The Peastick Girl by Susan Hancock

Published by Black Pepper, Melbourne, Australia - RRP $39.99

Reviewed by Maggie Rainey-Smith

This is an intriguing book by an ex-pat Kiwi writer published by an independent Australian Press and categorised as Feminist Fiction. Initially I was very engaged with the characters and most especially the evocative and atmospheric writing about my favourite city Wellington.   This was enough of a hook and there was love and mystery and drama, and so I settled in.   At times I thought of Robin Hyde, as the characters all had a very marked interiority and the natural world was constantly interwoven into the narrative.  I was very drawn to this, but whenever I felt that I was getting closer to the unravelling of the plot, the story veered into odd segues, including a number of literary allusions (The Duchess of Malfi for one).  I had to Google the Duchess of Malfi to try and get a plot summary to see how this aligned with what I was reading.   I could not always fathom the literary references; asking myself were they necessary; was I missing something?     

               The main character, Teresa has returned from Australia emotionally unstable and having what appears to be a complete breakdown.   She is reconnecting with her sisters, Mollie and Cass and there is a deceased (possibly murdered) mother in the background along with Hugo (the love interest) and an ex Russian lover (I think, because at times I wasn’t sure he was real).  Then there is Rangi a Maori feminist and friend of the family who represents the New Zealand ‘Colonial’ story and part of Teresa’s struggle with her identity.   Quite exciting really and yet the plot never really takes off in the way that you expect and the novel is more about the breakdown and deconstruction of Teresa and what are deemed to be her various selves. I liked Mollie and her husband Gil who live up on the Kapiti Coast with their two children and Mollie now expecting another baby.   She is an interesting foil for her sisters Teresa and Cass, and I would have enjoyed a more conventional domestic saga to be quite honest and that may make me a shallow reader.  

               But there is some very beautiful writing, with strong images and indeed the wild Wellington elements feature as an extra character and I did enjoy this aspect.   I was constantly trying to locate everything exactly – where on the hills the houses were with the various views of the harbour and the Carillion and the Brooklyn Hill and sometimes I felt very much in the picture and other times I was as lost as Teresa seemed to be.    

               There are some humorous observations about people but not always entirely in context.     There is some authorial intervention that annoyed me.  An example early on when a character speaks of ‘getting a grip’ and this is followed in brackets with (These are the two great New Zealand exhortations Go for it and Get a grip).  As if the author didn’t trust the reader somehow. 

               In conclusion, I started off with a great deal of enthusiasm because of the characters, the location and the possibility of the unravelling of a fairly obvious mystery, the mother’s death, and therefore Teresa’s dark secret and those of her sisters.  Along the way I felt I was drowning in descriptions, beautiful as some of them were, and faltering in my commitment to the characters. I felt the book could have done with a really good edit – that less is more.

                I note that Susan Hancock has won awards for her short stories, including the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Award 1994 and shortlisted for the 1996 Steele Rudd Award.  She is a New Zealand writer who the book says ‘has spent most of her working life in Australia’ and who won a scholarship to Oxford University.  She has also lectured in English Literature at La Trobe University.   It says that “in 1986, under the pressure of exile, she began writing fiction.’   I’d be most interested to hear from anyone else who has read this novel.  I cannot find any other reviews.   I note that Fia Clendinnen, Australian Book Review is quoted on the back cover as saying “a lyrical, understated intensity of emotion that is almost unbearable to read’.   Publicity for the book says “A sharply focused and often humorous account of New Zealand life – a world of men, Rugby, feminists who feel they’ve lost their way, Russian émigrés and powerful but disaffected Maori women – The Peastick Girl is a complex tragic-comedy of manners.”   

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