Life’s a beach
Humour abounds in a down-to-earth salute to small-town New Zealand.
Gabriel’s Bay is a charmer of a town, stitched together from fellow Listener reviewer Catherine Robertson’s favourite scraps of Godzone. There’s bush, a beach and a food caravan serving up crayfish rolls and paua. A fat dog potters around. The GP is a kindly old stick who should have retired way back. His hard-case receptionist is also the town bus driver and is married to the guy who runs the food caravan. The local council is stacked with busybodies and vendettas. The lucky kids have enough to eat and parents who turn up when they say they will. The unlucky ones – well, they’ve got Sidney, softie and mother-hen extraordinaire.
Into all this waltzes Kerry-from-England, an enthusiastic, energetic sort who has just bailed on his wedding. He’s trying to find himself. Trying to stop being, as he puts it, a twat.
The book – Robertson’s fifth, after four bestsellers – is shot through with low-key Kiwi humour. The dialogue, in particular, is lickety-split and smart-arsed. These people talk the way real people talk.
Here’s the hulking bloke who runs the food caravan offering newcomer Kerry a bite to eat:
“Bit of crayfish?”
“What’s that I smell cooking?” “Slow-cooked pork. Not ready. Another two hours.”
“Anything else?”
The giant gave him a look. “Bit of crayfish?”
Robertson can paint a picture, too: an elderly gardener wears “a ribbed jumper apparently knitted from old porridge”; hair sprouts from his nose and ears “as frilled and tightly whorled as ornamental kale”.
Previous books have hinged on women’s experiences. Here, Robertson gives a lot of space to men, particularly to male friendship and that strange time of life when high-school mates peel off onto different paths. It’s sensitively done, with not a skerrick of schmaltz or cliché. Male readers, I think, will feel seen and understood.
And the story? It’s not about Kerry, not really, although it’s billed that way on the cover. This is a book about community, and small towns, and New Zealand. It’s about growing up and growing old; about the grinding stress of never having enough money; about the way friendships and relationships change and sometimes simply fall apart. It is not, repeat not, women’s fiction or chick lit or – as the cover would have it – merely a “lively, heart-warming” beach read.
Robertson recently wrote a very funny, scathing essay making the point that women who write humorously about relationships are invariably consigned to the chick-lit corner. Meanwhile, “if you’re a man who writes humorously about relationships, you are Nick Hornby and you get a lot of respect. I’ve spent time with Nick and he’s lovely, but you know, f--- him.”
Indeed. My advice? Do as Robertson suggests: ignore the cover – it’s the words that matter.
It is not women’s fiction or chick lit or – as the cover would have it – merely a “lively, heart-warming” beach read.