Joy Cowley: Holy Days

By DAVID HILL

In 1980, three nuns embezzle church property, abduct a child and take off. One of them dies in suspicious circumstances ... " That's the story as twisted by a TV producerette. In its true form, it's also the story that Brian Collins remembers two decades later.

Joy Cowley's new novel for big people has the calm, consummate craft, affectionate mischief and sense of the wonder in small things that characterise her work for younger readers.

Written mostly in a vigorous present tense, it shows us Brian, aged 8, his mother just two years dead, Liz from the home appliance shop already getting her claws into his dad.

Brian is a top little guy. He misses his mum achingly, and no amount of his good intentions or others' kind attentions can overcome that.

The local convent becomes a sanctuary for him. Sisters Agnes, Luke and Mary Clare bring shape and sustenance. Brian and God start planning a miracle. God - "Himself" in the nuns' terms - comes into the plot a good deal, and comparisons between Cowley's young protagonist and Jimmy Sullivan of Ian Cross' The God Boy are inevitable. Both are vulnerable, hurt, half-comprehending. Both have an incandescent wish to be good. And both live intensely in the present, imperfect world. As one of the world's best writers for and about children, Joy Cowley presents Brian with authenticity. He roller-skates down the convent corridor; finds 75-year-olds' jokes boring; punches Matthew Cuttance fair in the gob.

An undemonstrative acceptance of spirituality has long been a feature of Cowley's fiction. That moral sense strengthens Holy Days. It's moral as distinct from moralising.

The plot is clean, slim-towards-slight, uncluttered. The 1980 setting sometimes feels like 1960, and the nuns edge towards affectionately drawn stereotypes (though you'll enjoy Sister Agnes demanding a discount on the sightseeing flight). A novel built with professional skill and underpinned by lively, untrendy goodness.

Penguin

$34.95

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.