Nicky Pellegrino - Herald on Sunday
By Sue Orr (Penguin Random House)
Aucklander Sue Orr is a writer of taut, terrific short stories and her first novel has grown out of one that appeared in her debut collection. It's a Kiwi-as tale set mostly in a rural farming community in the early 70s. It opens in 2014 as farmer's daughter Nicola Walker drives back to her childhood home for a funeral. On the trip she is haunted by memories of the past and a guilty secret she has carried into adulthood. She recalls the winter a new sharemilker arrived on her family's farm with his intriguing, headstrong, glamorous daughter Gabrielle. Gabrielle is trouble; that's what all the local parents say.
As the two become friends Nickie finds herself for the first time questioning the way things have always been. Gabrielle leads, and she follows, and they fall into an adult world whose subtleties they don't understand. Orr's forte is careful, elegant prose and in The Party Line she shines light on the toughness of rural life, the claustrophobia of small-towns and the confusion of being a teenager. This is strikingly good New Zealand storytelling.
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