Accents yet unknown
Angela Huth
DUNEDIN by Shena Mackay Heinemann, £14.99, pp.304 It is a puzzling fact in the literary world that while some writers' names lodge in the public mind from the start, others, for all their eligibility, remain for years — some- times for ever — 'vaguely heard of rather than a public name.
One of those upon whom the unfairness of fashion has rendered this disservice is Shena Mackay, first published 28 years ago. Her last collection of stories, Dreams of Dead Women's Handbags, received particu- lar critical acclaim. But, singular writer though she is, Mackay does not yet share the popularity of O'Brien, Brookner or Bainbridge, and it's hard to know why.
Dunedin is her seventh novel. The story begins in 1909, in New Zealand. Presbyteri- an minister Jack Mackenzie, with his wife and family, arrive from Scotland to start a new life. In Jack's case, this does not mean giving up old ways. He was 'at his nicest when being botanical'. When it came to women, he continued in his customary, churlish ways.
Mackay's evocation of small community life in New Zealand almost a century ago is masterful. Here we find Miss Kettle, spin- ster of the parish, whose days 'spread out around her like the repeated pattern of a dingy patchwork,' and who harbours a secret passion for the minister. He in turn lusts after Myrtille, 'the dark skinned laun- deress,' who keeps the head of her great- grandfather on a shelf. Beneath the domes- tic exteriors, misery and deceit rumble menacingly in all quarters.
It is not just that Mackay has that cliche, a woman's eye for detail (which she has), but that her delight in detail is infectious. No moment is too small to burnish; no tex- ture is too humble to bring to life. She makes the most ordinary things sparkle, describes with extraordinary vibrance objects and moments that are familiar to us all.
Many years later, Kitty would come across this book in a drawer lined with brittle paper of bleached and breaking roses exuding a dis- tillation of summers locked in wood, and would weep at the schoolgirlish hand in which the sheets, pillowcases, towels . . . were listed so importantly and painstakingly in ink which had rusted to the colour of old thin blood.
Mackay also has a piquant sense of humour. Louisa, the parrot-shooting minis- ter's wife, • .. started to hum: flocks of parrots might well explode in shuttlecocks of brilliant bloody green feathers if that would take her husband away from Dunedin for a day or two. He could make the feathers into a head- dress for all she cared, and perform a grotesque stamping war dance and protrude his tongue . . . a feathered spear impaling his chest. 'May God forgive me, I didn't mean it,' Louisa muttered as she realised she had just committed murder in her heart.
In the general charge of her exuberance, Mackay is prepared to take risks.
Lilian had a singing voice that reminded Madge of rowan jelly when you held the jar up to the light.
Had the words of this sentence been one millimetre out, it could have been material for Pseuds Corner. As it is, you know exactly what she means.
Unfortunately, on p.52, New Zealand ends, but for a few pages of epilogue. We are then whirled forward 80 years to Lon- don, and the bleak lives of the Mackenzie grandchildren. The misfortune for the reader is not that Mackay's writing in any Way declines, but the antipodean episode is so bewitching that it is hard not to feel some reluctance to being transported to the more familiar shores of grotty London. If anyone can bring humour and sparkle to delapidated houses, the agony in the mind of a baby-snatcher and the horrifying fate of a homeless young New Zealander, Mackay it is. We are in turn sympathetic, intrigued, shocked, entertained — but oh the yearning for the world she magically conjured in the first part. Would she had mixed her proportions of time and place differently. But perhaps she was unaware of how good her beginning is, and had no notion of what an ache for more she would cause in her reader.
As it is, her depiction of different kinds of misery in different generations of the same family manages not to be depressing. There is a kind of persistence of spirit among her characters, which is not a bad substitute for hope.
Previous page
