Shadows of the past
Only the third novel in a distinguished career, this will be a classic.
Stephen Ross, a pharmacist, is the quiet figure at the centre of Vincent O’Sullivan’s moving new novel All This by Chance, but the author gives the strongest voices in the saga to women. The novel spans six generations of a family and sweeps from Auckland to London, Germany, Greece, Italy and Tanzania before completing the circle in the place where it all started: Wrocław in Poland, formerly the German city of Breslau, where the Nazis targeted the Jewish population.
O’Sullivan explores how the past imposes itself upon families down the generations, in this case casting “shadows across their lives” for reasons they may never understand. To learn the truth doesn’t necessarily liberate, either: one character asks, as she explores her ruined ancestral home in Wrocław in 2004, “Do we never get away from it?”
In 1947, 22-year-old Stephen leaves behind an unhappy rural childhood in the North Island and flees to London, which still reeks of ash. Pushed into going to a church dance, the shy Stephen spots a young woman, “pale and tall and shining”, and life bursts into colour. Her name is Eva. “All this by chance”, the lovers keep saying in wonder during the months that follow.
Eva is a Jewish orphan from Breslau. Her family sent her to England as a child
during Hitler’s rise. Stephen becomes her only family, but he doesn’t realise how damaged she is.
Shortly before the newlyweds sail for Auckland in 1949, Eva discovers she has an aunt, Ruth, who survived the camps. She speaks only German, sails with them. On the ship, the sinister Miss McGovern approaches Stephen. She knows of Ruth’s past in the camp.
The story shifts to Athens in 1968, where Stephen’s daughter, Lisa, and her boyfriend, Fergus, are teaching English. Lisa is a serious young woman, intent on a medical career; Fergus is a chancer, morally loose. They break up when Lisa realises he’s a corrupting force.
Back in Auckland, O’Sullivan does not reveal much about Eva’s inner life, which is shown through Stephen’s watchful eyes. But we learn she hides secrets from him. He is “stifling”, judging her tendency “to get a little down to things”. He suggests a new medication.
By 1978, Lisa is studying medicine in London. She volunteers at a hospital in Tanzania, where her tenure is disrupted by the arrival of an autistic boy the locals dub “the Ghost”. They fear him, and she is forced to make a choice.
Twenty years later, her niece Esther visits a “petulant and decaying man” in an institution in New Zealand, gradually drawing out his story as a case study for an honours paper. This man is Fergus. Their “interview” escalates into a crescendo of confession. Yet such is the subtlety of O’Sullivan’s writing that when Fergus’s appalling tale finally explodes, it must be followed very carefully to fully comprehend its meaning. It’s not predictable.
Stylistically, All This by Chance is absolutely compelling, driven by the crafting of its characters’ internal monologues via staccato, incomplete sentences.
This is only the third novel by Dunedinbased O’Sullivan, whose long career – he is 80 – has been mostly devoted to poetry, plays and short fiction. But this may be his most ambitious work yet, such is its scope and its lingering emotional impact.
It’s a masterwork, one that will endure as a New Zealand classic.
A masterwork, his most ambitious work yet, such is its scope and its emotional impact.