Many rewards in potent debut
He’s a sculptor; he’s the son of outstanding NZ novelist Lloyd Jones, which he probably wouldn’t want mentioned, and a winner of Survivor NZ, which I’m not sure is worth mentioning. More relevantly, his first fiction has received a Viva La Novella prize in Australia. You’ll soon see why.
Jacob’s come home to claustrophobic, conventional, small-town New Zealand (well, this is a young man’s book), after years of swimming 10-hour distances in overseas oceans. His mum is ill and estranged; his dad is dead. But there’s much more to it than that. There are complexities and nuances, the command of big issues in a small space. There are plenty of rewards in this novella.
Home for Jacob is both familiar and alien. He’s out of synch with everyone and everything, “as if I had missed some steps”.
He’s restless and resentful. So he starts rebuilding a seaside shack and planning a little 15km swim.
An adopted brother features. So do a dog and a friendship, a seal remembered, an engaging if not entirely credible young Ma¯ ori woman and, like a dent on the horizon, an emblematic island he has never noticed before.
The world of the littoral is vividly rendered: po¯ hutukawa roots weaving through yellow rocks, black reefs with swaying kelp, tree trunks scattered on the sand like whales. So is Jacob’s immersion in the greenstone sea, shouting underwater, making inventories in his head, testing lungs and limbs to their limit, while the book acknowledges the generosity and suspicions of a small community and heads towards a climactic, near-apocalyptic storm.
Jones blends the mundane and imaginary; lights Jacob’s everyday world with visions. There’s clarification. There’s a tenuous reconciliation with a role-playing, confronting and death-negotiating mother. A few very conscious images: New Zealand “like a Band-Aid on the bottom of the Earth”. A few chunks of undigested exposition.
But it’s crafted, focused, potent. It’s quite a debut. It definitely keeps up with other literary Joneses — and if he didn’t want me mentioning that either, it’s meant as an emphatic compliment.