Book of the week

Mr Peacock’s Possessions

by Lydia Syson (Zaffre Publishing) $33 ‘Literature,’’ author David Lodge reminds us, ‘‘is a record of human consciousness, the richest and most comprehensive we have.’’

Insight and sensitivity is everywhere apparent in historical novelist Lydia Syson’s new book, Mr Peacock’s Possessions. Set on various Pacific islands in the 1870s, it follows the titular wayfarer and his family, their association with Niuean workers and the mysterious disappearance of a

tormented boy. It also becomes an expose of little-known settler existence in the Kermadecs, as well as a strong thematic study of Victorian patriarchy, idealism, control and freedom.

Syson has clearly done her research. From the Peacock family’s struggles to maintain a boarding house in Upolu, Samoa, in the face of German economic dominance during the late 19th century, to a rich portrayal of the different lives lived by those upon Niue and the Peacocks’ sanctuary, Monday Island (modelled on Raoul Island), the author’s details are precise and credible. They also come to the

fore in the family’s journey aboard the ship Esperanza as they are taken to their new island home. Moreover, always Syson’s historical landscapes – potentially distancing and unfamiliar to contemporary readers – are welcoming and faintly recognisable.

The key to Syson’s successes here is that, though the wealth of her research is clear, she never lards it into the action in ways which give us a history lesson. Instead, facts and details are used sparingly, but with necessity to immerse us in the compelling exterior and interior lives of the characters.

This cast is also crafted credibly. Victorians they might be, but the author creates them with an ease which makes them seem tangible, as free in their aspirations and as constrained by the social mores as the rest of us. Elder daughter, Lizzie, for instance, is a compelling mix of fire, industry, wit and compassion; while migrant worker Kalala offers a piety, integrity and perseverance required to unravel the dark secrets at the novel’s core. The other standouts are timid only son Albert and his defiant father. It’s young Albert upon whom, in the culture of the times, so much masculine privilege and hereditary and fatherly ambition rests

uneasily. Pater Peacock is his son’s opposite: forceful, daring, idealistic and – ultimately – dangerous.

In its characters, settings and details, Mr Peacock’s Possessions

tells an all-too-human and modern tale about the dangers of untrammelled authority, heedless romanticism, phobic gender and racial archetypes and the shortcomings of power. Astutely, the author anchors this rich mix of themes to the lives of one family and their employees on one small Pacific island. This particularising of the general pays off big time, making Mr Peacock’s Possessions

rich and comprehensive indeed.

–Siobhan Harvey

Victorians they might be, but the author creates them to seem as free in their aspirations and as constrained by the social mores as the rest of us.