Brimful of dark secrets
Jen Shieff’s first novel, The Gentleman’s Club, was a historical whodunwhat; this one’s 1967 setting may seem almost contemporary to those readers on National Super. But it’s the past, which is generally agreed to be another country, where they do things differently. So in Auckland, half a century back, gay women and working girls are marginalised, vilified and furtively sought after.
We start with Istvan of the “continental ways”, two recent deaths, a scoundrel in a raincoat, “all that blood”, a rotting corpse on Mt Eden.
All this happens in the four-page prologue so there’s no way readers are going to feel short-changed.
The plot twitches with edgy elements — blackmail, class bigotry, unsettled immigrants, compromising photos and brutish conservatism — and everyone has a secret or a murky agenda. Or both. We meet a medical man who examines his patients excessively closely, a misunderstood bordello cleaner, some sinister whitewashing, ineptly predatory males and there’s a badly-timed cardiac arrest.
All the while, protagonist Rosemary yearns after brainy, wealthy, sexy and arty Judith. Around them swarm a cast of dozens. I rather like Mandy, who calls people “sugar plum”, and the harmless cop with Eliot Ness aspirations. At the end, there’s a passionate letter in italics, a desperate drive to Bethells Beach, a murder resolved and a maiden rescued. This all takes only four pages, too; as I say, no short-changing.
I’m never sure how relevant the writing quality is in a book like this. Enthusiasts of the genre usually seem happy to skip the style and focus on narrative pleasures. Certainly, Shieff offers plenty of confrontations, revelations and even supplications.
She also offers a lot of adjectives, adverbs and authorial intrusion. She tells rather than shows, and much of her prose labours, over-explains, over-gilds but, as I say, it won’t worry enthusiasts. Dialogue is eager, enjoyably subversive, not always authentic: “I’m sorry. I must pull myself together.”; “Tell me, or you will deeply forget it.”
However, it’s a story where the good end partnered and the bad end, full-stop. That’s always pleasing.