Finally! I get around to reviewing, as part of our lead-up to the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, Kelly Ana Morey's two novels. Why two? Because I read 'em back to back. Why did it take me so long to do the review? Because I had to do them both together and it was hard. So without further ado:

Ms Morey (right) was born in 1968 in northern New Zealand of Ngati Kuri, Te Rarawa and Te Aupouri descent and grew up in Papua New Guinea, of all places, and Taranaki. Her first book, Bloom, won the Best First Book for Fiction at the 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. She subsequently received the 2003 Todd Writers Bursary and came up with Grace is Gone, which was recently shortlisted for the 2005 Kiriyama Prize. Both are published by Penguin NZ.

Bloom was a book that I immediately took a liking to. The first chapter, with the introduction to the ghostly Nanny Smack, a tiny, staunch kuia with an extraordinary kete, and Connie’s new lodgings complete with wacko flatmates enthusiastically consuming illicit substances, was enough to reel me in.

It struck me that, apart from the ghost, it seemed like an environment that many of us could reminisce quite happily about. And when Connie heads back to her Hicksville roots, the slow, dusty country life that Kelly-Ana Morey is so good at getting us to visualise (it’s so obviously part of her own back-story) was also a keen memory of my own childhood and no doubt lots of other nostalgic townies. The whole thing is all very kiwiana actually.

The opium-hazed historical angle is an unusual added bonus. Connie’s eccentric grandmother is quite keen on the stuff in the early years of last century, and has a Chinese soul-mate who keeps her alive on more than one occasion. Morey instills real sparkle and life to her historical characters; it makes you think of your own parents and grandparents and their real lives. Not the life that you saw from laps as a little kid with a mouthful of chocolate and fifty cents in your pocket, but the one you got interesting hints of once you’d got to a certain age of dawning awareness, listening to your grandad shout his political convictions at your dad, or your gran and your mum talk of family dramas before you were born.

This book’s public face is flippant and there’s always a smartarse about, (could it be the author?) but it’s really about the strength of women in the face of violence and oppression, the nature of enduring love, and the riptides that pull us back to family roots. There’s a depth to it that sinks it into your memory.

Kel’s obviously got a bit of a thing for families and their history, especially large families. Of women. Because straight after Bloom comes Grace is Gone, which one might say was straight out of the same small-town bakery oven, from the same recipe, right up there beside the lamingtons and louise cake.

However, the fact that Grace has much in common with Bloom was just fine with me; in fact, I was so depressed that I had finished the latter that despite having already started another book for review, I tossed it aside when Grace hove (hoved?) into view and scoffed it down with relief, glee and relish. I must say, just in passing, that the cover was a little disappointing. Bloom’s cover is luscious, but Grace is gone looks like what it is: a stock shot with little done to disguise the fact. However.

So, Grace. Straight in to the scene setting – and you’re hooked. The big, chaotic family background, the small cosy town with its Four Square, bakery, Lilith’s bookshop, Ms Mansfield the lesbian librarian, Wah Lien’s fruit and vege shop, the pub, the park and the single-cell police station. And the ghosts.

The ghosts – Cherry’s grandfather Noah and Grace – act as commentators of a sort and also have a certain funny man/straight girl comic responsibility. I had no suspension of belief problems regarding them, knowing as I do (another story) that we are all, always, surrounded by them. No, really. The large numbers of people in the stories who can actually see these benign specters I do find a little problematic, but, well, I can handle it. Maybe it’s a Maori thing.

Morey’s characterization and dialogue is her strength, I feel. In Grace she manages to fully round out the twelve daughters of Billy Flower (and who can resist their names: Cherry, Willow, Plum, Calla, Jasmine, Saffron, Fern, Aspen, Holly, Olive, Flora and Poppy?), giving each a wholly different personality. From the small and wordless Poppy to Bollywood superstar Saffron, from precocious Olive (‘Jeez, Mum, I’m almost twelve. I am actually regarded as a niche demographic. Officially I am a tweenie and I have huge spending power… though you wouldn’t know that from my pocket money’) to brittle Calla (‘Sarcastic, nasty loner galloping towards middle age, eternally teetering on the cusp of mediocrity’ – her own description of herself) you feel you know them all.

All the different mothers are around, and involved in endless bickering with and/or support of each other, their kids and Billy. There are unsuitable and eminently suitable blokes about that may or may not quite get the point, and tucked away in all the mad family chaos there are quiet, luminous moments of garden and landscape (‘the river beckoned and smoked, an intoxicating as a daydream and the birds spoke of certain harmony from the trees’).

As well as a gardener, Morey's a rider, her horses are present and precious, and as someone who also has an equine background, so to speak (or neigh), it's again something I can identify with. She also writes with authority of sometimes startling drug episodes which have a ruthless authenticity. This determination to be honest about small-town (or big, for that matter) substance abuse is endearing, if not pretty. But it certainly ensures her novels avoid being fluffy. And again, it’s something many in her target demographic (I’d love to see some real, honest numbers on this) have had in their lives, even if they’ve scrubbed up since becoming parents …

Really, the only thing that I feel I must moan about is a quirky thing: it's her use of the Greek Helios when referring to the sun. As in ‘Helios streamed in through the windows, his long golden fingers creeping across the mat, almost reaching the bed.’ I found this irritating as hell for some reason. There is personification also of animals, which I don’t mind nearly as much. I may however be persuaded in future instalments that there is method in her madness.

I heard a rumour in fact that the similarity between the two books is no accident and in fact, a trilogy may well bring the existing duo together. If so, bring it on. I for one can’t wait to hear Kelly Ana Morey’s dry, wry voice again in a novel. Although AWA Press has her booked, as it were, to write something called How to read a book for their non-fiction Ginger series. That'll be out in November. And of course, she’ll be appearing on Friday 20th May in the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. So we'll be able to both hear her, and marvel at those cheekbones. She'll have someone's eye out with them if she's not careful.