Landscape with Solitary Figure
by Shonagh Koea
Published by Random House NZ (Vintage)
'Landscape
with Solitary Figure' is a striking title for a novel and it works really
well. Shonagh Koea has a unique voice. In this novel, there are two voices, the protagonist speaking directly to the
reader and then an authorial third person voice who gives another version of
the same event, or re-caps what is happening. It's quite a tricky thing to do,
but Koea is very good at this. She lovingly paints small town New Zealand, the
gardens, the houses, the intricate details of relationships, especially those
between men and women.
Ellis
Leigh, the protagonist is indeed a solitary figure. She has been damaged and this is her
story. It's not an action-packed tale,
it is meditative, introspective, careful and fascinating, as well as dark and
kind of dangerous.
The novel opens tantalisingly
with this:
'I
once knew someone who said you could look out a window and see a story. So I'm
looking out one of my windows and I want a story.'
Ellis
we learn is widowed, and has an adult son Haakon who lives in London. She is recalling the events that led her to
sell her much grander home in another town and move to her present modest
bungalow. There's a man whom we don't
really get to know until right near the end, but his presence and influence
pervades the entire story. The story
loops back and forward over time and begins with speculation about guests that
might or might not have come to share a glass of wine in the garden in her new
bungalow. The chapters are short and
beautifully delineated with black and white horticultural images and the cover
is stunning with what I think is a pink clivia with a single bud unfolding. The book is a rather lovely artefact, in
itself, a hold-in-one-hand-size, flap covers and spacious formatting.
The
shift from first person narrator to third person happens suddenly and
seamlessly early on in chapter five, so it's not expected but it's not
disconcerting. Already the writing has an intimacy and looping back on time
that allows this new dimension. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of
small town New Zealand, the gradual shifts in boundaries from residential to
light industrial, the subtle changes that creep up, the way the landscape
shifts, and too how this changes the sort of people who move in and out of
town.
There's
a delicious description of a birthday party at a public park which reminded me
of Anne Enright's skewering of people at a social event in her novel 'The Forgotten Waltz'. Ellis, the protagonist, describes people
arriving at the party thus: 'the
population of the discarded, the unwanted, the truly bereaved and actually ill,
roamed gently over the turf of the splendid venue'... and... 'the serial
womaniser, whose ex-wife had come to the party in a lavender trouser suit, was
lounging boyishly in his long-limbed way against a tree...' and reminiscing,
she speaks of those with secure lives... 'The couples themselves would enter
houses in the higher range of value, and they would sit on down-filled sofas of
burgeoning superiority while they discussed the party, because secure couples
do that.'
Koea's
writing has a very recognisable and distinctive tone. It is hard to compare with other writers,
although she does remind me at times of Janet Frame when she is writing as the outsider looking in and observing small
town society. I recall hearing the
writer reading from her memoirs 'The
Kindness of Strangers' on Radio New Zealand and aspects of this novel held the
same mesmerising slightly-askew view of the world.
This
book needs your full and graceful attention and I recommend, a sunny afternoon,
or evening by the fire, far from distractions. I had to wind myself down just a
little to relax into it. It isn't plot
driven but there's a sense of the sinister that stays with the reader right to
the end.
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