Books wrap: Fiona Sussman’s new novel reviewed, ‘hybrid’ novel Tautou; and more

Kotuku Titihuia Nuttall. Photo / Ebony Lamb.

The Doctor’s Wife

by Fiona Sussman

(Bateman Books, $38)

Reviewed by Rebecca Hill

The Doctor's Wife

The Doctor’s Wife, Fiona Sussman’s fourth novel, is a murder story set on Auckland’s North Shore. Stan, Carmen, Austin and Tibbie are a close group of middle-aged, middle-class friends whose lives in Browns Bay are fraught with the usual complications — infidelity, money, jealousy. Austin is a doctor: he and his elegant wife Tibbie are unable to have children. Their close friends, Stan and Carmen, have teenage sons but a lot less money. They also seem, at first, to have much worse luck than Austin and Tibbie, but that’s until Tibbie is found dead at the bottom of a cliff.

The novel employs multiple points of view, deftly handled, and the switch halfway through to the perspective of detective Ramesh Bandara will please readers looking for a classic, whodunnit-style mystery. Connections build between the disparate perspectives and our suspicions move from one character to the other.

Sussman was a doctor, able to draw on this expertise for the medical aspects of the story: this lends weight to the key story of one character’s cancer diagnosis, which may otherwise have felt gimmicky. However, when faced with the task of sustaining an entire novel based on the central mystery, the author fills chapters with an excess of description rather than deeper character development — so much detail that readers may think they’re vital clues. Austin, for example, “ran the dirty dishes under hot water, then packed the dishwasher — knives on the top shelf, forks facing down in the cutlery basket, big plates at the back, side plates to the front”. We know that Austin is more meticulous than arty Stan, but is this a crucial clue to some dishwasher-related element of the murder? It’s hard to know in a novel that over-shares and is sometimes over-written: a pōhutukawa is “denuded of its crimson blooms”, and similes are employed to excess. This is frustrating in an otherwise readable novel with an intriguing plot.

Fiona Sussman

A number of characters are familiar tropes: Eliot, one of Austin’s patients, is a young autistic man with a heart of gold who doesn’t know his own strength. Ramesh, the struggling detective, has just been through a divorce and is pursuing the case against the wishes of his boss, desperate to prove himself. Austin himself, with his prim perfectionism, is trying to distance himself from memories of a traumatic upbringing: “Was this going to be his forever school or would his mum and her new squeeze pack up sticks and move town again?” At one point, Sussman even seems to even be winking at us via the police chief: “This is not some cosy murder mystery, Bandara, where the least likely person in the village turns out to be the culprit … You’ve got the quirky young lad with a supposedly superhuman memory. The woman with a brain tumour. Now, her financially strained husband. Soon the whole damned city will be under suspicion. You’re all over the show, man. Give me something concrete.”

By the time the novel reveals its second death, the story feels as though it’s winding down. When the perspective switches to Ramesh, readers have to wait for the detective to figure out as much as we already know. The pace suffers, so does the tension.

Still, seasoned crime readers who enjoy distinguishing clue from red herring will consider this a solid attempt at a classic psychological thriller. Despite its clunky moments, The Doctor’s Wife tells a compelling story and Sussman’s twisting-and-turning plot demonstrates her respect for the crime genre.

Rebecca Hill is a New Zealand writer and translator living in Berlin. A longer version of this review will appear on anzliterature.com

Tauhou

Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall

(Te Herenga Waka University Press, $30)

Reviewed by Kelly Ana Morey

It’s been a busy few years for Māori writing/publishing and 2022 was no exception with a satisfying number of new publications by Māori writers arriving in bookshops and dominating bestseller charts. The latest is Tauhou, Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall’s debut offering. While Tauhou has been loosely framed as a “hybrid novel”, in truth it could just as easily be regarded as a short story or prose poetry collection, such is its talent for shape-shifting.

The chapters/short stories are set in versions of either Aotearoa or Vancouver Island, which have been reimagined as existing side-by-side. The location of each chapter/short story isn’t overtly sign-posted but by using repeating imagery across the book and incredibly subtle differences in the voice of each of the locations, Nuttall grounds the reader without being obvious though still allowing the stories to sometimes work across both locations. Some of the refrains, not being able to breathe being one of the most insistent, also act as themes/codas throughout the book.

Calling on her Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi, WSANEC First Nation and Coast Salish whakapapa and history, Nuttall references the often shared history of not just the colonised people from her own whakapapa, but all colonised people. But it’s all done with the lightest of touches, often in the most poetic way possible and is never didactic. Nuttall’s approach is very much from the literary end of the spectrum. She’s a writer for whom words and ideas aren’t ordinary things.

Tauhou

For example, not for Nuttall, a thinly veiled lecture on the horror story of the residential school system for First Nation children in Canada (we had our own version here) that a lesser writer might produce. Instead, she offers just a glimpse, a sideways glance at the faces of the broken children when they return home for the summer. Nothing more. Just a handful of well-chosen words that stand as a mnemonic to the government and church-supported systemic cultural genocide that saw First Nations children throughout the 20th century forcibly taken from their homes to be re-educated.

Tauhou probably started out as a novel as the first chapter/story has an intriguing futuristic world-building that is reminiscent of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. It introduces one of the central characters, and leaves the reader asking a lot of questions, all things an opening bid should do. But I wonder if the enormity of history, the endlessness of time and the impossibility of writing it all in one go made Nuttall realise that the best she could do was grab and distill fragments that act as mnemonics for bigger stories/histories, down to glorious detailed perfection. She then weaves all these stories together into a coherent whole. Tauhou, its subject matter and the way it’s written is as unusual, new and exotic as the title suggests and it will be interesting to see where Nuttall goes from here.

5 Quick Questions: Jean Donaldson

Jean Donaldson

Tiaki: A shout-out to Aotearoa’s lesser-known creatures reads like a labour of love. What brought it into being?

I started Tiaki during my honours year of my Bachelor of Design at Massey University. But I kept working on it for almost a whole year before it was eventually finished and ready to be published.

Which is your favourite lesser-known creature?

That is probably the most difficult question to answer. I love all the animals in Tiaki, even the ones that didn’t make it into the final version. But if I had to pick, one of my personal favourites is the Smeagol gravel maggot, mostly because it is a Wellington local, just like me.

The illustrations in the book are digital paintings. Is this your preferred medium?

I’ve been digitally painting since I was about 15, although I did originally learn how to paint using traditional materials. That has heavily influenced the way I digitally paint as I still use quite traditional painting techniques even though it is through a digital medium.

You are working towards a master’s degree in design. What are your career goals?

To be very honest, I have no idea. I’m a big advocate for doing things when they feel like the right thing, and that’s something I can’t really plan for – although I would love to keep working with conservation from a design perspective.

You are described as a native bird fanatic — do you follow Bird of the Year? And if so, how good is New Zealand at choosing the best bird? There have been some scandals …

Absolutely. I love Bird of the Year. I think we do a pretty good job, and of course I’m happy the pīwauwau rock wren took out the title this year, as they are one of the creatures in Tiaki.

Tiaki

Tiaki: A shout-out to Aotearoa’s lesser-known creatures, by Jean Donaldson (Potton & Burton $30), is out now.

Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay

by Paul Diamond

(Massey University Press, $45)

Reviewed by David Herkt

Downfall

New Zealand provincial sexual scandals don’t often end with a death on the streets of Berlin during a riot between police and communists. On May 3, 1929, Charles Mackay, the former long-time mayor of Whanganui, was shot dead by a police sniper. Mackay had been working as a news stringer for the London Daily Express. Berlin police would ultimately produce three different versions of the fatal circumstances, but the events were also the finale of a life that involved many other complexities.

Scandals of the past inevitably explain the present. Paul Diamond’s intriguing Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay can still be read as a revelation of New Zealand life and attitudes, even a century later. Diamond began working on the book in 2003 and it has involved research trips to both the United Kingdom and Berlin, as well as many hours in Wellington archives. The story contains mysteries that are often as revealing as the many answers uncovered for the first time.

Mackay was a lawyer who had been elected six times to the Whanganui mayoralty. The projects he championed include many that are still associated with the city, including the Sarjeant Gallery which Mackay initiated and saw through to completion. He had a vision for Whanganui which included an improved port and better transport. He also had his enemies.

On May 15, 1920 a chair came flying through the first-floor window of Mackay’s legal office. There were several shots. Those who rushed up the stairs found a wounded returned serviceman, 24-year-old Darcy Cresswell, who claimed the mayor had shot him.

The mysteries start immediately. The young Cresswell had only arrived for a visit to the city a few days before the shooting. He and Mackay had not known each other previously, yet dined together that first night and subsequently. Mackay had also invited Cresswell for a private tour of the newly opened gallery.

At first Mackay claimed the gun had gone off by accident, but then he pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted murder. The court was presented with Cresswell’s claim that the mayor had propositioned him, and evidence that the married Mackay had previously sought treatment for his homosexuality. The “cousin” that Cresswell claimed to be visiting in Whanganui was never named or interviewed. The “confession” that Cresswell demanded Mackay write was never produced.

The role of the Whanganui RSA in the scandal was murky. It had its own agenda. There would also be the fact that Cresswell was exclusively gay in later life. There were hints of blackmail.

Mackay was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment but was released in seven, leaving New Zealand on a boat the very next morning. He went to London, where he worked in advertising before going to Berlin, where he met his end.

Paul Diamond.

Diamond’s dogged research unearths many intriguing facets to the story. It is profusely illustrated. His style can sometimes labour under the weight of structural decisions, but it is a narrative that will ultimately fascinate a reader. It firmly links New Zealand to a wider world and the sexual currents that would evolve so dramatically in the following decades. It is a valuable and insightful book about Mackay’s life that contextualises and links new information in ways that will continue to be of value.