Book of the week

The Ice Shelf by Anne Kennedy (Victoria University Press) $30

Who would have thought that a young woman’s self-deprecating litany of destructive experiences could be so consumingly funny? Or that a large, green fridge would be her chosen ally as she criss-crosses hilly Wellington, dragging it up and down hundreds of steps, battered by wind and rain, with the goal of finding a suitable resting place for it during her impending absence? It is the eve of 30-something Janice’s ‘‘Arts New Zealand Antarctica

Residency’’, an award based on the success of her slim volume of poetry that was, unfortunately, too slim at 49 pages to be counted as a book that would earn her the annual library compensation every author craves – Public Lending Right funding.

A propensity for such close shaves with success – she also missed out on a half-share in a nice, cosy apartment by being just one day short of the three-year matrimonial property requirement – and far too many brushes with disaster are the lifelong hallmarks of recently separated Janice’s life. But she takes them all on the chin, as the socially isolating experiences that make a good writer. And Janice has those character-forming unhappy experiences in abundance, some brought on herself, some inflicted by others.

Like her alcoholic mother, who

sent her off at the age of 12 to live with her stoner father at a filthy, vermin-infested commune. At the commune school she learns ‘‘Show Me How’’ is infinitely preferable to ‘‘a school dedicated to the principles of dialectical materialism’’. Show Me How to plant, tend and harvest hectares of weed, for example, or the kiddyfiddling teacher Valour’s instruction on Show Me How to ‘‘become a woman’’. The strength of Anne Kennedy’s writing is nowhere more evident in the telling of this horrific event. But, like all the other ghastly events in poor Janice’s past, it has a bright side: ‘‘And here I want to thank

Valour most profoundly, from the bottom of my heart. Because where would a woman writer be without having been at the very least sexually abused as a child?’’

It is this wry wit and ironic style that are characteristic of so much of this superbly written satirical novel. How else would we empathise with the essentially unlikeable Janice so deeply, if it weren’t for her fully engaging, firstperson tone of voice and total transparency (to the point of owning up to a series of most unfortunate incidents she’s inflicted on those who have financially supported her and shown her kindness)? She’s a

consummate bludger, has hardly done an honest day’s work in her life, and has nothing to contribute to society other than her slim volume of poetry. Yet we are right beside her as, having consumed far too many vodka and oranges, she drags her fridge up the National Library steps to the Antarctic Residency Awards function, then bravely troops round central Wellington trying to find her fellow awards winners who seem to have fled her presence.

Kennedy wrote The Ice Shelf when she was the 2016 Writer in Residence at the International Institute of Modern Letters.

– Felicity Price

Wry wit and ironic style are characteristic of so much of this superbly written satirical novel.