KEY POINTS:
Heads turn as the three women at the table by the window pump up the volume. One is constantly on her Blackberry, another touching up her scarlet mouth with her lippy and eyeing up the young men. They are talking so loudly we can't help but overhear: families, men, sex ... They order yet another bottle of wine. Blimey, that's the third and these dames must be pushing 70.
What is one of our most respected writers for the young doing creating a scene like this in a fashionable lunch spot in Auckland's Viaduct Basin?
The lushed-up trio are characters in the opening story in Tessa Duder's latest book, a collection of short stories titled Is She Still Alive?.
The collection is Duder's first foray into writing adult fiction, and in the 13 stories she explores the lives of women in their 50s, 60s and beyond, a genre she calls "crone lit".
"Older women are the most wonderful supporters of fiction, go to festivals, buy books, go to clubs and talk about the books among themselves," she says. "I thought there is a market there already and if I can write a book which they will tell each other [about], it was going to be quite a good idea. And there was simply the [attraction of] unexplored territory."
The stories are frank and earthy, dealing with ageing, sex, obsession, passion and disappointment.
Duder can't suppress the joy she felt in the freedom of writing about women who have been around the track.
"Well, the brakes were off," she says. "When writing for children, there is always a gatekeeper looking over your shoulder particularly if writing for young adults. It was a real pleasure to be able to write whatever I wanted to write without thinking there was going to be a censor." Duder agrees that her bold venture is possibly all part of the baby boomers refusing to go quietly.
"It's a very rich vein to mine, older women who are in their 60s-70s, because they have seen the most enormous changes - I don't think it would be self-indulgent to say more than any other generation in history. This generation remembers the Second World War and is old enough to remember the impact of the First, and here we are using cell phones and computers."
"Crone lit" stories aren't escapist fantasies. Lack of personal fulfilment is a strong theme, surprising from a writer whose life seems to be packed with achievement: champion swimmer, journalist, writer, script-writer, actor, pianist.
But Duder says she spent 12 years solely as a dedicated wife and mother, until the feminist movement of the 1970s made her realise she wanted something more. And her success, she insists, has had a strong element of luck.
Some of the stories have their origin directly in family events. The final, and most poignant, springs from the anger she felt when she revisited her parents' lovingly built former home on the shores of Lake Taupo, and discovered it had been carted away.
"I was absolutely outraged, and as I described in the book, I thought, I'm going to put a curse on this place!"
Incurable romantics will find Is She Still Alive? a bit short on dream blokes. The male characters include a husband too weak to deal with the boomerang children, the vain drama director toying with the affections of a shy middle-aged woman, the incurable alcoholic, the man who unceremoniously dumps his new partner to go back to his wife.
All good fodder for the girls to get together, open another bottle of that nice pinot gris and get stuck in.
* Is She Still Alive? by Tessa Duder (HarperCollins $34.99)
