An honest probe into the past

Beside the Dark Pool by Fiona Kidman. Photo / Supplied

"You can't write your memoirs at half time," declared American poet and memoirist, James McKean.

Unlike a number of recent youthful chroniclers of their lives (Wayne Rooney, Alan Carr and Peter Kay), the grande dame of New Zealand literature, Fiona Kidman, has left it until her "mature years" to reminisce on paper about her energetic and accomplished past. And in Beside the Dark Pool, her new memoir, Kidman certainly has a lot to reminisce about.

It's the follow-up to her previous memoir, At the End of Darwin Road, which absorbingly charted her childhood in 1940s Northland through to the release of her first novel, A Breed of Women, in 1979. This latest instalment is just as engrossing, a rich mix of anecdote, diary entry, narrative, literary reflection, along with social and political history.

Though Beside the Dark Pool starts out with a 1958 rugby match in Hamilton between the Mooloos and the Bay, this recollection is but a springboard into the author's remembrance of the darker, divisive world of "rugby as politics" which arrived with the '81 Springboks Tour.

From there, the book combines its examination of key events and players in national and international history in the last three decades (Rainbow Warrior, the legacy of the Vietnam War, Helen Clark, Ronald Reagan) with a more garrulous, but no less astute account of Kidman's private and public life.

Her authorial milestones in the last 30 years - books written, awards accrued, the 1985 tour of America where her third novel, Paddy's Puzzle (US title In the Clear Light) was the toast of critics and booksellers - is contrasted and complemented by her ongoing attempts to deal with the fallout from her father's aloof behaviour, her fascination with French writer Marguerite Duras, her bad health and her enduring relationships with her husband Ian and their large family.

If this makes for a plentiful, entertaining read, Beside the Dark Pool is unquestionably at its best when revealing Kidman's friendships and associations with influential artists. The time when Witi Ihimaera sat her down and gave her a frank talking-to about her creativity; the generous bond she struck with Peter Ustinov; her involvement in the media fracas over the regeneration of Katherine Mansfield's Menton abode: at moments such as these, we feel we're on Kidman's shoulder, bearing witness to key events in her life as they unfold.

Throughout the author is honest and meritoriously impartial in her recollections, never the victim but rather the discoverer of a lesson learned. This evenhandedness also extends to Kidman's analysis of her literary output. All the way through Beside the Dark Pool, we find her explaining how her fiction developed. Her iconic story Hats, for instance, with its tale of maternal rivalry over the titular headpieces on a wedding day, is shown as originating from a true event, one which Kidman confesses doesn't paint her in a very good light at all. "In a memoir, the contract implies a certain degree of truth. I think you have to be as true to your memory and your experience as you can," novelist David Leavitt wrote.

Beside the Dark Pool certainly proves the veracity of this. It's a book in which recollections and incidents are consistently offered to the reader with an objective, factual scrutiny enriched by the author's well-recognised, superlative prose. If you enjoyed At the End of Darwin Road, then Beside the Dark Pool won't disappoint.

If you haven't read the first part of Kidman's memoirs, then this second offering is just the excuse you'll need to do so.

Beside the Dark Pool
By Fiona Kidman (Vintage $37.99)

* Siobhan Harvey is an Auckland writer who edited the new poetry anthology, Our Own Kind. It is reviewed on page 29.