Barbara Anderson: The Swing Around

By PENELOPE BIEDER*

With her extraordinary facility for dialogue and character Barbara Anderson takes us back to another world, a country where Muldoon ruled, and where we find the Honourable Hamish Carew, former dairy farmer and now Minister of Cultural Links and Trade, about to launch himself upon South-east Asia on "a swing around" from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur. Accompanying him and his sweetly absent-minded wife Molly will be a personal secretary, Freddie Manders, and an assistant, the dark-eyed Violet Redpath. The narrative viewpoint shifts around this small, privileged group.

Molly is at a mid-point in her life where she could choose to rebel, or she could submit gracefully to the itinerary of sightseeing and shopping (which she hates) that has been arranged for her. She remains satisfactorily unimpressed by the opulence of the huge hotels they stay in - she's far too busy overseeing and organising other people's lives, often misguidedly, but with every good intention.

Her mild husband has had to ask her not to sing in the car - it puts George, the driver, off, he has explained.

Molly is warm, sentimental, inquisitive, full of good works and somewhat drippy (literally so, when she gets out from her car going through a carwash), so why does her only child, Roberta, loathe her?

Myopic but good-looking, youngish Freddie Manders is disturbed to be on this trip, feeling it is not a good career move, but powerless to do anything about it. He is nursing anger and grief over his wife Bridget's desertion of their marriage. She is off to join Humanitaire in Paris, an organisation specialising in disaster relief. He's so angry he's in danger of turning into "a supercilious shit".

Violet Redpath is first seen fending off an overseas general from an unidentified Latino country at a cocktail party at the ambassador's residence - she is neatly saved by the ever-solicitous Molly, who that evening is swathed in maroon crepe.

Anderson is perfectly attuned to this world of diplomats and military attaches, internal memorandums and red-carpet situations, and never more so than when she is sending it up.

She has a wonderful eye for the detail of clothes ("golden silk slashed with black slunk down her curves; her diamonds throbbed in the pink light") and houses ("like every head of mission's wife ... she had got rid of as much as possible of the crud chosen by the previous spouse; she had replaced the wobbly rattan tables with Korean chests, swapped the chintzes for blue and white cottons, and ditched the artificial flower arrangements").

But people and their messy lives are and have always been Anderson's forte, and again she does not disappoint.

While this is a lighthearted, funny and at times improbably farcical story, there is a serious thread running through it. Found in all of Anderson's novels, it draws upon the infinite variations of courtly, friendly and passionate love between people. And Anderson quietly reveals how important it is to treat people well.

Promoted as her funniest novel to date, The Swing Around won't have you falling off the couch, but it does raise repeated chuckles, as with her usual great skill the author creates a separate world - here, it's one filled with those who "are born to rule" - and proceeds to expose the small and large pomposities and rituals followed by those who have dedicated themselves to working for the Government.

There is a beautiful rhythm to Anderson's writing - graceful, long sentences punctuated by short, punchy ones - and she deserves more than the noticeably sloppy editing here.

Victoria University Press

$29.95

* Penelope Bieder is a freelance writer.