What a versatile chap Greg McGee is. Writer of Foreskin's Lament, one of New Zealand's most emblematic plays; pseudo-nymous author of damn compelling crime fiction; ghost writer of an outstanding biography of Richie McCaw; author of television and film scripts, plus an admirably subversive memoir. And now comes this substantial novel, niftily packaged by Auckland's Upstart Press.
Striding across three generations, six decades and two hemispheres, powered by all manner of revelations, it starts in contemporary Venice, where the "parched tongue" of land is being reclaimed by rising sea, and where a dying New Zealand father and desolate daughter have come to lay diverse ghosts.
It swoops back and forth across half a century, initially to Word War II Bari and a Kiwi soldier who's survived shrapnel, capture and the sinking of his prison ship by British torpedoes, but not the torment of his own cowardice.
Throughout the abundant episodes that follow, two countries and cultures confront or blend in numerous ways and consequences reverberate down the years: one man is lost in action, even though he returns home unscathed; another hides his name, face and nationality as he tries to make atonement.
An erratically-typed 1970s journal, featuring Red Brigade violence, Venetian patricians, callow American academics and a tormented sports coach becomes central to the narrative.
