Gavin Bishop. Photo / Martin Hunter
The Collections, by Patricia Donovan (Mary Egan Publishing, $35)
Reviewed by Greg Fleming
Christchurch-based Patricia Donovan is a prolific new talent; she has published three novels in two years - and seems to revel in switching genres and time zones.
Her debut, The Remarkable Miss Digby, saw its heroine crossing a Syrian desert in the 19th century, while last year's thriller, The Madison Gap, tackled sibling rivalry and family secrets in contemporary suburban Sydney. But throughout the various genres, her concerns have remained constant.
"I am always writing about the same thing," she has noted, "a woman's journey and her quest, in the face of obstacles, to find her strengths and happiness and make her way in the world."
Donovan sets her third novel in a dystopian future (circa 2041) one every bit as inhospitable as that Syrian desert (although funnily enough there are still dairies and televisions - called FlickBoxes).
The world is in crisis, climate change policies have failed and now "nothing could slow the accelerating deterioration of the planet". The upshot being it is now mandated by the government that the day you turn 70 a sleek sedan pulls up outside your house (complete with a well-stocked bar in the back) and you are transported to a facility where you are quietly put to death and your remains end up as "excellent mulch, perfect for the forestation programme".
When it is lead protagonist Claris's husband's turn to take that last ride, she urges him to reconsider and run away but her husband, an ardent environmentalist, willingly steps into the waiting car, happy to do his bit for humanity. While sacrifices like his help reduce population pressure, they have devastating effects on those left behind. Claris, who is in her late 60s, has only a few years of life left herself and is now alone for the first time in decades.
Ironically, she also works in one of the Collection facilities and begins to find the whole thing abhorrent: "Sometimes, I imagined my nostrils filled with the stench of Laurie's flesh, his skin, his bones, his hair or what was left of it anyway."
She begins a one-woman campaign for change at a time when the powers that be are considering dropping the age of entitlement to 65 and considers, with a few dedicated activists, dodging the Collections altogether.
While The Collections doesn't quite have the narrative energy of Madison's Gap (Claris isn't the most compelling narrator), and Donovan seems unwilling to fully engage in some of the ethical issues the book raises, this is a welcome addition to our growing library of dystopian fiction – one which runs from C.K. Stead's Smith's Dream right up to Kirsten McDougall's recent She's a Killer.
Na Viro, by Gina Cole (Huia, $35)
Reviewed by David Herkt
The Laniakea supercluster is one of the largest structures in the known universe. Named after the Hawaiian word for "immense heaven", it is a tribute to Polynesian navigators and contains around 150,000 galaxies, including our own Milky Way. Given that there are 1000 million stars in the Milky Way alone, the multiplied stellar numbers quickly become meaningless.
Now there are 3D models and diagrams it is possible to see the strange strands and filaments linking these galaxies in Laniakea's enormity and even glimpses of superclusters beyond. It is in this spatial vastness and on a very different planet Earth, that Gina Cole sets her "Pasifikafuturist" novel, Na Viro, a book that builds upon the achievements of early Polynesian explorers, who took their fragile crafts into the unknown.
Cole won the Hubert Church award for her collection of short stories, Black Ice Matter, but Na Viro is her first extended work. Set some 200 years into the future, in a world nearly unrecognisable because of climate change and cultural differences, humankind has become an interstellar species. After an unseemly brawl at her Academy Graduation ceremony, Tia must choose between joining a deep-space mission or completing lengthy oceanographic probation on Earth.
Despite her navigation training, Tia has a gut fear of space travel, so she chooses to map terrestrial ocean currents. However, her sister Leilani joins a puffer-fish spacecraft sent to investigate a great galactic whirlpool but then disappears.
There is also Tia's estranged mother, Dia, now surprisingly the captain of a mysterious spacecraft of alien origin, who had seemingly abandoned her daughters, but is now involved in a mission of great secrecy.
Na Viro is a book of broken family ties set in a universe whose currents and tides threaten to overwhelm. While it might resonate with familiar names and details – there is, for example, a Tamakimakaurau Sky Tower and a Devonport Base across the Waitematā – the novel reveals a disconcerting world where the very spatial fabric, as well as human relationships, are all on the verge of disintegration.
Cole's imaginative concepts include fascinating "living spacecraft" filled with metamorphic walls and passageways. Genders and even the notion of "personhood" are frequently questioned. There are also sentient alien species faced with human incursion into their worlds – a deliberate reflection of Pasifika peoples dealing with European contact.
In many ways, Na Viro is an old-fashioned "space-opera" owing more to Flash Gordon and the "Golden Age" of 1950s science fiction than the later evolution of the genre. Viewers of the 1979 Disney movie The Black Hole, for instance, will find much that resonates, as will those who enjoyed Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in 2013's Gravity. Cole makes gestures at the same big special effects.
However, a reader who searches for the world-building subtlety of the recent novelist C.J. Cherryh or the complexities of William Gibson will not find them. There is also no real reflection of the cultural, political, and sexual perspectives embodied so excitingly in even more contemporary speculative fiction.
Many will come to Na Viro with great goodwill only to be thwarted by a sometimes old-fashioned and confusing book. However, one thing is for certain – the concepts of Pasifika peoples and their Polynesian ancestors will find future expression in other works and other created worlds.
Amanda King lives on a Canterbury farm where she has ready access to her favourite photographic subjects: cattle. Load of Bull (Penguin, $50) is a collection of her popular portraits arranged by breed and accompanied by stories about each animal.
Parents of teens are often worried. The Kids Will Be All Right, by mother-daughter duo Robin Fausett and Molly Fausett (Allen & Unwin, $40), aims to provide evidence-based information and conversation-starters so parents can talk calmly to their kids about everything from bullying to porn.
No one would accuse Barry Crump of being an exemplary father. Twenty-five years after his death, the icon's six sons – Ivan, Martin, Stephen, Harry, Erik and Lyall – reflect on their complicated relationships with him in Sons of a Good Keen Man (Penguin, $38).
You've written and illustrated around 60 much-loved and lauded books for children, but have you been surprised at the enormous success of Atua?
I am always surprised if one of my books is received well. For a long time after a book is published I find it difficult to see past the things in it that I would like to re-do. All those annoying details that you would like to improve or have another go at, but couldn't see when you are working on them, keep jumping out at me.
What part, if any, does the cultural context of 2022 play in its reception?
I think we are entering a very exciting time in this country. Finally, we are appreciating who we are as a distinctive collection of people with our own history and stories. The introduction of a new history syllabus for schools expresses new confidence that was not there when I was at school. We were constantly encouraged to "look north" to the rest of the world for affirmation.
What is the best part of the job for you?
Meeting people of all ages who have read my books and are genuinely excited by them.
You're a grandfather. Which of your books have been most loved in your family?
Two books of mine have been very popular with my two grandsons. George suggested I write a book about diggers, so I wrote Bruiser. When I asked if he liked the book when it came out, he said, "No... I love it!" And when Freddy had Teddy One-Eye read to him by his father, he said to me with a sly grin, the next time I saw him, "I know all about you now."
You're also a rat trapper. How are the birds in your garden faring?
A small and noisy flock of kererū flew into our garden the other day as if to thank me for my war on rats. Well, that's what I like to think.
Atua: Māori Gods and Heroes by Gavin Bishop (Penguin, $40) was this week named Margaret Mahy Book of the Year at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. Atua also won the Elsie Locke Award for Non-Fiction and the Russell Clark Award for Illustration.
It's the third time Bishop has won the Book of the Year prize for titles he authored and illustrated (he has also won twice for books he illustrated). This is more than any other children's author or illustrator in New Zealand, including Margaret Mahy, who won the supreme award twice.
The century-old British carmaker's new logo and latest ads have raised eyebrows.