Book review: Addressed to Greta, by Fiona Sussman

Addressed to Greta, by Fiona Sussman

Addressed to Greta
by Fiona Sussman
(Bateman Books, $35)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Heritage

I have to admit that I'm prejudiced against people who don't like kiore mōkai (pet rats). So it's a shame that, as early as page 22, I read that "Greta loved animals … But she had not been able to feel any affection for Walter's two rodents." Oh dear.

Addressed to Greta is a new novel from kaituhi Pākehā (white New Zealand author) Fiona Sussman. It is about a 30-something white woman who, following a great loss, sets out on a journey to three different countries around the world in order to find herself through various means, including cookery, sex and romance. If that sounds familiar, it's because Eat Pray Love shadows the whole pakimaero (novel), although it is never explicitly acknowledged.

Despite being set in 2017, Addressed to Greta feels like it is happening in the pre-internet age and the discordance between the date references in the text versus my general impression of the setting kept taking me out of the story. It's not just that Aucklander Greta – who must be about my own age – refuses to use even a cellphone, let alone a smartphone; it's that hardly anyone in the pukapuka (book) seems to use computers or the internet in a way that we would have considered normal in 2017. It got to the point where, every time there was an unmistakably 21st century reference – such as when Greta visits the 9/11 memorial – it felt really jarring.

As I read I started to wonder how much of the Luddite kaupapa was Greta and how much was Sussman herself. The author certainly seems very keen on the romantic notion that paper letters are more authentic and meaningful than any form of digital communication – so much so that each review copy of the pukapuka includes a twee letter from Sussman to the kaipānui (reader), coyly hoping we will "enjoy the journey". I couldn't help thinking that it would have been much simpler to just set the entire pakimaero in the 20th century and be done with it.

When I wasn't being disoriented by the unmoored time-setting, however, I rather enjoyed Addressed to Greta. This was largely due to Greta herself, who, as the protagonist

and point-of-view character, dominates. Despite her dislike of kiore mōkai, Greta's awkwardness, courage, and strange blurtings-out charmed me. She is grieving both the death of her beloved friend Walter and the loss of the father who abandoned her when she was a child. Both men were gay and although as a queer person myself I like to see kaituhi including queer characters, I did have to roll my eyes a bit at Sussman's stereotyping, which falls into the "gay man as exotic victim" category (love of musical theatre, HIV positive, etc).

Overall, Addressed to Greta never quite achieves the heights that its puff quotes from a couple of local literary heavy-hitters led me to anticipate. It is an unsurprising albeit entertaining enough read that comes to exactly the conclusion that Eat Pray Love would have you expect.