‘The Open World’ by Stephanie Johnson

Published by Vintage, Random House New Zealand

RRP: $37.99

Reviewed by Maggie Rainey-Smith

This is an ambitious novel, reimagining the life of the great great grandmother of the author.   It is not for the lazy reader who doesn’t want to have to work a little bit for rewards.    I took a wee while to settle into the story, to adjust to the tone and the quite dense detail used to evoke period and character.   But, I was deeply fascinated too and became engrossed in the life of Elizabeth Smith told partly in a series of laudanum-filled reminisces by the protagonist herself, now in London nearing the end of her life and imagining what she would say if she wrote a memoir.  

               In the afterword, the author tells us “True history was carefully hidden by Elizabeth herself and may never be written.”    Thus, the author sets out to re-imagine a history for her.   At times I wondered if the author may have tripped up (but only a little) on her attachment to the authentic history of the other characters who are part of the story.  It’s the difficult balance I guess as to how to evoke and replicate history, the weight, the yoke of it.  I sometimes wanted just more of Elizabeth and her story and less distractions because she is such an interesting character.    But these are important Colonial characters and they include Bishop Selwyn and his wife Sarah, Mary Ann Martin (wife of Judge Martin) and Elizabeth’s two sons, Henry and Ish.    I learnt a lot.   This can’t be bad.  I don’t know much about early New Zealand Colonial history.

                   The relationship between Elizabeth and Mary Ann is somewhat central to the whole story and indeed Mary Ann Martin has written her own personal account of this period ‘Our Maoris’ by Lady Martin 1884.    Elizabeth Horlock Smith worked with Lady Martin running a hospital for the natives at Taurarua, (Judges Bay, Auckland).  In the novel, Elizabeth is the robust hard-working nurse to the natives and Lady Martin more the invalid benefactor who oversees the work.   I sense the motivation of the author to set straight the record on behalf of her great, great, grandmother who was known by the local Maori as Mata Te Mete. I would have liked more of her life and work at the hospital but it is only one small but very interesting part of the overall story, which includes a very moving love affair with a local Maori.

                 One of the interesting themes is the childless marriage of Mary Ann Martin to her beloved Judge Martin which the author imagines as unconsummated.   There is a fascinating moment early on en route to New Zealand, Elizabeth travelling as companion to Mary Ann sailing on the ship ‘Tomatin’ when they are temporarily stranded in Australia.  Mary Ann is distraught at the lengthy separation from her husband and becomes hysterical.    The cure for hysteria “the very latest from Europe” is a delightful detail that will fascinate and amuse many, if like me, they have never heard of it.   

               At heart, this novel is about the heart.   Elizabeth is looking back at the men she has loved, husbands and sons, and too the reappearing through a laudanum haze, of her deceased daughter.   It is the story of huge courage and fortitude required of people leaving England to take up life in the Colonies, and yet too, the hope with which they fled their equally tough and class-ridden lives in England.   It isn’t chronological and it can be at times confusing, because Elizabeth is obscuring her own past, reinventing herself and others participate in perhaps colouring and clouding this history.    

               The Reverend William Cotton is a close friend to Elizabeth, both in New Zealand and when she returns to England.  He is a comical and too, a sad true character, whom the author suggests in the afterword, may well have suffered from what we now know as bi-polar episodes.   Evidently, when he returned to England, he was dubbed the “lunatic priest’ of Frodsham.   But he is a great foil for Elizabeth’s story, as he is both slightly mad and also very knowing and close to both Elizabeth and to Mary Ann.    This assists with the unravelling of the story through conversations that with someone saner might not have been appropriate.

               The relationship between Elizabeth and Bishop Selwyn and his wife, accentuates the differences between the old and the new world.   In New Zealand they are considered friends, but on their return to England, their status means this is no longer able to be acknowledged in such a public manner.  

               I must say, that Stephanie Johnson has re-imagined an intensely colourful, pulsating, lively, smelly, detailed London and evoked a very atmospheric Colonial New Zealand.   Too, she has given great thought to her characters, their health, their physicality, down to teeth hurting when they eat certain foods, lovely details, actually quite achingly real details about how it was to be alive in such a time – the need for the laudanum to take the edges of the harsh existence – both the cruel facts of class in England, and the isolation of the Colonial life.   Buxton the spa town is contrasted evocatively with the thermal pools of Rotorua, the soothing solitude that Elizabeth experiences here, versus the very public, frantically crowded and fashionable Buxton spa.   Sometimes the detail in the writing delights and sometimes it is a distraction, almost a wilful obfuscation.

               I imagine this will be a highly successful book club sort of book.  It is likely to generate good discussion.  Those who love the historical detail will revel in it and those who are sometimes annoyed by what seem like unnecessary segues (like me) will find fault while still loving the learning generated from this.  Also, the life of Elizabeth is not fully unravelled and so if your book club is anything like my No.1 book club, you will find yourselves inventing scenarios, adding to the fiction, arguing about it, reinventing history, as has the author. 

Footnote:

Maggie Rainey-Smith (right) is a Wellington novelist/poet/bookseller and regular guest reviewer on Beattie's Book Blog. She is also Chair of the Wellington branch of the NZ Society of Authors.    

www.maggieraineysmith.com