Inner-city insights
Reviewed by Hannah Tunnicliffe
Greta & Valdin, by debut author Rebecca K Reilly, reminded me of Seinfeld : smart, weird, hilarious single people navigating living and loving in the big city.
In the case of siblings Greta Vladisavljevic and her brother, Valdin, the big city is modernday Auckland.
Like a Shakespearean play, Reilly opens her novel with a list of characters – Catalonian or Russian names plus nicknames. The list features 20 of the siblings’ closest family, friends and lovers, including one described as ‘‘Cosmo: is the closest they have to a cousin.’’Reilly does an expert job at developing characters, each wholly formed and distinguishable from the others.
The story opens with Valdin, who we quickly learn is gay, Russian and Ma¯ ori, heartbroken, and experiencing obsessive compulsive disorder. ‘‘Sometimes I think I can regain control by doing everything right, but the things I think I need to do don’t make any sense. It’s like being extremely superstitious but also hating yourself.’’
He is a vulnerable oddball with a dry, cynical, selfdeprecating sense of humour, impossible to dislike. When we meet Greta, it’s clear the siblings are cut from the same cloth. Rather than reeling from heartbreak, Greta seems to be heading straight for it, deep in a crush on fellow University tutor Holly.
Auckland University is at the heart of this novel. Greta and their father, Linsh, both work at the university while Greta and Valdin live together in an apartment near it. Ta¯ maki Makaurau has possibly never been so authentically celebrated: ‘‘We walk until we get to the big crossing, the one where big Santa used to live on the Farmers building at Christmas.
I miss how he used to wink and beckon. It felt like the city wasn’t so sexually repressed back then.’’
The Vladisavljevic family are the opposite – a cast straight out of a Wes Anderson film.
Reilly fuses socio-political commentary with humour, making Greta & Valdin both smart and funny.
Racism, sexism and homophobia are all examined in ways that make you think, sometimes cringe but mostly laugh, due to Reilly’s dry, acerbic tone which manages to also be warm and generous.
It doesn’t take long to become invested in mum Beatrice’s secrets, Valdin’s longing for exboyfriend Xabi (who happens to be his uncle’s husband’s brother), Greta’s misdirected affection for Holly, brother Casper’s past scandals, nephew Tang’s newly discovered monogamy or trying to figure out how almost-cousin Cosmo, currently unaccounted for, features in all of this. Greta & Valdin is fresh, funny, tangled and brilliant. I can’t wait for someone to make the sitcom so I can keep Reilly’s characters in my life.
This review originally appeared on Kete and is reproduced with kind permission.