How good a novel can a 17-year-old write? A new page-turner rooted in true crime answers that question. Learn about "the forgotten Blitz" as a new novel relives the "terrible beauty about a city under attack" in Belfast, and hear a life update from Mohammed Hassan, who discusses slam poetry
Canvas books wrap: Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley, These Days by Lucy Caldwell, and Paula Morris
13 mins to read
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Kiara's life reveals the mundane and brutal; her mother is in prison, her wannabe-rapper brother is not earning any money, she has a rent increase on her run-down apartment and she takes in 9-year-old Trevor, who is abandoned by his addict mother Dee. She faces a complex weft of inseparable problems; the need for money a constant aching presence. What Mottley achieves is the fine-layering of Kiara's narrative with rich details that feel real; the acrid swimming pool outside their apartment block becomes a visual reminder of their inability to escape pain.
Mottley was Oakland's Youth Poet Laureate in 2018, and much like her spoken-word poem Love Poem for Oakland, Nightcrawling feels like a love song to the city she grew up in; the basketball courts, the long, crowded bus rides, the downtown clubs with barbecues outside. The history of Oakland features too. Kiara's dad was a Black Panther, imprisoned and released, only to return to prison for drug dealing and to eventually die of cancer, left undiagnosed for too long by an insufficient system.
Tattooed, boyish skater Ale feels authentic, serving up love for Kiara in the form of much-needed food; offering huevos rancheros, nourishing soup and lavender-infused weed. The love story feels a little undercooked (Ale's plot-convenient lack of communication while Kiara is facing trial just doesn't feel true to character), just a clumsy means of heightening tension. But overall it does feel true to love when you are a teenager.
Kiara's mother is a profoundly disturbing character that Mottley handles with some deftness. In a controlled rehab centre after being responsible for the death of her infant daughter, Kiara's mother still tries to demand the fealty of her adult children. She gets Kiara to brush out her hair.
For the most part, Nightcrawling is a page-turner; starting with Kiara facing eviction if she doesn't make money, building to a deep sense of horror at the actions of the police, and then racing towards the outcome of the trial.
It is amazing to think Mottley was 17 when she wrote it, so to be pedantic about plot makes me feel ungenerous, but some minor technical issues bothered me.
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The protagonist doesn't drive enough of the action. Kiara starts out doing that when she needs to earn money and turns to sex work but, towards the end of the novel, it feels as if things just keep happening to her.
Perhaps to emphasise the character's age and vulnerability, Kiara doesn't seem to be pursuing the trial with sufficient anger about the harm done to her. Instead she follows the lead of her lawyer, Marsha, who is "not only blond, but she's got the bluest eyes I've ever seen and she stands petite but tall in stilettos and a pencil skirt, just like every TV show predicted she would".
The challenge of writing in first-person narrative is that while it is great for poetic language that feels like a personal account, it can get unwieldy when writers need to tell significant plot moments that occur outside of the narrator's field of vision. The phone call from Kiara's lawyer about the court's decision felt underwhelming — we should have followed more of the courtroom action.
Mottley conveys trauma and harrowing content (the sexual violence by police) by using poetic language: "The cops continue to call me, asking me to go to one thing or another and there is a jerk in the socket above my stomach, a repulsion that has me tasting bile, but I take my thumb and make circles on my abdomen, gulp down a drink to wash the taste away, and find a way to say yes."
Towards the end, when Kiara is waiting for the trial to begin, she ruminates, "and I am still waiting to be hit by some universe-halting love that will turn me inside out and remove all the rotting parts of me". It broke the suspension of disbelief for me; I could not believe that Kiara would be worrying about a lack of great love rather than experiencing fear and terror about the events at hand.
My disbelief reverberated and opened some doubt in me about the gap between character Kiara and her real-life counterpart. The afternote explains that while the book uses factual events from the trial, the character Kiara is entirely fictional. The factual events include several police officers being involved, that police allegedly "paid" for sex by sharing details about police stings, and that the exploitation was revealed in a police officer's suicide note admitting he had sex with an underage sex worker.
It's a time when we are thinking collectively about the ethics of telling people's stories, and who has the right to speak for whom. In a way, Mottley makes a powerful case for fictionalised retellings that are grounded in truths of identity and place. Mottley's version of this story is a means of speaking truth to power about the structural violence meted against black women, and the abuses of power that are inevitable by police, in a context of long-standing racism. It's a book that is vital in light of #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo.
Maybe it would have been impossible to tell, but I came away feeling like I would have rather read the story of the real survivor, Jasmine Abuslin, instead of the fictional Kiara. The separating of the crimes against Abuslin from her own embodied experience of them didn't sit quite right with me. In a 2020 article, Abuslin describes ongoing nightmares and shakes, while six police officers kept their jobs. After everything that happened, she deserves her own voice.
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These Days, by Lucy Caldwell (Allen & Unwin, $33). Reviewed by David Herkt
With searchlights probing the blacked-out night, wailing air-raid sirens, the approaching crump of bombs, and the companionship and fear of people in bomb shelters, World War II's London Blitz has been the setting of some of the greatest novels written in English.
Elizabeth Bowen's justly renowned The Heat of the Day focuses on an uneasy mix of politics and love in the wartime city. Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is a similarly close account of an affair set against sudden death and jealousy – mirroring Greene's own deeply felt extra-marital war-time relationship.
Lucy Caldwell's These Days, however, is not located in London but in Belfast – the forgotten Blitz. The British-governed Northern Ireland (unlike close-neighbour the Republic of Ireland, which remained neutral during the conflict) was attacked frequently by Nazi Luftwaffe bombers in April and May, 1941. Caldwell focuses on this neglected event and on the tight-knit Bell family.
Phillip, the family patriarch, is a doctor and married to Florence who still has her regrets about the death of a secret lover in the past. There is a younger son, Paul, who dreams of serving in the military. Central to the story, however, are the two daughters, Emma and Audrey, and their very different lives at a time of tension and stress.
Born in Belfast herself, Caldwell is a dramatist and a novelist. Both skills are evident in These Days. However, it is her setting that initially imprints itself on the reader's mind. The sudden urban destruction wrought by bombing means that streets disappear overnight, the docks burn, and those who must deal with the havoc are poised on exhaustion's edge.
There is a terrible beauty about a city under attack. Caldwell details the incendiary flares hanging over the city like chandeliers, homes being "punched out" of terraces and the frontages of houses blown away to reveal staircase landings suspended in mid-air, hallways, and walls "stuck with daggers of glass". Daily life is instantly altered, but so are human expectations.
Caldwell's characters are perfectly placed to explore these events. Audrey is suddenly asked by Richard, a young doctor, to marry him immediately after the first night of bombing. Encouraged by her parents, she finds herself committed to a man who seems more fearful and childish than any partner of her dreams. Faced with becoming a wife and giving up her job, it seems her life is closing down rather than opening up.
Emma, on the other hand, is a volunteer nurse, dealing with an event for which she has been trained. Her position on a First Aid post exposes her to the awful consequences of the bombing but it also introduces her to Sylvia, someone who becomes a practical mainstay in the whirlwind of events. They embark upon a secret sexual relationship which is vital to them both, until the unthinkable occurs.
Caldwell has an ear for language and the Northern Irish vernacular is often an added layering to the novel. Her storytelling is deft, with sudden changes of perspective opening up entirely new angles. The twists are often unexpected, the pacing clever. These Days is a novel whose ostensibly small confines belie the greater human depths it reveals.
JUST OUT
A little over two years after her sudden death, Greens Party co-founder Jeanette Fitzsimons is the subject of a major biography by former Green MP Gareth Hughes. A Gentle Radical (Allen & Unwin, $40) recounts Fitzsimons' many achievements, including helping form the world's first national Green political party.
A very different woman and very different sort of biography: Anna by Amy Odell (Atlantic, $40) charts the "relentless" rise of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Amy Odell is a fashion journalist whose essay collection Tales From the Back Row tracked her own early missteps in the fashion industry.
Snake Brought Cake (Hachette, $20), written by comedian Sam Smith and illustrated by Daron Parton, is the mood-lifter we could all use right now. A read-aloud story for youngsters, it features a mad petting zoo and a birthday surprise.
PAULA MORRIS
On the wealth of Māori writers and their passionate readership.
This year's Ockham NZ Book Awards showcased Māori writing talent and accomplishment, including two Māori debut winners — Rebecca K. Reilly for fiction and Nicole Titihuia Hawkins for poetry, along with novelist Whiti Hereaka who took the $60,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.
"I was particularly delighted in the strong showing — crushing it — by Māori across the board," says Kelly Ana Morey, the celebrated Māori fiction writer who was one of this year's judges. "What a turnaround. Go us!"Read the full story here.
5 QUICK QUESTIONS WITH MOHAMED HASSAN
1. You made a name for yourself with incredible performances of your slam poetry. Is that still something you do?
Poetry slams still hold a very special place in my heart. These spaces gave me my first platforms to share my words and to receive love and support from a community. The stage and the microphone helped me hone my writing as well as my confidence to speak and be bold when I needed to. While I'm not performing as much as I used to back in Auckland, I've been dipping my toes into the scene here in the UK. Last year I was privileged to compete in the UK National Poetry Slam, where I placed second among some fearsome and magical storytellers.
2. Your book of essays, How to Be a Bad Muslim, covers many themes close to your heart, but is there one piece that you consider to be the most important?
The essays in this book venture off into different aspects of my experience growing up as an immigrant and a Muslim in New Zealand and abroad. At the centre of it, and with reference to the title essay, is my journey with self-acceptance. It's almost a cliche that children of diaspora are troubled with identity issues. Today, many of us are searching for where we fit in a digital landscape that often reduces us to categories or demographics but, as a young Muslim, this pressure to fit in and self-identify began very early on. Journalism and poetry led me along paths where I could converse with my community and the wider society in Aotearoa and understand where I belong in all of their contradictions. I feel I am beginning to answer that question, even if it's not an answer my society is expecting to hear.
3. Can you give us a brief life update? You left New Zealand for Istanbul. You are recently married and are now based where?
It's been a wild couple of years all right. I left Istanbul shortly before the pandemic, was locked down in New Zealand for a year, and now I'm between Auckland and London trying to figure out what timezone I'm in. I'm now covering news in the Middle East out of London and working with the award-winning New Zealand film-maker Ahmed Osman on some TV projects as part of our new production studio Homegrown Pictures to bring our people's stories to the screen. Somehow I also got married to my best friend, a radiant and bold woman I'm excited to share my sleepless life with. We tied the knot in March, just days after the borders in New Zealand reopened and my family was able to attend, which was the most beautiful gift I have ever received and for which I'm eternally thankful.
4. What is the issue we face as a global community that feels most urgent to you?
Because of my work, I am acutely focused on the worsening situation in occupied Palestinian territories, where the rise of far-right attacks and ultra-nationalist policies has been described by many human rights organisations as a system of "apartheid". What is happening to the Uighur minority in northern China is unbelievable, and each day we hear more first-hand accounts and see leaked images of the situation inside concentration camps that the world seems at an impasse to confront but that we must, through our trade, politics and international relations. There are too many other issues to count, all with equal weight and deserving of our attention. Our global community feels divided and overwhelmed by catastrophes right now, without the tools to confront them. Part of that is a challenge for us to develop healthier ways of consuming news and healthier ways of communicating and connecting online. Once we understand how to step away from amplifying noise on social media and instead use these spaces to uplift voices in need of attention, we can begin to make waves instead of ripples.
5. What are you reading right now?
Right now I'm lost in Zadie Smith's On Beauty, Patricia Lockwood's No One Is Talking About This, Robert Fisk's Pity The Nation and I'm anxiously awaiting my copy of Jordan Hamel's Everyone Is Everyone Except You.
How to Be a Bad Muslim, by Mohamed Hassan (Penguin, $35) is out now.
