Review: A weird and wonderful life

NEW TALENT: John Summers does a a reading at the launch of The Mermaid Boy at Unity Books, in Wellington. PHOTO: Matt Bialostocki.

A boy with a mermaid's tail, a jittery Texan yoga instructor and a pathological liar wearing a tartan bulletproof vest -- sounds like something the Cohen Brothers might conjure up. Or David Lynch.

But these motley characters are, in fact, straight from the memory of Greytown author John Summers, and featured in his short-story collection The Mermaid Boy.

Summers specialises in the art of creative non-fiction: autobiographical stories which read like fictional tales.

At first, I wondered how it was possible to make such ordinary anecdotes as trips to Nana's place and flatting in Christchurch sound like riveting adventures.

But I devoured The Mermaid Boy -- and later gushed to my colleagues "this guy's had such an interesting life".

Apparently, that's what you're meant to think.

The Mermaid Boy chronicles various moments in Summers' life -- childhood holidays, part-time jobs, hitch-hiking around New Zealand, and teaching English in Asia.

Summers certainly is a wordsmith, with events recalled in rich, almost visceral detail.

He and his brother, Liam, sell "pulpy, boozy-smelling" plums from their grandparents' house; Japanese children with hair slicked "into black domes" grab him by the tie in English class; he wanders into a room of people with "al dente bodies" wearing pyjamas and munching watermelon in a Chinese spa; and sluggishly reads War and Peace while ill with food poisoning in Burma.

His scenes are vivid: Burma is bright, with "blue skies and markets with bolts of green, purple and pink cloth, sacks of orange spice, and sprays of red betel nut spit on the pavement".

Post-earthquake Christchurch is bleak -- but he skips the crumbling buildings, and instead describes the miles of near-empty Asian restaurants, with their depressed inhabitants "looking up mournfully from the dish between them, empty if not for a puddle of brown sauce".

Most enjoyable were the offbeat characters -- or at least Summers' skill in making real-life people suitably outlandish. There was Mel, his boss while potato picking in Australia, leering from under a stetson like a prison guard, but gentle and doe-eyed without his sunglasses.

There was Limo, his boastful colleague, who "rescued" the Taiwanese ambassador from a mugging, and brought a bulletproof vest to work.

In China, he meets Tak, the Japanese teacher who frequents cat cafes to pick up women, and Texan Wayne, a highly-strung yogi. And there's Graeme, the chubby kid, with his own mermaid costume -- a source of discomfort for the young Summers.

Strange, yet enchanting specimens, who the author treats with both contempt and compassion.

What was striking was the sense of despondency throughout the book. Summers approaches situations with mistrust and pessimism -- from his descriptions of the "run-down, stained, unfinished" Chinese cities, to his uncomfortable conversations with his mother. There's a dysphoria there -- but one that makes it strangely beguiling.

Overall, Summers is a masterful story teller, with a prodigious way with words.

An excellent winter read.