Vanuatu the star of debut novel
by Mikaela Nyman (VUP, $30). Reviewed by Steve Walker.
What happens when custom collides with modern, liberal values? What if that collision has fundamental impact on individual lives? What is the cost? Poet Mikaela Nyman’s debut novel explores these questions amid the carnage caused in Vanuatu by Cyclone Pam in March 2015.
As we read of yet another cyclone in the past few weeks, this novel is timely and timeless.
Nyman speaks from experience. Having lived in Vanuatu for four years, she knows its kastom, or customary practices, well. That shows in her novel. The geography, language, traditions, and people of the archipelago are well documented through an observant, understanding yet critical eye. Parts are even written in Bislama, the pidgin language of Vanuatu. It is a delight to read these out loud and see how much is easily understood.
Nyman’s Vanuatu is a patriarchal society where male values rule.
Women are told what to wear, in a very strict dress code. They are denied access to good jobs and not allowed to sit on community committees. When a woman is appointed chief executive of a board of chiefs, men said it was ‘‘preposterous that a woman could be in charge of male chiefs’’. The appointment is annulled.
Within this conservative patriarchy, a Kiwi NGO worker, Cathryn, helps the country repair the enormous cyclone damage. Cathryn has a son with a health problem and a partner who is, at best, part-time. She is helped in her job by a Ni-Vanuatu, Faia. Both women travel to one of the outer islands to help with aid projects. There, a shocking and
brutal accident occurs. It is in its aftermath that kastom overrules what we would see as justice.
This conflict powers Nyman’s impressively knowledgeable novel. Cathryn is involved in the accident and a detached observer of events. This allows us to sympathise with Faia, one of the prime victims of events, and to see how there are deeper forces at work.
As witnesses ourselves of the tension between conservatism and progress, we gain insight. Nyman forces us to understand rather than judge. Her purpose is not didactic, but illuminatory. In a way, the wreckage the cyclone causes is a parallel to the impact on the society’s lives. Families are torn apart, relationships founder and progress stopped.
Ultimately, it is Vanuatu that emerges as the most complex and interesting character of this novel. It may be constrained, but there is a vibrant energy in the country and signs, in the female contribution to society, of change.