A collection of short stories looking at "ordinary middle-class women coping, reaching cronehood with, quite often, thwarted personal ambitions."
IS SHE STILL ALIVE?
Tessa Duder
HarperCollins, pbk, $35
Review by Kathy Young
Tessa Duder has a fabulous sense of humour which she applies with a deft hand to the notion (and reality) of ageing.
This collection of 12 short stories is wonderfully described in the introduction as a look at "ordinary middle-class women coping, reaching cronehood with, quite often, thwarted personal ambitions."
Tessa Duder is another New Zealand writer I had not read until now and how wonderful to find her in a book she wrote while the Katherine Mansfield Fellow in France.
She earned that honour through her efforts and success as a writer of 35 books after working as a journalist while raising four daughters. So it might be fair to say that Tessa may be ready to wear the title of "Crone" and I suspect if she does, it will be with glee and a sparkle in her eye.
The stories tell of women who struggle and sacrifice, as well as of a time and era in New Zealand.
These are women, now in their 60s, 70s and 80s, who volunteer (always have), who knit, bake, garden.
Women who married as virgins and divorce to a bewildering and wild new world that they feel has left them stranded in sensible shoes with a library card but not much else - certainly not the confidence of their daughters, the financial acumen of their husbands nor the flexibility to break some of the constraining and constricting social rules they watch their sons ignore.
These women are inspiring, engaging, moving and real. Duder does a wonderful job giving us friends, wives, widows, divorcees, sisters, aunts and couples content, constricted, in love and in despair.
These are people you know, you are related to and you have grown up with.
It is hard not to be hopeful when you realise that we are all driven by the same need for connection, for love and for compassion regardless of age or era.
Read it and weep - as well as laugh out loud.
- Kathy Young is a local fundraiser and writer.
