I’ve been reading! So much so that I’ve been forgetting to do the reviews in between. This has lead to a horrid situation to which I am deeply reluctant to subject any writer: the group review. However, needs must, and one oughtn’t to point any fingers at a harried mother of three who’s just trying to do her best. A bit of a whine creeping in here – better get on with it. In the order I read them, we’ve got Nigel Cox’s Dirty Work, Deborah Challinor’s Union Belle and Eleanor Gill’s In the Shadow of Trees.

First up, Dirty Work. I was swanning about all over Europe when this book first came out in 1987 (this is a reprint from VUP and as usual, a superb cover from design goddess Sarah Maxey) and NZ literature was the last thing on my mind. Having said that I vividly remember reading C K Stead’s A Fitting Tribute in London around that time, finishing it in a state of almost unbearable thrall on the top deck of a number 73 bus, if my memory serves me correctly. I only found out recently that it was based on the life of Barry Humphries. You could have knocked me down with a feather, but in hindsight it is, of course, so obvious.

Anyway, back to my point which was that I wasn’t here in NZ during the eighties to experience the social polarity of the times, which is what the book is based on. It’s about the long-term residents of The Happy World, a terrifically seedy hotel in Wellington, and Gina Tully, the clever but desperate part-time acrobat who takes on the job of running it whilst evading the inevitable with Hendy, the insanely grasping but strangely endearing Dutchman who owns it.

So. Acrobat eh? Not unlike the hero of Mr Stead’s work, Gina attempts to rise above the sordid reality of her life by taking to the air on her trapeze, and like him, succeeds to a point. This is a love story really I think, and I am borne out in this by Nigel’s note at the back: ‘at that point [late feminism] I was hugely anxious that I would have to live on a world where women felt I was the kind of thing they could do without. So… one of my ambitions was to show a heterosexual couple getting a kick out of being together.’ The backstage love-interest, Laurie, is therefore a quietly supportive chap, if slightly wet, (he spends a lot of time in the bath) but he ends up in a position of quite substantial power after all on the last page. He’s not hugely keen, but he’s there, and you know he always will be. Hmm. Yes, it appears Nigel (or his subconscious) had a self-effacing anti-hero creeping in way back then.

The characters in this novel are many and varied, from violently cynical Nif to laid-back, dope smoking Bill, all of them flawed and often hilarious. And all of them whistling in the dark, staying just this side of sane, a sign of the times. There but for the grace of god, I believe is part of the phrase.

I loved most of this book, but a drawback for me was the long drawn out build-up to the denouement which has assumed almost mystical dimensions by the time you get there and is unfortunately a bit of a let-down, unless I missed something, which is quite possibly the case. Great last page though, I held my breath reading it, then stared at the ceiling for some time. You’ll know what I mean.

What’s next? Ah, Union Belle (HarperCollins, $24.95). This was a good read; I charged through it, harking back to the days when I would rug up in the caravan as a young teenager and blast through mum’s Catherine Cooksons (more mining tales, very topical at the moment). It’s badly let down by its production which is a shame, as it could conceivably be right up there with Jenny Pattrick. I notice her latest book out, Kitty, has been given the star treatment though, which is great.

Based in a tiny mining town in the Waikato in the 1951 strikes, it’s well researched, and Deborah Challinor’s writing I thought was clear, unaffected and fresh, with a no-bullshit eye for human behaviour, especially childrens’. She’s obviously decided on a pretty warts-and-all approach about what life was like in small town NZ in the fifties. And there’s a decent amount of healthy shagging in there too, which after a long build-up of sexual tension is described in enough detail to provoke the odd squawk of delight.

I certainly learned a lot about the politics of the times, although I thought her way of moving from the anguished love triangle which is at the heart of the story to the masculine details of the strike negotiations needed a bit more work. She attempted to soften it by making her heroine a feisty woman who’s a union girl to the bone, but it’s still a bit of a Venus/Mars clunk at times. However, when Ellen has to make her final stay or go decision, it’s really gut-wrenching – I blubbed!

This is quite a gripping and well-researched story, perfect for a rainy bach. Like any historical fiction, it makes you think about what your own forebears lives were really like, behind the lace curtains. Musing on the skeletons in family closest… it’s a rare family that ain’t got none.

And finally! Eleanor Gill’s In the Shadow of Trees. Crikey. This is a story for all those tree-huggers who feel a mystical something when they’re surrounded by a grove of centuries-old kauri and muse on what the trees may have been doing when… Elizabeth 1 was crowned, or when the Crusaders were butchering heretics or whatever.

To nutshell: Regan Porter is a sculptor of wood, a very good one; world renowned. A recent affair with a younger man, Jason Sullivan, has left her with a certain amount of angst and ire, but they are not so estranged that she can’t accept an offer from him to retire to a cottage in a forest on his father’s farm near a (NZ) country village so she can whip a new exhibition into shape in peace. But although it seems perfect, all is not well.

She finds the graves of three of the Sullivan wives, whose short lives, she finds, bear unusual and unnerving similarities and she finds herself dreaming of them with ever more intensity. And Liam Connors, the dark Irish farmworker (irritating but hairily attractive), seems strangely concerned for her safety, especially when she starts sleepwalking in the forest at night, and small furry animals begin to meet their maker in bloodcurdling ways.

It’s a wild story that’s bound up with Celtic legend, tree spirits and sacrifice, always a good combo. And good characters: Regan’s a likeably stroppy sheila but she’s met her match in the saturnine, secretive Liam.

The last bit sounds full-on Mills and Boon, but Eleanor Gill very deliberately writes it in a down-to-earth way, nothing overly dramatic about it, which offets the somewhat startling plot; she takes her time to build the tension, and almost completely gets away with it. Meaning, yes, there are a couple of moments where I thought, OK, this is getting a bit silly, but I was turning pages so fast I didn’t let myself get any further.

OK, I confess: it was really quite freaky actually. In fact, I near about shat meself. Living out here in the bush-clad Waitakeres like we do, it’s made me look over my shoulder when I wander down the road for a nightcap at my neighbour’s of an evening. And it also made me google ‘Wendigo’. It’d make a great movie. Another good yarn for the caravan or bach, or a perfect Mother’s Day pressie for a Stephen King fan.

So there you go. Three reviews! What am I thinking? Could’ve spun that out for ages. Never mind, we aim to keep you up to date. Sort of.