Karyn Hay: Emerald Budgies

Vintage

$24.95

Review: Colin Hogg*

Karyn Hay has written something remarkable with her first novel - something remarkably down, dirty, druggy and desperate.

"I looked like a rat on acid," says Ruth, the book's lead character, and that's how Hay writes Emerald Budgies, a tale that rings with detail and truth that suggest Hay has spent half a lifetime researching it.

It is a tour of the inner and outer lives of Ruth, the sort of daughter no mother would want to have. She's a drug-gobbling, predatory lesbian who occasionally has resentful sex with men and whose idea of a visceral thrill is to put a hedgehog in a plastic bag under her car tyre and drive backwards and forwards over it.

Ruth is quite a character - an anti-heroine who is by no means anti-heroin - and she carries the story, which is hardly a story at all and more of a look inside a life and a lifestyle most people have only heard dark rumours about.

It's sometimes hilarious in a way that might make you feel guilty about laughing and it's certainly not recommended for the faint of heart and the tight of morals. But it has a shocking sort of verve about it and its appalling cast of characters, each of them wearing their dirty habits like medals.

They're the most unlovable bunch you could find in a long search, but there's no denying their stinky charisma or Ruth's cynicism which burns through the book with an acid breath. It's a bit like Bridget Jones' Diary went straight to hell, pausing only for anal sex and drugs. And Hay has a sharp eye for detail, though it's not always the sort of detail you want.

" ... I stood in the bathroom doorway. It looked like a two-hour job. The walls were filthy, thick with the ghosts of gayboys past: the casual splatterings of shaving foam and hair mousse; the squirts of eye wash; the trails of toothpaste; the nose pickings and the blackheads. And, always, ever present, gathered along skirting boards and knitted together in the corners with dust and scraps of toilet paper, the hair."

There's a lot of italicising in Emerald Budgies, though it's not entirely clear why. There are several other things about the book that aren't entirely clear. Its story isn't entirely clear, though there are some marvellous childhood flashbacks. And it isn't a smooth ride. For every sharp line Hay throws at the page, there's a dull one drooping off it.

And its dirty detail offers the sort of fecund thrill only a few could enjoy. But it has a lot of energy and a corrosive confidence that suggests if Hay can trip over a decent story in time for her next novel, she might really pull something off.

I don't like to think what, but I'm sure she'll think of something.

* Colin Hogg is an Auckland journalist.