AUGUST 3 2019 LISTENER 51
the earth mother as a solo mum: Rangi’s
shot through, leaving her with these
ungovernable boys, including Rongo,
who is forever in the garden, and Tanga-
roa, who is always at the beach.
Hēmi Kelly’s deceptively simple
Rata uses the story of an old woman
gathering medicinal plants as a lovely
meditation on the meeting of ancient
and modern. It’s plain enough to make a
bedtime story for the mokopuna.
Each of the stories, in its own way,
shines a new light on
another facet of te ao
Māori and reminds
us of how special this
land is. l
PŪRĀKAU: Māori Myths
Retold, edited by Witi
Ihimaera and Whiti
Hereaka (Penguin
Random House, $38)mother is alive and he reports speaking to
her each week; not many pages later, he is
shocked that Kate has forgotten his mother
is dead – though she is always in complete
control.
Kate’s parents may be a happy couple,
or unhappily separated. One minute the
former Amsterdam Bank is home to a
cafe, the next it is a lounge bar. A cast
of riveting characters adds to the whirl:
white-haired Ukrainian mail-order bride
Oksana, who prefers nakedness to wearing
her bad clothes; ex-Navy Seal Jose; wealthy,
unhappy Sabine. Racial identity is also part
of the mix – Kate is Hungarian-Turkish-
Persian, but Jewish when she is Emilia; Ben
is half Bengali, half Jewish.
The writing is pause-and-read-again
superb: original, clean, fresh, light, often
exquisite. Newman’s words are thought-
fully chosen and perfectly placed; she
reminds us that, in a diminished world of
worn, overused words, there are still new
ways to electrify: stars like “dusty candy”,
the “frowsty bonheur” of overnight guests
after a party, Ben’s “patchy, indecorous
beard”, the changes in Kate’s consciousness
that have “the brightness of a paper cut”.
Newman channels intelligence and
humour into the Shakespearean-era lan-
guage, but it’s not a pastiche. The cadences
are teasingly the same and she has fun
with spicy little reminders.
When Sad Will, as Emilia calls the Bard,
pretends to offer her a nutshell, surely we
are to recall Hamlet’s famous words: “I
could be bounded in a nutshell, and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not
that I have bad dreams.” Newman conjures
up both contemporary New York and 16th-
century England without apparent effort.
There are no heaving bosoms or carefully
described farthingales here, and she pro-
vides a memorable slant on 9/11.
I read The Heavens in a day and gained
pleasure from rereading it. This is a novel
about our crazy, broken, threatened planet
and about the possibility, somehow, of
saving it. It is about madness and uncer-
tainty and parallel
lives. And it is a
triumph: disturbing,
compelling and mes-
meric. In the words of
Sad Will, this is indeed
something rich and
strange. l
THE HEAVENS, by Sandra
Newman (Granta, $32.99)Hardship
and happiness
by ANN PACKERT
he trio of young pioneer women
gathered for washday, pictured on
the cover of this volume of 19th-
century immigrants’ stories, look as
if they’re really enjoying themselves.
It’s a different story inside. The tight-
lipped older woman, washboard in
hand and stirring a boiling cauldron,
doesn’t look quite so happy.
The trials, tribulations and occa-
sional joys of
arriving in a raw
new land, with
very few resources
and no support
networks, are
remembered
mostly by women
in later life,
who have long
since survived
earthquake, wind and fire. More
immediately appealing, however, are
the diary entries and letters in which
they pour their hearts out to sorely
missed family.
This collection of writings is tar-
geted at intermediate- and high-school
students, but it makes entertaining
reading for a wider audience.
Married, single or widowed, these
women really got around, coming
ashore wherever there was a port,
and travelling long distances on
horseback or foot to often isolated
encampments. Mud, rats and things
that went bump in the night were all
to be expected. There’s even a child,
11-year-old Ella Adams, after whom a
lake at the top of Mackinnon Pass is
named – she climbed there with her
dad and explorer Quintin McKinnon.
There is no Māori voice here – it was
Pākehā families who lodged their writ-
ten material in institutions such as the
Alexander Turnbull Library. Compil-
ing that history may be a much more
challenging task, but it needs to be
done. l
THE NZ SERIES: Pioneer Women, edited by
Sarah Ell (Oratia, $30)The US president is a
woman named Chen,
carbon emissions have
“radically declined” and
peace accords have been
signed in Jerusalem.
Pūrākau: shining a new
light on te ao Māori.