Novel explores generational boundaries Book review
Kokomo, by Victoria Hannan (Hachette, $34.99). Reviewed by Emma Maguire.
Victoria Hannan’s Kokomo, which won last year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript – is a novel about loss, exile, homecoming, family and, above all, love.
When Mina leaves her life in London and rushes home to Melbourne because her agoraphobic mother has finally left the house, she begins to realise her idea of the past is based, like The Beach Boys’ imagining of Kokomo, on a profound misconception.
At first, Mina finds she’s suffocating in the house she grew up in, where her mother has spent more than a decade hiding since the sudden death of Mina’s father. Mina returns to a site of deep trauma and eventually reveals the mysteries beneath it: why did her mother become a recluse? And why did Mina abandon her mother and move to London? Love, in Kokomo, is complex, fearsome, and elusive.
Paradoxically, the book begins with Mina declaring she has found love. But she is such a stranger to love she has misidentified it – repeating her mother’s patterns of passive longing.
When two-thirds of the way through the book we switch from Mina’s perspective to that of her reclusive mother, Elaine, we discover her complicated attitude to love has been learnt in turn from her mother.
Mina’s most reciprocal and generous relationship is with influencer and pretty best friend, Kira. It’s Kira who tells Mina her mother has been seen outside her house. As they revive their real-life friendship (as opposed to a social media one) Kira helps Mina confront the source of her pain: her mother’s abandonment.
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Kokomo brims with references to popular culture and concerns. Mina tries and fails to selfmedicate her anxiety and depression with alcohol. Her marketing job yields disappointment as it reveals its sexist foundations. She struggles with feelings of failure, and is alienated by life as a grown-up. Millennial characters resonate with readers by examining the discomfort and disillusionment many feel when faced with the realities of life in late capitalism.
Mina nurtures a secret crush on her colleague, Jack, who appears to reciprocate her feelings. But when she goes to Australia after almost hooking up with him, she has no way of knowing where their relationship stands. She obsessively stalks him on Instagram, allowing his likes and friendships to fuel her anxiety.
Mina acknowledges not only the deficit of social media as an interface for human connection, but the deterioration it has facilitated in her own friendships.
Many young(ish) readers will see their own lives and interior landscapes mirrored in Kokomo, but the book is so much more. It’s about those things that bust generational boundaries: love, family, friendship, home.
Emma Maguire is a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at James Cook University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence.