Written by Rose Tremain, published in 2003, and ably read, in my audio-version, by Eleanor Bron, this offered an interesting fictional return to one of my former homes.

Joseph Blackstone; his mother, Lilian; and his wife, former governess Harriet, migrate from England to the South Island of New Zealand in the mid-1800s. Joseph is fleeing shadows (he was responsible, albeit not deliberately, for the death of his pregnant lover). Lilian is fleeing the ignominious death of her husband, and the financial chaos that his gambling habit has left her in. And Harriet... Well, Harriet is going because, as a wife, she has to -- but also because she is the genuine pioneer of the three, with a longing for adventure, a love of nature, a marked sense of curiosity, and a capacity to turn her hand to anything.

Initially, the family starts a farm. It's tough. Of course it's tough. New Zealand is different from anything they've known; lacking experience, they are constantly losing out to the vagaries of the unforgiving climate.

Harriet suffers, but is exhilarated by it all. Nothing daunts her. Lilian, on the other hand, desperately misses her old life, with its familiarity and its home comforts. One of her persistent pursuits, initially, is the painstaking attempt to mend the china that was broken during their sea passage. (This is one of Tremain's nice little symbols, which linger so powerfully in your mind. Personally, I often feel as though I am gluing together metaphorical pieces of china, which have been smashed in the temporal shift from a past phase of life. It would probably be better to throw them away.)

Joseph works hard on their farming endeavour, but not always intelligently or imaginatively. He's a cold, stubborn, secretive man, who rapidly loses his chance to win Harriet's love. And then he finds a little gold -- "the colour" -- in their creek, and succumbs to gold fever. He loses all interest in the farm, and goes off to join the gold rush near Hokitika, on the far side of the Southern Alps, leaving the women in charge of the crops and the animals.


How we crossed the Alps, 1992

Mother and daughter-in-law fight gamely, but ultimately in vain. The attempt to keep their frail house watertight will literally be the death of Lilian. Eventually the house falls to the elements, and Harriet goes off in search of Joseph to tell him these various pieces of news.

Joseph is in dire straits. He's consumed by his so far hopeless quest, awash with resentment and bitterness, but unable to let go. When Harriet does eventually find him -- and a little later gold -- she settles on a plan that will channel him riches, but also keep the two of them separate.

But everything is swept away by the calamitous "fresh", a spring flood of water that upends the diggings, and causes wholesale destruction. Both Joseph and Harriet survive, but they don't know each other's fate. Ultimately, Joseph commandeers the gold Harriet has fossicked, and sets sail for England, where he remains as miserable as ever. Harriet, now carrying the child of a Chinese vegetable farmer (who has returned, armed with another of Harriet's finds, to his family in Guangdong), is determined to make a life for herself and her baby in New Zealand.



There's much to like in this. These three central characters are well developed (as are those of the less prominent Toby and Dorothy Orchard, a successful farming couple who are the Blackstones' nearest -- though not that near -- neighbours). Tremain evokes the reality of pioneer life very effectively (at least insofar as I understand that reality from the museums I visited when I lived in New Zealand). It's all there -- the back-breaking work of the farmers; the constant battle with the elements; the sheer challenge of getting anywhere... And the descriptions of the land, the small towns, and the monstrous industry that was goldmining are all excellent.

Harriet Lane tells us: "Tremain has said that she was moved to write about the mid-19th-century gold rush in New Zealand by the desperate flimsiness of the prospectors' tools, which she saw in a museum there, and she is particularly good at describing optimism in the face of overwhelming odds. The novel is about hope, or the point at which hope becomes destructive or turns into madness."

But the characters' ultimate fates indicate that hope itself is leavened by the quality of each individual's moral fibre. Lilian buckles down, but never really reconciles herself to this wild, bleak life, and always hopes to go "home" -- a desire she fulfils only in her death-bed delirium. Joseph loses every shred of decency in the pursuit of his hope to find gold, but he eventually ends up back in Norfolk where he started, dedicating himself to dolls' house making (a heavily ironic end for the man who could make neither house nor home). Harriet strides towards a very uncertain future, as a woman on her own with a mixed-race baby, but you feel that her hopes are so sound and wholesome, and her energy so fierce, that she'll somehow make it.





Many critics are very positive about Tremain's achievement. Peter J. Conradi, for example, describes it as "a fabulous work, bravely imaginative, deeply moving, surprising, invigorating and satisfying".

But I feel Tremain casts her net too wide, is a little too "courageous" in taking on the task of speaking for very different people. There's Pare, the young Maori woman, for example, with her access to the spirit world, which creates a powerful and ultimately destructive bond with the Orchards' small son; or Pao Yi, the market gardener, who -- like all the Chinese in the book -- is identified with stillness, patience, and self-containment; or even Will Sefton, the lad who provides a variety of "services" for the gold-seekers (including Joseph), and then proves fickle, grasping, and prone to blackmail -- whereas the Blackstones ring true, these characters feel like stereotypes to me...



Claire McAlpine, who originates from New Zealand, comments: "[The book's] only weakness for me was the subplot featuring Pare, the Maori nanny, her superstitions and behaviours seemed odd to me, somewhat fantastical, bordering on magical realism, a little patronising in terms of my understanding and experience of the legends, culture and tradition I grew up with, though perhaps reminiscent of the colonial attitude of that era and beyond."

To offer another Kiwi view, I'll close with an excerpt from a review that appeared in the New Zealand Herald: "It's odd to read a book set in New Zealand yet aimed primarily at a non-New Zealand audience, and written by someone who has been here only briefly. Our landscape emerges as someone else's fantasy, a symbolic end-of-the-world, an 'other' from which someone may or may not choose or be able to return (to Norfolk, to southeast China, to Scotland). I found that aspect interesting rather than irritating or offensive... Tremain makes the odd mistake ... but overall I think her many fans will not be disappointed."