However, the novel is not simply an account of a man seeking to control every aspect of his followers' lives - charismatic, harsh, relentless. This is a novel of women struggling to exist, bearing countless children, silenced, isolated, denied any life beyond drabness and domestic labour.
It profoundly moved me on the first reading and, 25 years later, it has moved me again.
It is a novel of the entangled experience of three women: Isabella the grandmother, Annie the mother and Maria the daughter. We begin and end with the daughter, having encountered sections on the others in between.
The novel is, as the title implies, a symphony of revelations. Isabella's book of secrets allows Maria to see the past, the present and the future differently, but equally important is the way the three characters add substance to each other.
Each woman has been shaped, to some degree, by the oppressive doctrine of McLeod, yet each woman becomes something other. There is love, desire, big rebellion, little resistances, thought, speech, distance, intimacy, dreams, self-protection and loss.
Like a good wine, the novel has aged beautifully. Just one point of discord: the arrival of a young boy at the end of the book represents "a new kind of person, without allegiance to a particular group or race". I believe we still need these various allegiances to sustain who and how we are.
Kidman has blazed a trail for women as both readers and writers, perhaps more than any other New Zealand author.
Beyond politics, she cherishes story and character, and that marriage produces writing with both edge and heart. The Book Of Secrets is no exception.
Paula Green is an Auckland poet and children's author.
