New Zealand Listener – June 08, 2019

NEW

ZEALAND

SYMPHONY

ORCHESTRA

PODIUM SERIES

Book at nzso.co.nz

Winter

Daydreams

Christopher Blake

Angel at Ahipara

Stravinsky

Violin Concerto

Tchaikovsky

Symphony No. 1

Winter Daydreams

Fawzi Haimor

Conductor

Carolin Widmann

Violin

JUNE 8 2019 LISTENER

scenes in which the Adamsons throw

a party for a rich crowd of shrieking

cokeheads. Fortunately, Dan starts to

understand that this lifestyle isn’t com-

patible with a happy marriage. So, they

return to Alex’s hotel one last time.

At some stages I thought the direction

of The Snakes was going to be a little too

easy to predict, but I was wrong. Jones

blindsides with a finale that is com-

pletely unconventional, an unflinching

resolution of a skilfully controlled drama

that has more coils

and kinks than an

entwined nest of

snakes. It’s a night-

mare for sure, and

a stunning achieve-

ment, too. l

THE SNAKES, by Sadie

Jones (Chatto & Windus,

$37)

Nevertheless, doubt must be guarded

against, and the business end of the

truth apparatus is the Speculative Service,

whose agents have special dispensation

to use possibilities and hypotheticals to

resolve criminal cases beyond the open-

and-shut. More like political inquisitors

than workaday law enforcement, the

Speculators are viewed with a mixture of

justified fear and curious fascination, but

veteran Laz Ratesic has no doubts about

the importance of his mission. After all,

who’d want to live in a world you can’t

depend on?

It’s not hard to foresee at a nasty

surprise in Laz’s future, and untoward

happenings waiting to be sniffed out.

We’ve been here before with upstanding

cops in a world gone wrong, in Robert

Harris’ Fatherland for a start. But the

central concept of Golden State shifts many

familiar elements and expectations nicely

off-kilter, helping the various twists and

revelations to hit with appropriate impact.

Laz makes an entertaining protagonist

and narrator, fighting on two fronts to

dig into puzzling case while resisting the

temptations of his licence to imagine.

There are influences and borrowings

from other dystopian satires here, but

they’re carried lightly, and Golden State is

a thoroughly fresh experience. The setting

has its disturbing and unsettling elements,

but they’re made arguably more eerie by

contrast with long stretches of sunny nor-

mality (mixed with the physical remains

of a past that’s become unknowable). And

there’s humour here, too, much of it fed

by the myth of California as a stronghold

of the “reality-based community”, along

with the twin obsessions of lie-counting

and fact-checking that

have blossomed in the

Trump era. They’re

grace notes of politi-

cal zing in a clever,

propulsive book with

plenty of other tricks

up its sleeve. l

GOLDEN STATE, by Ben

H Winters (Century, $37)

The setting has its

disturbing elements, but

they’re made arguably

more eerie by contrast

with long stretches of

sunny normality.

Ben Winters: the central concept shifts many
familiar elements nicely off-kilter.

Sadie Jones: a stunning achievement.