Book Review: That Bastard Hamish Clayton & His Genius: The Pale North.

The publisher’s blurb for Hamish Clayton’s novel, The Pale North reads:

1998, Wellington. A series of catastrophic earthquakes has left the city destroyed. Returning to the ruin from London, a New Zealand writer explores the devastation, compelled to find out for himself what has become of the city he left years ago. As he drifts through the desolate streets, home now to the shell-shocked and dispossessed, he finds among the survivors a woman and a child. And although they are haunted, hostile and broken, the strangers feel eerily familiar to him: as if they promise the answers to the mysteries he once swore to leave behind.

A layered meditation on love, history, creativity and loss, The Pale North is an audacious and disarming novel, a forensic journey into one writer's short but singularly brilliant body of work.

At the end of my review of Greg McGee’s The Antipodeans, like a dumb, impetuous clever dick prick, I wrote this on reading merely 17% of Hamish Clayton’s second novel (ebook format) The Pale North.

17% into The Pale North and the words in my mind so far are: over-worked and arty sentimentality. Our individual reactions to a worthy work of art are subjective: some works will transect with our experiences and aesthetics and speak to us, some won’t. There’s a lot of book to read yet, however, as I crustify into my middle age years, I like a starker prose than this, with harder edges.

Thankfully I redeemed myself (a bit) at 25% by writing an addendum, formatting it in bold trying to recover my soul:

25% into The Pale North, I retract the above. I'm getting it now, the words occupying my mind have changed to 'aberrant; beguiling; singular talent, and treat'. Also, sentimentality is the point; Mr Clayton has cracked through the crust. Indeed, beginning to view this novel as a stunner. Looks like Wulf remains on the reading list.

Noting the review of art is all about me – it has to be because I’m the point and then the filter - can I excuse my rashness into that first statement? It's interesting Clayton was prescient to the response of the premature half-wit reviewer:

… But then he asked me what I’d remembered of that first exhibition [snip]. I described what I’d seen as clearly as I could remember, but Colin only narrowed his eyes as he listened, focusing on some far-off but internal horizon, scanning for meaning and finding my account wanting on some score or other. He listened in silence as I revered what I could recall of those photographs: their calm, arcane order, the sombre grace of their elegy. He seemed unmoved but then sighed and turned away.

I asked him what I’d missed and he laughed quietly and said, ‘The whole point.’

I’d been in a ruthless stage of editing my own script, trying to pare it down to concise sophistication, and was initially immune to Clayton’s swirling ordinary words and the humanity which lives too easily (damn it) in them. Mea culpa.

I don’t know if what I write is any good – see, me again. After realising I couldn’t write a short story – either I didn’t like the form enough, or perhaps I was just useless at it - I never submitted the first novel I wrote – it’s awful, so never will – and am at sea on the one being rendered down; the only solid fact being I have no judgement on assessing my own work (none at all). And so – Murphy’s law - at this tenuous time, crashing from his celestial orbit above my fragile confidence too easily tipped into paralysing self-doubt (please forgive me Mike Hosking) comes Hamish ruddy Clayton and his bloody masterpiece that creeps up on you, The Pale North. Clayton is a dangerous man because he makes me want to stop reading. He makes me want to stop reading, because he is so good he makes me think I must stop writing for all is hopeless in the face of his words … but then what would I have left without writing?

Wine. Yes. But wine alone is not enough, certainly not the next morning. Please realise Mrs H and I live in a house, three in fact (one munted thank you, no fuck you, EQC – [from the Big One out of Christchurch]), wearing our happy domesticity and well-worn love (and better, friendship) like a glove over top of the world I otherwise live in words, so that doesn’t count, I don’t think.

If I could read Clayton’s human stories, imagery and busted Wellington without an ego, and a need, I reckon the overwhelming residue would be the word warmth from a finely honed artistry and a love of art, despite he references the winds from Antarctica in The Pale North too much – three times by 44% in (there, see, I can still be critical).

Damn that man. Utter bastard. I say beguiling, the publisher says disarming … you should read him; two novels so far, Wulf, followed by The Pale North, though I can only recommend the second (highly), I’ve not read the first, yet.

Book Review: Greg McGee’s The Antipodeans – Master Class in Story Telling, But Niggles … (Also Clayton's The Pale North). #NZBooks

[Photo Credit: Upstart Press.]

I don't review a book unless I enjoyed it, so noting this short post barely counts as a review, again - think of it as a note in the margin -  I’m giving Greg McGee’s The Antipodeans a solid eight out of ten: it’s a great read, content summed up well enough by Graham Beattie on his Bookman Beattie blog:

Spanning three generations of New Zealand and Italian families it is vast in its scope and richly peopled with characters of depth & complexity starting with an aging, ailing New Zealand lawyer who returns to Venice in 2014, with his adult daughter to trace his father's Italian Word War 2 friends. The novel then skilfully moves back and forth between 1943-45, 1976 and 2014.

A big powerful, emotional novel, both love story and war story, that will stay with me for a very long time. Stunning. My congratulations to the author on his very fine achievement.

That said for me The Antipodeans was a book of two halves; an apt metaphor given rugby is a central motif. I’m not a huge sports buff, but it’s nice to read the national game in ‘our’ literature, and for those versed in McGee, he’s the obvious choice to bring rugby from the theatre and into novel form. Plus I’ve written one of our (NZ lit) weaknesses can be a literature not set where we live, so a shrewd move (I hope) for sales. Add to this I loved reading a story playing out partly in Oamaru and the surrounds in which I literally live – (don’t panic, plenty of North Island locales as well).

But I think McGee's relative late-coming to the novel, having cut his writing teeth as a playwright, meant the first half held several irritations for me expunged only in the second half by an enjoyable immersion into his storytelling, and as the prose got better, tighter, once he wrote himself in.  I tweeted this about 35% (Kindlespeak) into the book (it's Twitter, excuse the typo):

#NZBooks Perplexed by MeGee's *The Antipodeans'. Good story-telling, but loose prose & emotionally too stock. Needs tighter edit (I reckon).

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) August 8, 2015

By irritations I found the opening romancing between Clare and Renzo was too obvious and too told (that it was going to happen, and the tropes leading to it), with the emotions tending at times toward stock (as in stock scenarios, not clichéd language); although by the end of the novel the – avoiding spoilers - relationship was satisfactorily complex, if not as good as the rendering of the war time relationships on which the novel revolves. A different matter was that loose prose which drew my attention to the words on the page and away from the story. There’s a few too many adjectives that are trying too hard early on, and over-use of that male peculiarity for those adjectival –lys. For example:

The boat motored straight at them, slowing slightly, but not enough, she thought, instinctively, looking for the wharf they would surely disembark. Suddenly they were among old stones …

Or:

… she’d placed the cup on the breakfast bar in the kitchen and stood in front of him, implicitly challenging him to get on with it …

I realise incredibly picky on my behalf – unfair because I’m in a ruthless edit phase on a project of my own - also subjective (surely), especially when I’m unapologetic on my use of long, complex sentences, (for which I in turn was scoffed by that literary, arrogant & attention deficit end of the Twitteratti – [you bet all prose is political]); but it was enough, in this McGee, and happened enough, to irritate and have me looking at the physical page, not falling into the story between the words from inception as I want to.

And there were some clangers that shouldn’t have got past publisher, Upstart Press:

… and tried to burrow his way back home through the rock. Until mercifully he’d been hit by a piece of shell, it must have been.

And:

… ‘I want to you to know that I’ve gotten help, that I’m clean.’

Almost as if McGee was climbing into the work of writing, starting out a little unpractised, but achieving a tighter prose by the end. The book lacking only a single tighter edit, and rigorous proofing; (I want to continue the opening metaphor by suggesting a coach’s eye from Steve Hansen required, but if that man were to edit as sloppily as his dreadful pronunciation, I reckon we can kick that notion to touch). [Edit: I've just read McGee spent 15 years working on this novel ... I don't think that changes any of my comments; rather, it puts them in the context of a longer time frame.]

So I do protest too much: McGee’s strength is story-telling, and once the narrative tension is wound up through the many arcs The Antipodeans is a consuming tale, which took me over historical ground in wartime Italy, and 1950s New Zealand, I was not familiar with. On a radio interview promoting his book, McGee spoke of the life of a professional writer, during every project having a mind on the next to provide an income: he’s a writer I want to see stay in business, so if you like a saga told well, buy The Antipodeans.

Next onto the reading desk I had planned for Anna Smaill’s The Chimes, but I’m not in the frame of mind for that (yet), plus am holding out on the delights of Rachel Barrowman’s Gee biography until I haven’t got work matters weighing me down – with the collapse of the dairy payout that may not be until April. So I’ve loaded Hamish Clayton’s The Pale North onto my Kindle; from the reviews, excited (noting I didn’t read Clayton’s Wulf, so this is my first reading of him – I love that coming to an author for the first time).

And to close on some good news, my literary manifesto/disquisition on our contemporary literature continues to climb in reads, although if 18,000 words is not within your attention span, you might want to start at the fluff piece literary manifesto II.

Footnote - The Pale North:

Damn. 17% into The Pale North and the words in my mind so far are: over-worked and arty sentimentality. Our individual reactions to a worthy work of art are subjective: some works will transect with our experiences and aesthetics and speak to us, some won’t. There’s a lot of book to read yet, however, as I crustify into my middle age years, I like a starker prose than this, with harder edges.

No:

25% into The Pale North, I retract the above. I'm getting it now, the words occupying my mind have changed to 'aberrant; beguiling; singular talent, and treat'. Also, sentimentality is the point; Mr Clayton has cracked through the crust. Indeed, beginning to view this novel as a stunner. Looks like Wulf remains on the reading list.

Full retraction and review of The Pale North.

Book Review: Wake, by Elizabeth Knox.

Confession: this is not a book review. Writing a review requires more time and concentration than I can currently muster with my work commitments, and a review done awfully is irresponsible. But Wake gave me joy over the Christmas to New Year break, and fortunately I can sum up why by simply quoting a single, small extract that encapsulates everything I loved about the book: its overarching concept, skilful storytelling, characters, and even - despite its subject matter - humour. (I get the feeling in the opening scenes the author was having some deal of fun in the writing.)

You can easily enough Google a full synopsis of Wake, so by way of context, I only need explain how after a mass hysteria has overtaken the town of Kahukura, and with it the brutal death of most its inhabitants, the surviving fourteen characters of Wake are trapped from the outside world by a mysterious no-go zone. In the section I've chosen below, Dan is talking to fellow survivor, policewoman Theresa, about why the authorities outside the zone won’t immediately respond to their attempt at communication by Morse code, after the survivors have finally gained news of the outside world via messages in plastic milk bottles that have drifted to them through the no-go. For my (over 70%) US readership, note the Wahine disaster referred to is the New Zealand maritime disaster on 10 April, 1968, in which the ferry Wahine sank during a storm with the loss of fifty one lives, as would-be rescuers watched helplessly from the shore.

As with all book recommendations appearing on my blog, I apologise to the author for appearing on my blog. That said, my readers will understand an important truth, or two, being covered so ably here.

[Dan’s] back was to the light and Theresa couldn’t read his face. He said, ‘Look, it’s good that you’re so staunch. And I know that you, more than anyone else here, can imagine how the authorities are going to go about handling something like this. But don’t you think they’re being extra harsh?’

He took a deep breath and went on. ‘Either things don’t work the way I think they do, or – well, like, in the Wahine disaster, they always talk about how people broke the police cordon to jump into the waves and haul the lifeboats out of the surf at Eastbourne beach. Ordinary people, with stacks of blankets, and thermoses full of soup. Everyone soaking wet and cold, and doing their best. Wahine wasn’t that long ago. We aren’t that different. New Zealand isn’t that different. How come this disaster has been taken out of the hands of the ordinary people who just turn up to help?’

‘There are the bottles.’

‘That’s mostly Oscar’s mum and dad and some bloke who can’t bear to think we don’t know what bloggers are saying about us.’

As a blogger, I’m laughing out loud – largely at my own expense – typing out that final sentence. Only the best fiction explains how we live as succinctly as this. And don't be fooled by a plot synopsis either: there's a lot of serious content going on in this novel, particularly regarding the tough and oftentimes cruel decisions we have to make in so many spheres of living; from the moral judgements, and trade-offs, required in conservation, to the heart of it - the responsibility of authority, and what justifies the sacrifice of an innocent individual human life. I'm philosophically uncomfortable with where Knox leads me, but then, that in itself is the importance of reading and literature: to get you to that point of difference, or not, understanding how you got there, and who you are because of it.

But this isn't a review, and I don't want to risk spoilers. 

In summary, as with all of Knox’s work, Wake is exceptional storytelling delivered through enduring characters: a very good read.  And the novel is yet further proof of the exceptional range that Knox is capable of from my favourite of her works, the ‘realist’ Glamour and the Sea, to the glorious fallen angel Xas of The Vintner’s Luck, whom I think is one of the best realised characters in New Zealand literature, and strangely the most human, while not forgetting also that novel’s equally worthy follow-up, The Angel’s Cut. Especially when Knox's young adult fiction is considered alongside these adult offerings - and Wake is adult fiction - I can’t think of another New Zealand writer who can so deftly change their spots.


Footnote:

Wake comes from the stable of Victoria University Press which had a stunning 2013: Wake, Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries (2013 Man Booker winner and a fine book), plus a fascinating novel for a New Zealand publishing house, John Sinclair's The Phoenix Song; a novel which starts in Mao's revolutionary China, and ends in New Zealand. I read it earlier this year when distracted by too much of life and earning an income, so hope to read again in order I can review at a future date. But for those who enjoy thinking about political content, you need to put The Phoenix Song on your list.

Related Posts:

New Zealand Literary Rambles I

Literary Rambles II - CK Stead, Diana Neutze, Rachel Joyce.

LiteraryShambles III - Eleanor Catton.

Book Review: Jennie Erdal – The Missing Shade of Blue. Deconstructing Hume.

Books in Passing: Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin. The snitch, surveillance society.

Reading by Capitalism: Kindle Versus the Femme Fatale iPad.