***REGION 18: Oceania

If you have not read the information on the master thread regarding the intent of these regional threads, please do this first.

***18. Oceania: Australia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, Micronesia, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, American Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu

Black Mirror by Gail Jones (2002, Australian)
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones (2006, Australian)

Black Mirror is Gail Jones's first novel, which followed two collections of short fiction. Briefly, an elderly and lonely artist in London is telling her biographer her stories before she dies. The biographer and artist grew up in the same outback mining town in Western Australian, albeit in different generations, but that does not mean their stories will not interweave. Another brilliant work by Gail Jones, whose gifts for language enrich the story.

Dreams of Speaking is Jones's fourth book, after Sixty Lights. A young woman, who is a bit emotionally unsettled, is in Paris working on her project, "the poetics of modernity", when on a train trip she meets an older Japanese man: an atomic bomb survivor and poet. This is the story of their friendship. Again, another bloody brilliant work by Jones.

Here is just a little excerpt of my Belletrista piece on these novels, now up on the web.

One looks up from reading a Gail Jones novel and cannot fail but see the world around one somewhat differently, if only briefly—colors are somehow richer, shapes sharper, shadows deeper. We notice things we have not seen before—we have new ways of seeing. This is because there is a poetry, a lyricism, to her work; it's a feast for lovers of language. She tells her characters' stories in beautifully crafted prose, rich in metaphor and simile.

Her books demand an attentive reader, sheltered from distractions, They are not easily read on a noisy subway or in a room full of rambunctious children. They lend themselves to quiet afternoons in the park, cozy evenings curled up in bed, or sheltered corners of someone’s library. Her sensuality of expression makes her stories breathe.

Five stars for both books! (I'm terribly smitten by her)

The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (2005, Australian author).

This exceptional crime novel is also a splendid piece of literary fiction. The writing is superb, the characters credible and well-drawn, the story brilliantly told, and the sense of place inextricable from it all.

Joe Cashin has returned to his hometown to recuperate further from the severe injuries he received in a previous case in the city. He's a broken man, both emotionally and physically, and is only just now starting to really recover. When a local, wealthy landowner is brutally attached in his home and eventually dies, Cash can't help get drawn into the case, sometimes involuntarily. Three young aboriginal boys are quickly suspected and when an attempt to apprehend them by the local police goes terribly wrong and two of the boys die in a gunfight, Cash finds himself in the middle of it all.

And this is just the beginning of a story that becomes more and more deliciously complex as each page is turned. And as the story progresses, we get to know Joe Cashin, a young detective of few words who proves to be far more complex than we might assume at our first introduction. Despite it being set on the somewhat rural coast of Victoria, the dialog has an urban feel to it; a fair bit of Aussie slang and off-color, offensive words. And Temple, like fellow crime writer Reginald Hill, is great with dialog.

The setting, especially the broken down wreck of a building that Cashin lives in, the farmland around it, the old family home he's trying to fix up, and the particular/y dangerous part of the coastline referred to as "The Kettle" - all reflect back to Cashin's struggle to recuperate.

It's a detective story, sure; but it's also a story about Australia, race relations, building trust and, yes, the resilience of the human spirit. THIS should have won the Miles Franklin, not his horribly bleak later novel, Truth.

Three Dog Night by Peter Goldsworthy

Martin has just returned to Australia - with his beloved English wife - after ten years spent in London. One of the first things they do is look up the old friend from medical school whom he has always loved and looked up to. But they find Felix dramatically changed - cynical, confrontational, unwelcoming. Despite this, Martin and Lucy try and reach out to him, and there are signs that they are getting through. But what will they need to sacrifice in the process?

I found this book almost breathtaking. Although the storyline is fairly unlikely, the quality of the writing more than makes up for it, carrying the reader along and making the wildest events seems plausible. One example of this is that although Felix is almost unforgivably rude at their first meeting, the reader can completely understand what it is about him which makes Martin and Lucy persevere. And the events of the story unfold with a sort of tragic inevitability.

Goldsworthy also handles extremely well the variations of tone within the story - the drama of the main story, with, for example, the humour and cringing embarrassment of the social occasions involving the pompous senior doctor.

Sample: Our eyes lock. My heart hammers against the bars of its cage. Standard boy-meets-girl disruptions to physiology, but I have never felt them so powerfully. I feel unstable inside, as if all my organs have shaken loose from their bony shelves and leapt out into the unknown.

Dirt Music by Tim Winton

What do you do when your luck runs out?

Some people let their lives become a bitter search for revenge. Others decide to defy fate: "Russian bloke told me once. Said we all die. But you might as well die with music. Go out big."

Georgie Jutland has lived a chequered but adventurous life, fleeing from her family's bourgeois respectability. She's been as fearless about discarding men as she has about changing continents. But one day, she concludes that her luck has run out. She has lost the tough detachment she needed for her career as a cancer nurse. She has landed, like driftwood, in a feudalistic township in the brutal landscape of Western Australia. And without the self-confidence, her defiant brashness is starting to feel like empty bravado.

The man she's currently with is Jim Buckridge, a widower and the king of his lobster-fishing town. He no longer rules with vindictive violence, as he did when he was younger and as his father did before him. They do not love each other, but they have found an equilibrium, although it gives Georgie less and less of what she needs. Then one day, in a spirit of self-destructiveness, she has a sexual encounter with a local ne'er-do-well, the polar opposite of Jim and a man seen by the townsfolk as coming from a family tainted with bad luck.

This is a fantastic, complex read, about confidence, luck and coming to terms with the past. The landscape is almost a character in the book, described with lyrical beauty but inhospitable to human life. The writing is as vivid, spare and harsh as the landscape, with sentences whose significance you only realise pages later. There is real evil present in the town, but all the main characters are, to some extent, comprehensible and therefore forgiveable (not an easy call given some of the dynamics involved).

Sample: He can't admit it to himself but the sight has jolted him. Four figures suddenly out there across the yard with its perimeter of gutted vehicles. He walks barefoot back to the house with his mind knocked out of neutral.

Five Bells by Gail Jones AUSTRALIA

In this poetic novel, Jones meditates on memory, especially memories of childhood and of loved ones who are dead or far away, through the stories and back stories of four people who converge on Sydney's Circular Quay on a stunningly sunny day. Very little happens in this novel, other than the lyrically expressed thoughts of Ellie, a rural western Australian delighted to now be living in a diverse, vibrant city; James, her lover from their school years together, who is seeking her now to try to cope with a tragedy that has befallen him; Pei Xing, a middle-aged Chinese woman, living in Sydney for 15 years, who was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution; and Catherine, a young Irish woman escaping her traditional family in Dublin and mourning the death of her brother. Sydney itself is another character in the story: the reader gains a vivid impression of its varied neighborhoods and cosmopolitan allure.

Several images and themes wind through the novel -- snow, Doctor Zhivago, translation, migrating birds, and especially water. I am grateful to amandameale for sending me a copy of Kenneth Slessor's iconic poem, "Five Bells," because it helped me think about the very watery nature of this book, as well as its undercurrent of sadness and death. Despite the emphasis on the sparkling, glorious, sunshine, there is the pull of the water, from the trips on the ferry, to a Chinese water clock that emphasizes the continuous nature of time (as opposed to the measured segments indicated by a western clock or watch), to the death by drowning of Magritte's mother, and more. There are also references to art and music, and I have to confess I didn't really know what to make of all of these images and themes, some of which seemed a little forced, as did the (SPOILER ALERT) fact that class of schoolchildren was taken camping on a beach with only one adult supervising. However, overall, I found the novel lyrical and moving.

Bougainville: Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones - 4 stars

I thought this would be a rather cheerful story, like Major Pettigrew or something, but it didn't turn out this way. The story is mainly set on the island of Bougainville in the Pacific where in the nineties a civil war broke out which killed thousands of people. When the war breaks out, all the white people leave the island, leaving behind the natives and one Australian, mister Watts who stays behind with his wife. Mr. Watts decides to reopen the school and teach the children whatever knwoledge he has. When he decides to read Charles Dickens' Great Expectations to his pupils on a daily basis, a whole new world opens to them. However, the book also proves to become a source for disaster.
This truly was a magnificent surprise, heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. Matilda, the teenage-girl through whose eyes we see the story evolve, proves to be a remarkable, genuine, resourceful girl who observes with great sensitivity. This is one of my favourite reads of the year

New Zealand: Wulf by Hamish Clayton (2011)

Hamish Clayton appeared on a session of emerging New Zealand writers at the Auckland Writers Festival back in May and when he’s not writing books he’s busy working on his PhD in English literature.
Wulf created a real stir here when it was published earlier this year, a debut novel that is so accomplished, so different , so so…. good. He uses dreamy poetic language, heaps of imagery to weave an Old English poem, 'Wulf' or 'Wulf and Eadwacer' onto the legendary story of the early 19th century Maori chief, Te Rauparaha. A sailor on board the trader ship Elizabeth, weaves the legend of the merciless Wulf (Te Rauparaha), to his shipmates as they sail down the coastline of New Zealand to Wulf’s lair on Kapiti Island. They want to trade guns for flax but it’s 1831, and Te Rauparaha, known as the Napoleon of the South, is about to commit his most notorious deed, the Banks Peninsula massacre, a deed that involves their ship.
There is so much to be said about Clayton’s use of language in this book, and, though at times the story is lost in the prose, overall the effect is mesmerising.
I’ve read several accomplished reviews of this book, and love this little snippet from a blog review:

The New Zealand described in the novel is all dark greens and blacks––impenetrable, unknowable, and completely foreign to the English––splashed occasionally with the violent red of flame, blood, and pohutakawa. Clayton’s colour palette, like every detail in Wulf, is well thought out and contributes to the general sense of unease and uncertainty. This is not quite the New Zealand we know, but one which is filtered through foreign eyes seeing it for the first time and desperately trying to make sense of the place.

A short Q&A with the author talking about his book here

Just posting so any notes about Papua New Guinean novels will get to me . . . from what I can see, their literary culture is like, none.

Australia: Walkabout by James Vance Marshall



This novel was written by Donald G. Payne by 1959, who used the pseudonym James Vance Marshall, in honor of a man who lived in the outback of Australia and collaborated with Payne in its creation. Walkabout did not receive much attention until 1971, after a movie based on the book, but not faithful to it, was released, to critical acclaim.

Eleven year old Mary and her eight year old brother Peter are residents of Charleston, South Carolina who find themselves stranded after their Adelaide-bound plane has crashed and exploded in the desert of the Northern Territory of Australia. They are only lightly injured, but the captain and navigating officer, the only other people on the plane, were killed. The two struggle to find water or food, until they encounter a naked Aborigine boy, who is performing a walkabout, a ritual essential for manhood in his tribe. The unnamed boy has never seen white people, and is fascinated by them. Peter almost immediately bonds with the Aborigine, despite their lack of a shared language; the older Mary, who is more familiar with the customs of the Jim Crow South, is repulsed by the strange black boy, but she realizes that he and her brother must rely on him in order to survive.

Peter and Mary follow the boy, who takes them under his wing and shows the "amazingly helpless" pair how to search for water, and hunt for and cook food. The boys become playmates and comrades, while the half-child half-adult Mary maintains her distance while harboring jealousy for her brother's attachment to the Aborigine, his lack of reliance upon her, and her desire to join them in their childish games. A simple misunderstanding between Mary and the Aborigine leads to a tragic consequence, which places all of their lives in jeopardy.

I found Walkabout to be a mildly enjoyable though repetitive and heavy-handed story about cultural misunderstandings and similarities, which can best be thought of as a dated young adult novel. The novel shines in its descriptions of the flora and fauna of the Australian outback, but the structure of the story and the portrayal of the three characters was overly simplified and ultimately disappointing.

Australia: The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage (2012)



(Cross-posted from my Club Read.)

Bill Gammage's book was kindly leant to me by a new found friend while I was away in Western Australia. Unfortunately, owing to the many wonderful distractions one encounters during a family reunion visit, I was unable to sit down and actually read the whole body of text from start to finish. I did though manage to read significant portions of it - including the many copious illustrations with their very fully detailed and lengthy explanatory captions. In some ways this book reminded me somewhat of Oliver Rackham's excellent Woodlands published not too long ago in the Collins New Naturalist Library series. Both books' authors hold tremendous regard for the methods and traditions used in managing landscapes by the local peoples (be they indigenous Australians or traditional British woodsmen).

Obviously the two books' similarities end there as in the former case the traditional land management techniques were more or less effectively obliterated by an advancing tide of British colonialism, while in the latter case traditional woodland management was effectively ended in significant scale by the industrialisation of forestry that followed the First World War. The book's title refers to the fact that to newly arrived European eyes the lay of the landscape (as controlled pre-1788 by the local inhabitants) reminded them repeatedly of the vast landed estates that the wealthiest in their own societies back home were so earnestly trying to replicate.

Gammage's fascinating book is concerned with more than traditional woodland uses and management though. The Aborigines' vast understanding of their homelands, accumulated through hundreds if not thousands of years' worth of knowledge passed from one generation to the next, was truly a wondrous thing. They knew every aspect of every facet of flora and fauna in their landscape at a level that very few (if any) learned modern land use professionals would ever approach. Every wild flower, grass type, fungus, tree (and that includes foliage, fruit, bark, root or lignotuber, etc.) or shrub, bird or animal, would be intimately familiar to both men and women of all ages.

Most crucially, the skilled use of fire - whether it be naturally occurring or instigated deliberately - would often determine the cyclical movements and seasonal reactions of various flora or fauna, most notably the right grasses that would attract kangaroos for hunting. Controlling the bushfires would be an integral tool for not only hunting, but also in managing pathways, communications, and woodland regeneration. This knowledge would be all but lost, or rather abandoned through ignorance, by those authorities in power following the transformative year of 1788 and the commencement of systematic colonialisation of Australia. Gammage's book also illustrates wonderfully how various European colonials initially approached the landscape and their interactions with it in terms of surveying, mapping, drawing and painting, writing, and farming.

An extensively illustrated book with a multitude of primary references (together with a very comprehensive bibliography), this is an incredibly valuable and important book - not only for Australians, but for anyone interested in learning about any indigenous people's understanding and management of their own ancestral lands, and the devastating effects that the 'civilisation' of newcomers - be they through farming, forestry, land division, and creeping 'development' into the modern era can have. Books such as this can go some small way in perhaps helping to reverse those effects where those in control of the land have a mind to do so.

Frangipani by Celestine Hitiura Vaite (2004, French Polynesian author)

(review copied over form my 'Around the World' thread)

Frangipani is a genteel look at the sometimes fractious relationship between Materena and her daughter Leilani. The book begins prior to Leilani's birth, and looks at Matarena's family life, especially her relationship between herself, her husband Pito, and her two sons. What emerges is a portrait of a proud woman who is nevertheless kept from fulfilling her potential in life by contemporary Tahiti's attitudes toward women. When she has a daughter, Leilani, Matarena is forced into confronting what these attitudes mean for her daughter's life. Leilani grows into a headstrong young woman who is prepared to defy the traditions handed to her, something that causes an awakening in Matarena.

Although Frangipani purports to deal with some big issues, it is a cosy book. There is no real narrative thrust, instead being broken into a series of 5-10 page chapters, each of which recounts an incident in Matarena's life. The book is bathed in the warm glow of family love, meaning that there was little in the way of jeapordy or drama to the lives depicted. It became like a peek into the diary of someone I had never met and, too be honest, wasn't hugely interested in. The lack of overall narrative and the inconsequential nature of each short chapter meant that the book just sort of washed over me without leaving any dents. Some of the observations of family life were very good, and the ending is uplifting without being too mawkish, but this is likely to be the only part of the 'Mahi trilogy' that I will be dipping into.

-->9 Nickelini:
Nickelini, I have a novel by a Papuan writer, which I promise I will try to get round to sooner rather than later. However, I have just started Gravity's Rainbow, so may be reading nothing else for some time....

NEW ZEALAND

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

  

'There's no charity in a gold town. If it looks like charity, look again.'

This astonishing historical novel opens in Hokitika, New Zealand in 1866, a gold mining town along the West Coast of the South Island. Founded two years previously, Hokitika is in the midst of a population boom, as prospectors, hoteliers and other businessmen have flocked there after news of its vast riches and promise of easy wealth has reached people living within and outside of New Zealand. One of those men is Walter Moody, a young Englishman who is trained in law but seeks gold to provide him with material comfort and the start of a new life. He arrives in town after a harrowing and emotionally distressing voyage at sea, and after he checks in at a local hotel he proceeds to its smoking room, where he hopes to unwind with a pipe and a stiff drink. Upon his arrival he notices that 12 men are already there, who appear to be from different backgrounds but also seem to have gathered in secret for a particular reason. The atmosphere in the room is tense and troubled upon his entry, but in his agitated state Moody doesn't sense that he has disturbed them. He is approached by one of the men, while the others appear to direct their attention toward their conversation, and after slowly gaining their confidence the men begin to share their intertwined stories with Moody, and the reason for their confidential meeting.

The story is centered around several mysterious and apparently interconnected occurrences that took place two weeks previously on a single night, including the death of a hermit in a shack overlooking town, the disappearance of a young man who has struck it rich in a gold mine, and the apparent near suicide of the town's most alluring prostitute. Every man in the room claims to be innocent of any direct involvement, yet they all appear to share some responsibility in the events that led up to these crimes, and each one fears that he may be accused and held accountable.

The reader learns more about these 12 men, Moody, and several other key players, as the story takes on a more defined shape. However, just as it seems to become more clear new twists arise and relationships emerge between previously unconnected characters, which made the tale more compelling and delightfully puzzling. I exclaimed out loud numerous times at various points ("Wait, what?" "Whoa!", etc.), and except for one relatively dead spot near the novel's midway point I was captivated from the first page to the last.

No review could adequately convey the intricacy and complexity of this novel, along with its numerous subplots and themes, and Catton's ability to maintain its momentum through 832 pages was akin to a performer riding a fast moving rollercoaster while juggling various objects of different sizes for hours on end. My biggest critique is its ending, which felt rushed and overly tidy, and despite its length I would have preferred for it to have been extended by another 50-100 pages.

The Luminaries is a masterful literary symphony, and a work of historical fiction that compares favorably with similarly superb novels such as The Children's Book, The Stranger's Child and The Glass Room. There are few very books of this size that I would love to start reading again immediately after finishing it, but this is one of them, and young Ms Catton is to commended for a brilliant novel that should be a strong contender for this year's Booker Prize.

Tahiti & French Polynesia

GlebtheDancer already reviewed this novel (see #12). I agree with those comments, except I really liked the book.

Frangipani, Celestine Hitiura Vaite, 2004


Cover comments: Painting by Shelagh Armstrong. I adore this cover--the colours are gorgeous and the style really says "Polynesia". I also love the title, as frangipani (aka plumeria) are my favourite tropical flowers



Comments: Frangipani follows the life of a Tahitian woman, Materena, from her days as a young mother through to the years when her three children leave home, although the focus is on the tumultuous time when her daughter Leilani is a teenager. The novel often looks at Materena's fairly traditional Tahitian approach to life versus Leilani's modern and progressive outlook. Frangipani also highlights the strong bonds of the vast network of aunties, cousins, and grandmothers that Leilani and Materena can rely on for support.

There is little plot to this novel--it's told in vignettes that hop forward in chronological order. The third person narrator has a robust voice full of traditional Tahitian folk wisdom and island patois (both Tahitian and French), and this gave Frangipani a unique charm. I enjoyed spending time with these characters and getting a glimpse of Tahitian culture.

Frangipani was nominated for the Orange Prize.

Rating: 4.5 stars. I liked this better than other LTers, although I do find more positive comments out there in the greater Internet. I will definitely track down her other books.

Why I Read This Now: I bought this a few years ago and tucked it away for any potential tropical vacations in my future. When a trip to Maui suddenly came up, this was the first thing I packed. It was the perfect book to read on a Hawaiian vacation.

Recommended for: There aren't a lot of Tahitian authors around, so if you're interested in reading globally, here's your chance.

I read Iep jāltok : poems from a Marshallese daughter by Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner which is the first full volume of poetry published by a Marshall Islands author. One of the poems namechecks fellow poet Emelihter Kihleng from Pohnpeia in the Federated States of Micronesia, who was the first Micronesian poet to publish a full volume.

These poems are creative with language in an variety of thoughtfully structured forms, from concrete to free verse. They speak movingly about traditional Marshallese culture, family history, the fallout from U.S. nuclear bombing, emigration, racism, and climate change. All these experiences, including the most painful and difficult, are communicated with impressive clarity in the poet's chosen forms.

The banality of a car crash transformed into art (extract):

In the hospital a male nurse
strung stitches
through the blooming wounds in my wrists
the only remains
of the passenger window

His blue aloha shirt
reminded me of home
I wanted to tell him I wasn't from here
I wanted to tell him I missed my mom
I wanted to tell him I was sacred
of dying in someone else's country

As whimpers escaped from my lips
he yanked the black thread just
a little
tighter
sealing my voice into my wrists

-->Nickelini: You may want to look for Russell Soaba's Maiba. He's a Papuan writer; it's a small book. Nothing revelatory but a worthwhile read.

>17 Gypsy_Boy:
Thanks!

>15 Nickelini: I've been wanting to read Island of Shattered Dreams forever as it was the only text I'd run across by a Tahitian writer but I've never found a copy that wasn't exorbitantly priced. Thanks for letting me know about Frangipani. Surprisingly, my library has a copy!

>17 Gypsy_Boy: Thanks for the Soaba too. His books seem hard to find but I'll keep an eye out.

Legends of Micronesia (Book Two) –Eve Grey - 1951

Online description: ”Originally published in 1951 by the Department of Education of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, for use in local schools. Among several versions of some legends, preference was given to forms known to young people of the day. Since there are different languages and customs in Micronesia, the legends have been checked for local detail and spelling with experts in each location.”

According to Wikipedia, the area formerly called Micronesia has six sovereign nations as well as islands claimed by other nations. This book has legends from three of the sovereigns: Republic of Palau, The Federated States of Micronesia, and Republic of the Marshall Islands. There are also legends from other areas of the islands and the islands more generally as a whole.

It’s a nice mix of legends –there are themes that must be common across all cultures such as wicked stepmothers, gods and competitive brothers. There are also legends that explain geological oddities on the various islands, and which, according to the introduction could help inhabitants identify particular islands as they navigated the area. There are also legends that are unique to the seas, the islands and their animal life, especially the frigate bird.

I particularly liked the first legend – where the first map of the islands was a fishing net with shells inserted for the atolls.