Review: One of Those Mothers
Aotearoa New Zealand’s fiction commercial fiction is finally growing up, and Megan Nicol Reed has skilfully captured the ‘think global but write local’ zeitgeist in her excellent debut novel One of Those Mothers.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s fiction commercial fiction is finally growing up, and Megan Nicol Reed has skilfully captured the ‘think global but write local’ zeitgeist in her excellent debut novel One of Those Mothers.
Nicol Reed honed her skills during seven years as a columnist, first for Sunday Star Times and then _New Zealand Herald’_s Canvas magazine. Her large following adored her gentle skewering of the middle-classes and, in her own words, her ‘Wringing the absurdity out of modern parental concerns.’ She was thrice nominated for her New Zealand’s best columnist.
One of Those Mothers is a natural evolution and covers similar territory. Bridget, Roz and Lucy have been friends for years. When something happens on a group summer holiday on Hine’s Island with their husbands and children, one of the couples becomes estranged. Why? We don’t know. In the present day, nine months later, we learn a father in their suburb of Point Heed has been convicted of child pornography charges. With his name permanently suppressed, and suspicions high, the tight-knit community begins to unravel.
At one point, Bridget declines a sleepover for her child with a wealthy Pasifika family because the culprit could be in any family, right? It’s an excruciating scene that reflects unchecked racial prejudice and privilege. Tricky territory but well done.
The characters are authentically drawn and of familiar mother archetypes from Auckland’s upper-middle-class central suburbs (Ed’s note: although the story isn’t set specifically in Auckland): the boho-chic Botoxed mums, the lycra-clad stay-at-home mums and the working mums who double-park their Rangies at the school gate. There’s an obsession with house prices, children and status.
Not every columnist has the chops to sustain a 287-page novel but Nicol Reed has without doubt succeeded. Her handling of narrative tension throughout, of holding back information and meting it out at just the right pace, reveals the skill of a much more experienced novelist. It is not until past the half-way mark that the reader learns what happened on that summer holiday, which was perfect timing to keep me flipping pages long into the night. Oh, and by the way, Aotearoa, it’s official: we have a new Queen of the Twist. If you enjoyed Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies or Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap, this one’s for you.
We read the story through Bridget’s third-person point of view and her middle-class, privileged observations had me laughing out loud. Nicol Reed does not shy away from the ludicrous aspects of being a woman (cue trimming pubic hair, togs up the bum, forgetting school mums’ names) and the taboo subjects of sexual fantasies, drug taking and pornography. Bravo.
Nicol Reed chose fictional settings for the novel: Point Heed, and an island holiday location, Hine’s Island. Whilst this isn’t uncommon—after all, authors from Dickens to Moriarty have long done it—I felt somewhat disconcerted, as Point Heed felt very much like Point Chevalier, where I lived for 11 years (the crappy supermarket gave it away). And with its missionary-era mansion, Hine’s Island felt like Kawau. I could, of course, be wrong but if this is the case, I wonder why the author chose to fictionalise these places as a real setting offers the reader automatic verisimilitude. Instead, this smudging of real locations took me out of the story flow. However, this minor point won’t be relevant to an international audience which this very good book deserves. The publisher blurb says: ‘Read the book everyone will be talking about.’ Bets on, they’re right.
Reviewed by Caroline Barron
