Charlotte Randall: What happen then, Mr Bones?

Reviewed by SUSAN JACOBS

Death stalks Charlotte Randall's latest novel from the opening pages as she traces the dubious fortunes of the Montague family, who have all, many unknowingly, come under the influence of their formidable 17th-century ancestor Valentina Montague. She does not, however, appear until near the end because the novel moves back in time from Petone, New Zealand, 2002, to Oxford, England, 1651. And what a journey it is.

The ride is often wild but Randall is always at the helm. Readers of her earlier award-winning works, The Curative and Within the Kiss, will recognise themes exploring the interconnectedness of scientific, medical and religious practices, how these affect people's lives and approaches to physical and mental wellbeing.

The members of the Montague family are largely an unlikeable, gloomy, self-preoccupied lot, but given the conditions in which they try to carve out their miserable lives that is hardly surprising. Fortunately they are not around too long. Just as we get used to them they die and we proceed back, in film-like segments, to an earlier time in their lives before they disappear for good.

By far the most fascinating and sensible character is Valentina, whose chance at a second life after the gruesome demise of her first leads her to become an atheist. In doing so she challenges the prevailing belief systems of the anatomists, physicians apothecaries, quacks and crackpots who make up the public health system circa mid 17th-century England.

Through these characters Randall examines how the human body — the bleeding, wheezing, pustule-encrusted, secreting, excreting body — is the repository of society's changing religious and scientific ideas. While the early Montagues are variously loading themselves up with potions, poultices and morbid fears, their angst-ridden descendants seem little different from their forebears. Death is just the final straw, life getting the last laugh.

It makes for strangely exhilarating reading. Although this is not strictly a historical novel, Randall throws in plenty of sociopolitical knowledge. A London-based Montague finds himself singed during the Great Fire and another falls victim to the plague. Her portrayal of 19th-century New Zealand's coastal waters as red with the blood and offal of slaughtered animals is a haunting reminder of how our colonial past is rooted in the charnel-house.

Readers of any of Randall's novels need to keep a dictionary handy — she is a wordsmith, forging delectable phrases that dazzle with stunningly original images. I particularly enjoyed "the cloying redolence of the jam factory, yeasty halitosis of the brewery, and the rancid transudations of the woollen mills" — and this is only half the sentence.

Such is the sheer bravura of it, some of us can even (with a groan) forgive such preposterous excesses as "to propitiate the predatory coruscations of the peddler's teeth", mainly because the narrative voice — in turn ironic, whimsical, sly, bawdy, complicit — seems to groan with us.

In short, Randall gets away with it because she can. She is one of the most original, intelligent and exciting voices in contemporary New Zealand literature. Enter-tainingly erudite, abuzz with febrile ideas, quirky characters and lush settings, this is a remarkable story.

* Susan Jacobs is the author of Fighting With the Enemy: New Zealand POWs and the Italian Resistance.