent and Marie Broom, would make of the book?
As far as it being an honest account of what they lived through, and the way they remembered it, I think they would be very satisfied. I tried really hard to take advantage of the fact that both of them left me pages of quite special observations, prioritised in a way they personally found natural. My grandfather mentions the "gentleness" of the gestures of Indian seamen placing the bodies of dead crewmen on top of the water during a burial at sea rather than dropping them from high up and having them sink into darkness as he was used to seeing; and that when a bomb goes off next to a young woman's wardrobe the wall gets "decorated" with ribbons cut from her dresses — pinned up by hot shrapnel.
3. This project has spanned more than 20 years. What drove you to complete it?
The rapid answer, half the answer, is that I wanted my mother to see the story of the parents she had so much respect for, shared, enjoyed and celebrated — then sadly she passed away 11 months ago. The other half has to do with my own characteristic desire to see the projects I start finished "well" rather than "fast", and a respect for the people who decide at some point that they're willing to help me do that — for this book that person was Mary Varnham at Awa Press who started to put a lot of time a few years ago into helping me edit my text.
4. What was hardest for you to write about?
The hardest part was the reading I had to do to get all of the facts straight. There were some fine exceptions, like the book written by the children of the British Army Aid Group founder who helped my family, but many of the books about World War II were written from a "mono-cultural" perspective that I found very limited.
5. You are a successful designer in Paris. Do you want to write another book, or has that itch been scratched?
The itch is unlikely to ever be scratched enough. I have an essay I've just finished, a type of manifesto of 21st century design about how design might play a part in modifying non-sustainable cultures. And I have a "coming of age" novel set among the aftermath of the sexual and utopic revolutions in Europe in the late 60s — it's all mapped out and half-written, and I'm looking forward to finishing it over the next six months. My first love is writing. Even though this is my first substantial published work, success as a designer just happened to come first.
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