Devilry in paradise
There has been much which is pastoral about award-winning New Zealand author Owen Marshall's recent writings. Last year's View from the South, for instance, combined his poetry about rural South Island environs with iconic depictions of the same by artist Grahame Sydney. Meanwhile, many of Marshall's novels during the past decade, such as The Lanarchs (2011) and Drybread (2007), have been set in remote landscapes.
The pastoral, of course, isn't just a place but an artistic evocation of idealised country existence. Often in his recent work, Marshall's distinctive take on this concept has been to couple a pictorial portrayal of high country settings with a sinister psychological edge.
His seventh novel, Pearly Gates, sees him continue this rendering of a dark-edged pastoral. It focuses on a former Otago rugby player and almost All Black, Pat – “Pearly” – Gates, who's in his twilight years. Having retired from sport, he's become a successful real estate agent and twoterm mayor of a provincial South Island town. For Pearly, daily existence means not a lot happens and yet so much unfolds. The demanding intricacies of local politics, professional house selling and journeying through life with wife Helen in the years after their children have left consumes Pearly's time and the novel.
Yet, like a calm river can belie a dangerous undertow, Marshall's new book carries continual hints that not everything is right in Gates' rustic world. His campaign for a third mayoralty is challenged by his career-climbing deputy; Helen begins to move beyond her roles as wife and mother into a high-profile nursing position. The small-town intrigues of an illicit affair spill into his social and political orbits. Pearly also starts to receive disturbing anonymous calls. Appearance contradicts reality; personal dysfunctions and deep animosities refute the seeming conviviality of township life.
At its core, Pearly Gates surveys the human mindset, particularly sensibilities which are restricted by ambition, curtailed career, ageing and geography. Marshall's prose, which is as unadorned as the book's everyday lead, perfectly suits this careful cerebral uncovering.
Such insularity of the mind and its perceptions are offset by the book's broad, open spaces and the wider community of Pearly and Helen's wha¯ nau and friends, particularly Helen's staunch best friend, Alison, and Pearly's old school buddies Sir Andrew Nisse and beleaguered “Gumbo”.
Pearly Gates offers us rural "mainland" life, its people and psychologies, the foibles and fortes. The bright lights, big city living of its former professional rugby playing protagonist are long gone; in their place, the minutiae of small-town existence, family, camaraderie, long kindled grievances and daily survival reign. As Marshall examines the good and bad sides of humanity, a gentle paced, deceptively dark novel ensues.