Life’s lessons can be learnt early
Suzanne Masefield was meant to be on holiday in Samoa but with a major speaking engagement looming, the executive life coach and body language expert couldn’t relax. “I thought, ‘gosh, this is how many of my clients must feel’,” says Masefield, who’s a regular on television, offering insights into the body language of newsmakers — everyone from politicians to contestants on The Bachelor.
So, she went to a local book outlet hoping to find something to take her mind of the forthcoming conference. A compendium of Enid Blyton stories, ones she remembered from childhood, caught her eye.
She read them and, transported back to childhood, felt a sense of calm descend. As a child growing up in the UK, Masefield — then Suzanne de Malplaquet — had loved reading and writing her own stories.
Remembering the happy feelings that engendered, she decided to write a children’s book. Masefield wanted to tell a story that would uplift and inspire young people while giving them tools to help them deal with the hurly-burly of emotions, friendships and finding the magic within themselves.
On Wednesday, she launches Eddie Motion and the Tangible Magik in New Zealand. It’s a magical fantasy about Eddie Motion, who’s not like other children because he knows exactly what people are thinking and feeling without their saying a word.
When his beloved mother’s life is threatened, Eddie and his best friend, Melody, travel to the fantasy land of Andalustria — his mother’s homeland — where they encounter mysterious creatures and mystical guides who take them on an enchanted voyage.
They find that the things that made them different, even the bits they thought weren’t particularly positive, are valuable and celebrated. Together, Eddie and Melody learn their choices have the power to turn lives around and change the world.
Masefield spent time last year on a writing retreat working on the first drafts of Tangible Magik. She also consulted school principals she works with and says this confirmed to her the need for a book such as the one she was crafting.
“What I’ve discovered is that the personal development and self-management around emotions is reasonably good in junior school but then it stops and, you know, what happens then? Our young people are going out into the world and things are challenging; focus is on academics or getting ahead but it’s not on self-management or things like how do I deal with emotions?”
But Masefield knew kids wouldn’t want a “lecture book” so, thinking about her own love of magic and fantasy, she created the adventure story. Valuable tips and hints that form the “Tangible Magik Toolkit” are included.
She believes the story will appeal to those aged 9-13, but says adults may well get life lessons too. Dionne Christian
Part mystery, part family saga, Chakraborti’s latest novel is set in both New Zealand and India, and focuses on the lives of half-brothers Ashim and Abhay, their separation in childhood and their reconnection as adults.
Abhay, the younger brother and the novel’s first voice, has lived in England before marrying Lena and settling in Wellington with their young daughter, Mira. Ashim has remained in Howrah.
In a prologue, we learn Ashim and his sister remained with their mother when their parents’ divorced but when she died they were taken in, with some underlying reluctance, by their father and his new wife, the parents of Abhay.
One night, a train bearing their grandmother for a visit was several hours delayed; the two boys ran off and were lost overnight. The resulting stresses resulted in Ashim being sent to boarding school. His sister chose to follow him, living in the same town, with their grandmother.
Into the story proper we find Abhay and Lena awaiting the arrival of Ashim and his daughter Tulti in a long-overdue visit; funds have not allowed Ashim’s wife to come. But the reconnection is far from a joyful flourishing of brotherly love, with Ashim’s underhand behaviour first alerting Lena that there is far more to this visit.
What follows is a tale of suspicion, jealousies, resentments old and new, and a growing dissatisfaction with his lot as house husband and baby minder in unrequited author Abhay’s heart.
Chakraborti initially presents the viewpoints of Ashim, Abhay and Lena in separate voices in the first person, but this soon dissolves into a somewhat irritating mental monologue on Abhay’s count. It reeks all the while of the thwarted artist lost in his own self-obsessions, showing him, long before Ashim declares his hand, as a man who truly does not seem to see.
This reader can only hope there is not too much of an autobiographical thrust in Abhay’s apparent shallowness as he struggles with the conflicts of immigration, changes in gender roles, and within his disparate family. Chakraborti, who was born in Calcutta in 1977, has lived in Canada, England and Scotland and now resides with his family in Wellington, bares some obvious milestones with his character, although he, in contrast, had already established himself as a writer internationally, before this, his New Zealand debut.
It is testament to his writing skills that although The Man Who Would Not See strikes a gossipy and somewhat superficial tone and neither brother is immediately likeable, it sucks you in.
THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT SEE
by Rajorshi Chakraborti (Penguin Random House, $38) Reviewed by Bernadette Rae