Felicity Price: Dancing in the Wilderness

The intertwined struggles of a woman and her granddaughters provide the strong stories for a New Zealand author's first novel, writes CARROLL DU CHATEAU.

Felicity Price's first novel offers something rare in New Zealand fiction - pace and tension. You can't bear to put it down.

Her description of a mother losing her child and the anger, coldness and destruction it brings to her marriage is the best account I have read about couples caught up in tragedy.

Similarly, her evocation of the tough life faced by women who stepped off sailing ships into the mud that would clog their shoes for years on end is evocative. However, the story is uplifting rather than depressing.

The star of the novel, Henrietta ("Etta") Jackson, is light-hearted and generous by nature. And Price is gifted enough to write her story, set in the South Island coalmining town of Denniston, with a precision, eye for detail and balance that make it feel authentic.

Henrietta's tale, though the strongest, is only one of three that help to pull this book off.

The novel slices together the stories of three women who lived on the West Coast over nearly a century.

First comes Etta, who lived in Denniston during the growth of unionism - and with it the beginnings of the Labour Party - followed by the 1913 union riots in Wellington.

Her experiences are layered with those of her granddaughters, Stephanie and Miriam (who know little about their grandmother and her life), who find themselves on different sides of the West Coast logging debate 90-odd years later.

Although neither of the modern characters is as compelling as their grandmother, the technique works well, helping to draw the story along and bring it into the modern arena.

Stephanie, the high-powered PR woman brought out from Britain to mastermind the campaign against the anti-logging movement, is Gucci-clad, espresso-addicted and cold - and more shallowly drawn as a character than her grandmother.

Her sister Miriam, the tie-dyed-skirt-wearing greenie, is infuriatingly naive. Her slice of the story is told with less sympathy than Etta's.

Although Dancing in the Wilderness cannot be classified as high literature, it is several steps up from light romance. It may include the odd cliche, but the writing is pacy and vigorous and the end satisfyingly - and believably - untidy.

Price, a journalist (North and South, Christchurch Press, New Zealand Woman's Weekly) and public relations practitioner, is a gifted storyteller who has gone to serious lengths to research her plot.

Her writing style and technique benefit from practice as a long-haul magazine feature writer, plus workshops with both Sue MacCauley and Fiona Farrell. The section of the book set in the Denniston Face, where Etta lived for almost her entire adult life - making the journey down only to bury her daughter - reeks of hours in the library, researching the history of coalmining in New Zealand at the turn of the century.

Her account of Etta plodding and panting the 7km up the Denniston Incline tells of someone who has at least seen - if not climbed - the steep hill that virtually imprisoned people like Etta and her family.

Most strikingly, it is difficult to imagine an author telling of the events that occurred after the death of Etta's child without having experienced tragedy herself.

Then there is her obvious knowledge of how the PR industry works, her intimate experience of the West Coast logging dispute, sustainable logging and greenies.

Hazard Press

$19.95

* Carroll du Chateau is the editor of Weekend Life.