We meet the well-intentioned Mr Mayor, whose obsession with the improbably, gloriously named Gondwana Project has eroded his life. The returned husband performs his own erosion, as he moves an entire hill in wheelbarrow loads to win back his wife.
And we meet Alma, dump-dweller, ex-rat-catcher, portrait-painter, whose female clients become his subjects, in classes where "certain women, no names, try to hold in their stomachs". Rooted in domestic detail, yet always liable to soar into the fabulous, the narrative winds through all sorts of transformations towards reverie, reconciliation, and an epiphany of "just as you are, please".
It's an emphatically satisfying denouement. Just as couples in Here At the End of The World We Learn To Dance found that the tango offered ways to unite or sever them, so in this novel, the men who take up brush, palette and canvas start to really see their partners.
Lloyd Jones has written recently that plot now matters less to him in his writing; that the exploration of language itself is becoming more of a preoccupation. The pleasures of this swooping, sensuous narrative make you hope there'll be room for both strengths in his future fiction.
• David Hill is a Taranaki writer.
Paint your wife by Lloyd Jones (Text Publishing $29.99) Reviewed by David Hill
