Books: Literary excellence from New Zealand authors
The Ice Shelf – Anne Kennedy
Victoria University Press, $30.00
This is an unsettling novel. It doesn’t follow any conventions, nor does its protagonist, Janice. The story unravels in the form of an Acknowledgements section, written by Janice to be published with her novel, The Ice Shelf. Janice has a long list of thank yous to give out, interspersed with what she self-consciously points out to be a discontinuous narrative in which she reveals her broken relationship, her traumatic childhood and the reason she is currently carting a fridge through the streets of Wellington like a recalcitrant dog.
But what is Janice all about? Is this satire? Is it an investigation into psychological breakdown? How much insight does Janice have? She sets about her thank yous with ‘couldn’t wish for a nicer group of women,’ etc and then, complaining of passive aggression, passive aggressively annihilates their personalities and their actions towards her. First it’s Miles, who has dubbed her the murderer, and unfairly deprived her of half his beautiful apartment. Her parents, Sorrell and Harry, are to be thanked for the abusive childhood that has made Janice the writer she is today. If she’d had a nice middle-class upbringing with four walls, Christmas presents and a fridge what on earth would she have to write about?
Much of what Janice rails against, in her thankful way, is a writerly swipe at people in all their hideousness. Humble bragging, preaching left wing values from a position of white middle class wealth, the competitive and snide world of literature. She makes monsters from mice and infects every situation with her paranoia. Janice is a fridge dragging nightmare who has most certainly been wronged and who then sets out to alienate anyone who gives her an opportunity.
I love Janice. Her raw emotions, her inability to see anyone’s perspective but her own, her self-destructive urge to ruin any opportunity that comes her way. I love her because her creator shows us everything: I see the tiny Janice who held on to the hope of a Christmas tree, who innocently wandered into the woods (be warned, there’s a very difficult scene here), who has been so damaged and is yet so determined to force positivity on her experiences that she cannot but fail.
Kennedy shines a light on our snideness, our pretensions and our relief at not being Janice. The Ice Shelf is a deeply disturbing novel that can make you laugh out loud. It dares to be different without being obfuscating or boring. Janice is hypnotising, sweet and scary, an unravelling nightmare and Anne Kennedy’s The Ice Shelf is food for the brain.
The Ice Shelf is a longlister in the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
The Dog Runner – Bren McDibble
Allen & Unwin, $18.99
Ella lives with her father, half-brother Emery and three large dogs in an Australian near future city. Society has broken down after a fungus has wiped out European grasses from the world meaning there are shortages of everything: food, petrol, energy. Jobs are non-existent but Ella’s mother holds the valuable role of scientist at a power company and has not been home in months. As the city around Ella’s apartment crumbles into anarchy her father goes to find her mother; when he doesn’t return, the children head out to Emery’s mother’s first nations family way out in the bush, hoping that things are better off grid and that their parents will follow.
The children are aided by their fantastic wheeled sled dogs – powerful breeds trained to follow directions. Emery has secured a sled and two more dogs and their escape begins.
The journey is fraught with danger; Emery has to school Ella in abandoning her naturally trusting nature and she learns that people are to be avoided – they are likely to steal and hurt. The author does not shy away from the brutal realities of desperate humans. The relationship between the dogs and the children is convincing; the animals are as rounded as the human characters. Emery’s bush craft is plausibly useful, the references to the teachings of the first nations elders enlightening and Ella is strong, wily and quick to learn.
This is a hugely engaging, prophetic story with a strong environmental message. It feels eerily real- a post-apocalyptic story without the strange fantasies of Divergent or The Hunger Games and it is all the more frightening because of that. Best suited to robust, curious readers of about 9 years and up.
Bren McDibble also writes young adult fiction under the pen name Cally Black and is a multi-award winning author in New Zealand and Australia.
