At a time when publishers are feeling understandably
risk averse, it’s good to see fresh talent still emerging. Auckland journalist
Bianca Zanders’ first novel, The Girl
Below (Penguin, $30) is by no means flawless but it demonstrates admirable
depth, skill and inventiveness, marking her as one of the more interesting new
Kiwi writers I’ve come across in recent years.
If I had to stick a label on this book then it would
read supernatural coming-of-age drama. Its key character Suki Piper is an
emotional mess. Adrift in the world, grieving for the mother she lost to cancer
as a teenager and haunted by a dark incident in her childhood, Suki is
desperately trying to find a place she belongs.
The story opens with her return to London’s Notting
Hill after 10 years in New Zealand. “It was only May but the streets flared
golden like they do in high summer, and all around me the neighbourhood sighed
with so much privilege that I felt shut out – a stranger on the block where my
childhood took place,” Suki tells us.
Her re-entry into London life is grim. She is short on
cash, an unwelcome guest in a friend’s flat and incapable of sorting herself
out. When she discovers an old neighbor Peggy Wright still living in the
building where she grew up, Suki latches on to her and her daughter Pippa.
Reconnecting with the past brings back Suki’s
childhood nightmares. In Peggy’s flat she finds the creepy statue of a young
girl that left her rigid with fear as a five year old. But it’s the garden, and
an old air raid shelter, where most of her terrors are centred. For it was
there, after a memorably drunken party, she and her parents became briefly
trapped underground and the trauma of the incident has never faded.
Suki finds herself revisiting the garden and the
party, both in memory and in supernatural sequences. Magical realism is a tricky genre and some
readers might find it frustrating that Zander never makes it clear if this is a
haunting or just dreaming. But I think she gets the balance right and it’s no
bad thing to leave it up to the reader to decide whether Suki is
psychologically disturbed or if there really is something spooky happening.
Dark, gothic and sinister seems to be the tone of
choice for so many New Zealand writers. The
Girl Below, while it’s all those things, is also sparky enough to be an
entertaining read. To me it feels
like a novel that has been a long time in the writing. There is a lot going on
with the story: it moves between three time periods and countries; is crowded
with themes and ideas. For the most part Zander keeps a firm hand on things:
the structure works, the prose sings, the people hold your interest even if
Suki is passive for a lead character. There were some points when it did seem
overworked and the ending was surprisingly frail but, all in all, this is a
strong debut and Zander a writer with a promising future.
Footnote:
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