Book of the Week: Exile on main street, Pātea

ReadingRoom

All over a novel set in Taranaki, reviewer David Hill saved exclaiming “Wow!” 

Pātea in South Taranaki. Just below 100 km from New Plymouth; simply over 60 km from Wanganui. Gallant issues function on this little (about 1200 individuals) city: the spacious, fashionable Aotea Upangunui / Museum of South Taranaki; a fantastic cafe with a positively Edwardian washroom; an adjoining artwork gallery; the fabled Pātea Māori Membership; Kim Jarrett’s Backyard of Tutunui whale-rib sculpture, on the nook the place SH3 sidesteps in direction of Waverley.

And a separate paragraph for the 90-year-old, wondrously inconceivable concrete and plaster duplicate of the Aotea Canoe, perched 3m above the footpath, with its ten occupants staring stiffly in direction of the South Island. It was a laddish Saturday evening prank to climb up and switch a few of the figures spherical in order that they had been going through Mt Taranaki as a substitute. They made their very own enjoyable in these days.

I am banging on about these positives as a result of Pātea faces plenty of negatives. The large freezing works shut down with brutal abruptness 4 many years again. Its UK house owners just about walked away, leaving an asbestos-poisoned hulk and half the city’s wage-earners out of a job.

The same old financial and social points adopted. Retailers closed in multiples; the principle road remains to be largely a succession of empty home windows. Households packed up and went; the superb highschool’s and first faculty’s rolls dwindled until they needed to mix as an space faculty, the place children rattle round amongst closed-up lecture rooms. Properties in aspect streets grew shabby or derelict; lawns and hedges and footpaths turned rank and ragged. No-frills, no-bullshit Pātea  is a spot to sober the soul.

Airana Ngarewa grew up there (has the Vital Author From Exhausting-Battle Background trope reached cliché standing by now?), and his quite terrific first novel The Bone Tree is ready close by of Taranaki Maunga, the place invasions and exiles nonetheless darken reminiscence, farms are battlegrounds with the setting, and time, climate, land all elevate into fable.

Plot particulars – intimately, for a purpose. Kauri and Black are pre-teen brothers (it appears), whose mother and father match into  that class labelled by one in all our beloved political leaders as “bottom-feeders”. Besides they do not even feed any extra. In a Gothic opening, Mum has already died agonisingly after a lazy medical misdiagnosis, and Dad follows soonish after, stiff and dirty in the lounge. The 2 children bury him below the eponymous tree. Their mom? Dad carried her physique into the gorse that fills close by paddocks; they did not dare ask what occurred then.

The boys are already outdoors The System. They have not attended faculty for yonks; Dad despatched CYPS away with a flea of their ear and a fist of their face; their dilapidated outdated home sits on a fringe of city, with fuel already lower off and electrical energy quickly to comply with. So it is a survival story, nearly a survivalist one, as Kauri units out to take care of himself and youthful Black, whereas staying invisible to any authorities, and fearing all of the whereas that he is doomed to finish up “that very same violent piece of shit” as his Jake the Muss father.

He begins a number of journeys into the unnamed, garish metropolis close by, searching for id, meals, assist, explanations of some type. He seems to be nearly Pākehā, and this each directs and warps his quest. In a pub of damaged males, ”a scourge, a Taniwha inside a Taniwha”, he meets ruined, resourceful Tea, who turns into a flawed seer and non permanent saviour to the 2 boys. There’s additionally a mild outdated shop-owner, who will take a reasonably heavily-underlined main function in direction of the tip.

That story is simply midway by way of at this stage. So why all these particulars about it? As a result of it is a narrative seething with incident. (”A shit-load occurs.” Thanks, Kauri.). And Airana Ngarewa handles that load with spectacular if often precarious management. What’s exceptional is his fusion of the bleakly hyper-real and the emblematic. Occasions, locations, individuals turn into elements of a generally lyrical, generally ferocious pageant, the place every part blazes with lurid mild.

I will additionally point out right here that it is the most bilingual NZ novel I’ve ever learn, studded with te reo that even a shamefully ignorant monoculturalist like this reviewer can comprehend – and commend.

The plot storms on. Kauri has a serious assembly and a semi-epiphany in a church. A paternity revelation follows. 9-year-old Black, an authentically feral and gutsy, fragile and craving small child – ”actual warriors do not relaxation” – and one of many novel’s stars, falls sick and sinks in direction of dying. I do not consider it is a spoiler if I inform you that another person joltingly dies as a substitute. Kauri makes extra journeys into the town, assembly extra deformed, generally deranged drunks and derelicts. A automotive splutters to the rescue. Midway to it, anyway. One other revelation directs occasions in direction of a point of reconciliation and determination.

It’s possible you’ll hear echoes of As soon as Have been Warriors and/or The Bone Folks. However Ngarewa’s novel is much less concussive than the previous; much less hallucinatory than the latter. He has his personal voice, resoundingly so for a brand new, younger author.

Reservations? Each authorities or civic company from CYPS by way of church to college will get a foul press, which generally diminishes them to caricatures. And you must settle for, even when you marvel at, a few of the writing. ”He who knew the striving wouldn’t come with out missteps, errors and misdeeds.”  Or “The Solar took his seat atop the sky.” (I would actually love him to do away with the a number of “atops” that I fell over.) You may tut-tut over these as florid and inflated. You may additionally see them as essential to the imagery that colors the story.

In plenty of different locations, he will get the wording spot on: ”places of work with glass home windows stacked like crates of beer”  And, on Mt Taranaki versus Tongariro, ” He hit on one other maunga’s missus and received the bash.”  Is not that second one simply good? If Ngarewa’s attain generally exceeds his grasp, that is no unhealthy factor in a debut work.  Although I do hope he and his editors have the possibility for a very lengthy chat concerning the distinction between ”eh” and ”aye”.

All over The Bone Tree, I saved exclaiming “Wow!” Really, I saved exclaiming “Shit!”, which I attribute to the unhealthy affect of younger Kauri, whom additionally, you will wish to clasp to your bosom – although he’d most likely knee you within the groin. It is whole-hearted, passionate, not good, very, very memorable. And I am delighted to report that The Pātea Māori Membership will get a point out on p95.

The Bone Tree (Moa, $37.99) by Airana Ngarewa is out there in bookstores nationwide. ReadingRoom is devoting all week to protection of the writer and his e-book. Monday: a portrait by writer Emma Hislop. Yesterday: the writer on kura reo at his marae.