Tina Shaw: Paradise

By MARGIE THOMSON

Shaw is not the first writer to wrestle with the moral and spiritual dangers of life within a rigidly controlled environment, and not the first to conclude that absolute power is not only illusory and temporary, but represents a grave moral danger to both the powerless and the powerful.

Yet her imaginative take on these ideas - which includes age-old metaphors such as the Garden of Eden, the serpent, and various manifestations of God and Satan - has transformed them into a captivating contemporary allegory about our bid for absolute dominance of the planet, and of science's infatuation with extending life at all costs.

In Paradise, the lush, false world is sealed within the richly empty Grahame Sydney-esque landscape of the New Zealand plains, which in turn co-exist with the teeming chaos of the wider world.

Claudia, our prickly heroine, is acting manager of Paradise Resort, a vast geodesic dome set somewhere in New Zealand, a "tropical Eden" which markets itself as the only tourist resort in the world where guests know beyond doubt that the weather will be perfect, and where they can step directly from the tropical wonderland to cross-country skiing at nearby Mt Harbert.

"We are a world apart," Claudia proudly tells a group of visiting travel agents, "a world of our own making."

And yet there is a clue on the very first page (in the very first line) that Paradise is a fragile, threatened concept. A snake - a beloved, champagne-swilling snake named Pet, smuggled in by a guest - has escaped, and Claudia must track it down.

Behind Claudia's perfectly groomed facade is a woman still dealing with having been kidnapped from a Malaysian resort by Filipino pirates and held for several weeks on the island of Jolo in the increasing realisation that those back home were reluctant to pay money for her release.

Scenes from this experience intersperse with the events at Paradise, and both the conditions of her island prison and the relationships she slowly forms there are a foil for her cloistered, manicured, pedantic life back home.

In particular, Claudia is compelled to rethink her relationship with husband Tony, a smooth-shaven, thin-lipped, be-suited character who works for the same company and whose total lack of empathy or other redeeming quality makes him a useful symbol for the emotionally void life of Paradise.

Claudia tells Tony she wants to live apart for a while, and he concurs, albeit unhappily. "When did that ever matter - love?" he asks her, as he leers at other women in the restaurant. "Partners, think of it that way. As in business ... "

Oh dear - it's obvious he's dreadful, but just how hopelessly fallen we must wait until book's end to discover.

Permeating the story - in both the island hellhole and Paradise itself - is the insubstantial presence of Pasqua, who insinuates himself into all corners of life and all questions of meaning, without ever being seen. He is the owner of the Pasqua Group, and therefore of Paradise and many other resorts around the world.

Claudia has never met him (in a nod to Samuel Beckett, she is "waiting for Pasqua") but Tony, his agent, is always able to tell her where he is located. Pasqua is always in transit.

Of the god-like figures - Pasqua, and Stevie, who from his position in the Control Room manipulates all the physical conditions of Paradise's occupants - neither are at all appealing, and in fact seem more satanic than heavenly. If there is a god, it's pretty obvious that he's a bastard, and in fact, as one character - a gin-sozzled 122-year-old - sputters, the Garden of Eden was never about perfection, but about the egotism of God.

God and Satan may well be one and the same, mutually defined by their desire to have their own way. If that is the case, all that stands between such greedy absolutism and oblivion is the chaos of the real world.

And that seems to be where Malaysia comes in: Shaw's encroaching theme of that teeming, chaotic country where people go missing, brothers argue, children are born and life goes on.

In such a place, paradise will be a transitory thing, experienced in snatched moments, and perhaps that's how it's meant to be. What lasts, we see finally, is poetry or, more precisely, the spirit of the people out there in the grimy, dangerous world.

Shaw writes always with humour and wit, but in this novel there is a cynical edge that goes beyond the merely witty towards some dark depiction of the world's inhabitants and their self-serving machinations - as if Shaw herself is rather disillusioned by most of the people she observes.

Her sense of irony is clever but not carping: a fellow captive tells Claudia that their new location in the dirt is "so much more real" than the resort they had been snatched from - but who would trust a tourist to decide what is "real"? Actors employed to play Adam and Eve argue during a performance, and are replaced by a hologram; Sundays are banned at Paradise; Pasqua sends coffee like God sent manna from heaven; a man is beaten to death at the gates of Paradise.

Subtle Paradise is not. Its themes announce themselves; its sense of allegory is very pronounced - but that's a large part of the fun.

Shaw has a piercing eye, a finely tuned ear and talent for monologue and dialogue. The little exchanges titled "Jean, Liz & Delia in Paradise", for instance, sparkle with dry humour and make you think that here is one writer who should be snapped up by a television production house.

There are a few weak links - the investigation into the waiter's brutal death comes to a so-whatish end; there were a few characters who seemed like ideas that hadn't quite panned out; the ending is perhaps a little overblown.

But I read this book in one session, puzzled over bits of it, wanted to have its mysteries resolved, and ended with a feeling of enjoyment, and respect for the author. The character best suited to living in Paradise? Oddly enough, the sleek, wilful, champagne-sipping snake.

Penguin

$27.95