Duff off to pastures old

By DAVID HILL

From 1990s Mangere to 1950s Hungary: it's a big bold move. A timely one, too. Duff's probably done as much as he can with Jake the Muss and his bleak, brutal world. After the concussive impact of Once Were Warriors, the plots were becoming a touch predictable.

So it's off to pastures old, in this ultra-violent narrative of a boy's and a nation's battle for Szabad - freedom - against external tyrants and internal traitors.

Despite the very different place and time, this is quintessential Duff.

There's the bloodletting; the disenfranchised, dispossessed, degraded underclass, the rush to retribution.

Characters are still emblems as much as individuals. Thirteen-year-olds declaim like epic poets. The avalanches of adjectives and rhetorical questions; bruising, three-word sentences; sudden sentiment and lush lyricism ("I know not ... flee this accursed country") are instantly recognisable.

At the start, Attila Szabo - a name to covet - is 12 and wretched. "Nearly everything and everyone I have known has come crashing down." The shell of his father has just returned from jail. The police state corrodes human spirit. Attila vows to take his "screaming fury" to the grave.

His games and fantasies of rising up against the Soviet oppressors turn out to be a rehearsal for the real thing. An improbably beautiful couple move in above Attila's disintegrating family. The sumptuous Aranka becomes an adolescent's icon.

Two years skip past, and Hungary rises. Duff gives a flat-out rendering of days of heroism and savagery - gunfire like trumpet bursts - and the pulverising Russian retaliation. Lust and bloodlust bloom big and purple.

You wonder uneasily how much the author is enjoying heaping up the horrors.

Attila is a powerful and passionate protagonist. Like all Alan Duff characters, he wears his nerves on the outside. His anguish is affecting; his fervour fascinating. Duff conveys the tumult of his inner and political life splendidly, though the mini-lectures go on a bit.

Once again, the structure creaks and strains. Even screaming fury needs a shape, but in the protracted street-fighting scenes, one atrocity quickly blurs into another.

The rhetoric also gets in the road. By mid-book, posturing and orating take over. Attila doesn't just punch someone: "the arrow had left its bow". People don't bleed: "human gore erupts".

Energy keeps it going. Style keeps it florid. Polemic keeps it repetitive. It's uneven, unsettling, difficult to categorise or forget. It's typical Alan Duff.

SZABAD

By Alan Duff

Vintage $29.95


* Published next week.

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.