Serious issues are given a light touch

What You Wish For by Catherine Robertson, Black Swan, $38. Reviewed by Felicity Price.

Ahandsome young Indian GP arrives to take over a small seaside town practice where it seems his traditional formality and un-Kiwi ways will never fit in. An androgynously beautiful but decidedly straight young Ma¯ ori boy with long blond hair fights social media trolls and protesters outside his home. An earth mother of two boys who has been deeply hurt before takes too long to tell her man she is pregnant. A young, politically passionate woman causes untold harm on social media while in thrall to a most unpleasant, dreadlocked eco-terrorist. A vital older woman and her bookish husband take on a difficult foster child. A group of travellers set up long-term camp beside a river belonging to a struggling farmer.

These are just some of the numerous twisting stories entwined in Catherine Robertson’s hilarious, compelling novel What You Wish For –a sequel (yet perfectly standalone) to Gabriel’s Bay, the town where it all happens.

There is a large cast of characters, thankfully listed at the start of the book. We met many of them in the first book, but this time old familiars take a back seat for new.

Big, macho, boatshed cafe owner Jacko wears a frilly apron while he cooks whatever takes his fancy (he never has a menu), and his fierce wife Mac is office manager for the new doctor. But, this time, it’s their daughter Emma – newly arrived from the United Kingdom, along with a mysterious stranger – who takes our attention when her strong anticapitalist and environmental principles are offside with local developers and farmers. She decides to name and shame farmers whose cattle are wandering into waterways, but caught in the headlights is struggling farmer Vic.

Kerry, the red-haired UK import who arrived at the start of the first novel, now has a stable relationship with Sidney, the mother of two boys, but the focus in What You Wish For shifts from him to Sidney as she grapples with her insecurities and how to make do on a tiny income.

And newly arrived Dr Ashwin (Ash) Ghadavi is a bundle of insecurities, trying to overcome his formal upbringing and make friends in a country, and particularly in a small country town, where everyone seems so relaxed.

Robertson, a gifted writer, traverses a cross-section of inherently Kiwi characters with their distinctive lingo and mix of traditional Down Under laid-back attitudes, and introduces the necessary conflict by contrasting them with new arrivals who are passionately convicted to a cause. She also integrates humour into some dark and serious subjects, such as depression, gender identity, ecoterrorism, and politics. The writing is incredibly witty and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.

It’s a genre many contemporary writers have made popular, treating serious issues with a light touch, so we can still learn from them, but not be bogged down. In achieving this clever balance, Robertson manages to transcend the ridiculous, snootily-imposed line between literary and commercial fiction to produce a real winner. We should honour Kiwi writers like her who aren’t afraid to celebrate our unique way of life.