Jim Kokoris: The Rich Part of Life

By JANE WESTAWAY

It's impossible to resist a novelist who writes: "Mrs Wilcott stood on our front porch looking divorced." Almost as impossible not to wish he hadn't followed up this perfect image with: "She might as well just wear a sign that says, 'He left me', my mother used to say about her."

Pepper-potting the target - not trusting that you nailed your idea first time around, and having a second go - is a technique beloved of new writers, who usually grow out of it, and Americans, who may not. Is it they, their publishers or their readers who think a book doesn't justify the name unless puffed up to twice its natural size?

Whichever, it is a pity, because The Rich Part of Life is an original, poignant, funny and, for the most part, well-written first novel. A hard edit resulting in a hundred pages fewer, and it would have packed a real wallop.

Its opening pages introduce the nucleus of the American-Greek Pappas family: Dad - elderly academic, Civil War aficionado, and distant parent; 11-year-old Teddy - the sharp-eyed, uncomplaining narrator; his disturbed 5-year-old brother, the nose-picker, who likes to get on all fours and bark like a dog.

Dad has just bought a lottery ticket using the favourite numbers of the boys' mother, who died in a car crash less than a year before.

As soon as their vast win is announced, they start attracting extras. First to arrive is elderly Aunt Beth and her revolting cat, Stavros: "[He] lay curled up at her feet silently emitting a variety of odours, all suggesting decomposition."

Aunt Beth takes on the housekeeping - thank God someone does.

Uncle Frank's next - loud-mouthed lawyer, would-be trusted adviser, and successful (in his own view, at least) Hollywood producer of vampire movies. Then Maurice - a gentle, sensitive former football player turned bodyguard; divorced and eagle-eyed neighbour, Mrs Wilcott, with her infernal pies; and Sylvanius, a dignified, scrounging old vampire actor. Kokoris is a whizz at characterisation.

Teddy's account of the next few months are entertaining, endearing and sometimes wrenching. His grief and longing saturate the page. What's refreshing about Kokoris' view of family life is that Teddy suffers almost without knowing it, and that the adults are not monsters; they mean well but somehow fail to produce the goods.

But by the time Kokoris reaches his crisis the reader has had a bit too long to wonder where it's all going.

By then, too, we're fairly confident of a happy ending, and that confidence sabotages the tension once Teddy finds himself out of the wings and at the centre of the action.

Still, the novel's resolution is believable, and (with a nod to Oprah) life-affirming. And if you miss it, don't despair: it'll soon be on its way to a cinema near you.

HarperCollins
$24.95

* Jane Westaway is a Wellington writer.