BOOKS IN REVIEW
In Amber's Wake by Christine Leunens (Bateman Books, $35)
Reviewed by Stephanie Johnson. Johnson's most recent books are the novel Everything Changes and the biography/social history West Island: Five Twentieth Century New Zealanders in Australia. A longer version of this review will appear on anzliterature.com.
Christine Leunens has been living in Nelson since 2006, after an international career as a model and some success as a screenwriter. In Amber's Wake is her fourth novel; the most famous being Caging Skies, adapted by Taika Waititi for his award-winning film Jojo Rabbit.
This time, Leunens turns her eye on her adopted home, more particularly Auckland, stamping ground of the central protagonist, Ethan Grieg. The first-person narration begins in 1979 at the Nambassa festival, runs until 1991, and then casts off into the future. In a couple of paragraphs, Leunens swiftly evokes Nambassa in all its nudie-hippie-patchouli-dope-smoking colour, setting the scene for the first meeting of Ethan and Amber, who will become his great love. They are the same age, almost 18. Both are from relatively conservative families, and both are just setting out on adult life.
The novel would end not long after if the course of love ran smooth, but it never does, and Ethan and Amber have some fearsome obstacles. Leunens keeps the pace rolling at a swift clip as Ethan studies film at ATI (which she laboriously only ever refers to as Auckland Technical Institute), does a little OE, puts up with his mother on return, lives in scungy flats and pines for Amber, who gets married, but not to him. The limitations of the first-person perspective mean that the reader can only know what he knows about her life, from what she tells him and what he observes. Leunens wants us to believe that Ethan loves Amber forever and above all others, which a cynic might think is only ever a subject for a woman novelist.
The era is carefully evoked. During Ethan and Amber's early phone calls in 1979, his little sister picks up the extension and listens in. He remarks that it's "like Watergate". Santa Claus is still in his finger-crooking glory on the front of Farmers in Hobson St; in September 1981 the Tour is dividing us more than any mandate and the US submarine Phoenix is made unwelcome in 1983.
As the novel progresses, Ethan's voice matures. Early on, there is a penchant for exclamation marks and capitals. When Amber accompanies him to Eden Park, he observes:
"She went absolutely APE! The moment we got outside the grounds she started siding with the most hardcore protesters, freely throwing ROCKS and F*** YOUs at the POLICE!"
Leunens has listened to the way we speak, or some of us. Ethan remarks, "Man, did she know how to make me feel bad" and, "Boy was she quick to find just the right thingamajiggy to fit into another thingamajiggy."
Ten years older, the sadder, wiser man expresses himself more moderately, reflecting on his past from the distance of Antarctica while he makes a documentary.
The intended readership for the novel is blurred. It would appeal to young adult readers. Sexual content is never explicit. Ethan remembers: "We stared into each other's eyes for so long and then, still staring like that, came together … It was intense love, right from our hearts. Afterwards she clung to me like she never wanted to let go." Adult readers might struggle to take this seriously.
Likely, In Amber's Wake would make good television. It's episodic, the characters are kindly if sometimes misled, and a golden light of nostalgia is cast over all.
FIVE QUICK QUESTIONS WITH ANNABEL ABBS
You write popular historical fiction. What do you love about it?
I love doing research (anything really), but historical research is a particular passion. We're shaped by the past. We carry the vestiges of our ancestors in our DNA – their likes and dislikes, their hopes and fears. Historical research reconnects us to this, helping us understand who we are, what matters to us and why we're here.
What drew you to write specifically about Eliza Acton, author of the first cookbook with recipes?
I've always loved cooking. In fact I love everything about food – growing it, buying it, eating it. But it's not a subject that's often covered in fiction. Most great food writing is, in my opinion, non-fiction. So I was really writing the book that I wanted to read. But I also prefer to write about real women – I'm on a personal mission to return some of history's many lost women. I'd inherited a collection of antiquarian cookbooks from my mother-in-law who had been a cookery teacher in the 1950s, and in her collection I found several female cookery writers who had been enormously successful in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many published anonymously, but not Eliza Acton, who invented the recipe as we know it and was a bestseller for 60 years. Before her book Modern Cookery for Private Families, recipes were a long list of instructions written very plainly without much detail for professional cooks. Acton wrote for the middle-class woman with a family to feed. But she also wrote beautifully – her recipes make you want to cook them. This wasn't enough to make a page-turning novel but, when I researched her life in detail, I discovered that she had a compelling backstory - a failed career as a poet, thwarted love, bankruptcy, recipe theft and more.
What is your favourite Eliza Acton dish?
I've been cooking her recipes for four years now, working my way through her 600-page recipe book. Her soups, stews, puddings and cakes are excellent. I'm particularly fond of her apple and ginger soup, her Acton gingerbread, her madeira cake and her mincemeat – which my mother used to make every year.
You are a walker. Tell us about it.
For me, walking is much more than exercise. It's where I reflect, think, plan and prepare. I start every day with a walk where I plan my work but I also finish most days with a walk, where I switch off and focus on what's around me. All my holidays tend to be walks too – long trails that go on for days. I'm really happiest in walking boots.
What's the connection between walking and feminist artists like Simone de Beauvoir and Georgia O'Keeffe, who you have written about?
I believe that the time we spend walking, especially when alone in more remote landscapes, is vital for contemplation and creativity, but also a powerful means of emboldening ourselves. Beauvoir and O'Keeffe and the other women I cover in Windswept: Why Women Walk seemed to find their own voices and a sense of independence and inner strength by walking in the mountains (de Beauvoir) or on the plains (O'Keeffe). I've experienced the same, walking beside rivers and over hills. Everyone should try a long hike.