LANDINGS
Jenny Pattrick
Black Swan, pbk, $28
Review by Cushla McKinney
One of the difficulties of setting a novel in the past is the need to create a fictional narrative simultaneously true to a particular historical reality and accessible to a contemporary readership.
Get that balance wrong and the factual becomes either didactic (at the expense of the imaginative freedom) or reduced to a series of irrelevant details, inserted for the sake of form, instead of essential elements of the story as a whole.
In her Denniston trilogy, Jenny Pattrick demonstrated a rare ability to imbed a compelling story in a tangible and living moment of New Zealand's past, and her new novel, Landings, is further proof of her status as one of this country's finest writers.
This time, the setting is the Whanganui River at the turn of the 20th century, just before the completion of the main trunk railway line.
With access overland almost impossible, the river is the major thoroughfare for goods, services, and tourism between Whanganui and Taumarunui, conveyed by entrepreneur Alexander Hatrick's fleet of shallow-draught steamers in a three-day voyage along the Rhine of Maoriland.
Along the way are Hatrick's stopping points (Pipikiri House with every modern convenience and the 40-berth houseboat) and a series of settlements, farms and kainga, linked by the ferries, the river, and a tragedy that changes the lives of all of those it touches.
Pattrick introduces us to a diverse range of characters, starting at the upper reaches of the river with Irishman Danny O'Dowd and his half-Maori wife, Stella, trying to carve a farm out of the untameable bush and supplementing their meagre income through Stella's work as maid on the houseboat.
Further downstream are the Chinese gardener known locally as Charlie Chee, whose only dream is to earn enough money for the bond to bring out a Chinese wife, then Simon Blencoe, emotionally scarred by years in an Australian prison, who finds solace and healing in the river and the land.
At Pipiriki, Stella's parents run the hotel, while the nuns at Jerusalem provide guidance and solace to the various lost souls that seek it.
This loosely connected community is unsettled by the arrival of Angus McPhee, an ambitious and belligerent man who has plans to supply his sawmill by floating logs downriver, a scheme that ends in disaster almost before it starts.
Lured by the prospect of easy money, Danny and his brother-in-law run a load of timber into the steamer Wairua bringing supplies and tourists (including McPhee's own family) upstream.
In the ensuing chaos, Bridget (Bridie) McPhee is lost overboard, and although Danny saves her life, she never fully recovers her mind.
A beautiful, silent presence wandering restlessly between Jerusalem and Charlie Chee's, stopping a few days here, a few days there, she is soon as much part of the landscape as the river itself.
And when she falls pregnant, suspicions and accusations threaten to tear apart the lives of all who know and care for her.
Such partial summary cannot do justice to a storyline that touches on the complexities of race, class, love or even the practicalities of daily life, but it is through such touches that the story becomes vividly and emotively real.
And in providing these, Jenny Pattrick has written what is, in my opinion, her best novel yet.
- Cushla McKinney describes herself as a scientist and dreamer.
