Hungry and Frozen<\/a>.<\/p>\nOn a scene-by-scene level, Hoods Landing is one of the most intricately crafted debut novels I\u2019ve read recently. Vincent plows through the narrative in fourth gear, not quite speeding but not quite meandering through, to get us home by Christmas, to misuse a metaphor. Scenes that are so full of conversation that they could be plays never feel stagy, and she knows exactly the right moment to zoom out and lightly touch on a character trait, or another observation, before throwing us back into the fray. It\u2019s an impressive ability, and one that you expect from someone who has been around the prose block a few times, not someone making their debut.<\/p>\n
The beauty of a book that is full of so much death \u2013 short interludes focussed on characters within the orbit of our protagonist-family are delineated with a cause of death and a date of death \u2013 is that it is also so full of life. You could argue that there are characters that take precedence over others, namely Bufty (the matriarch in everything but name), Irene (the tarot reading mystical great-grandmother), and Rita (the prodigal daughter who opens the novel), but Vincent never takes sides. It\u2019s also very likely that you\u2019ll walk away with your own favourites, or the ones that speak to who you are in your own family the most, but if your favourite characters are anything other than the twins-but-not-twins running the local pub, you\u2019re sadly incorrect.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m an easy target for Hoods Landing. Towards the end of her life, my mother and her partner pulled up roots in Papakura and moved to Onewhero, a small town a few clicks in from Port Waikato, and out from Pukekohe. While the book isn\u2019t explicitly set here, it might be set in the next, lightly fictionalised, town over. Every town you drive through is somebody\u2019s home, and I feel so many of the realities of Onewhero and its surrounds captured perfectly here by Vincent. (Also, full disclosure: during my time at The Spinoff, I was delighted to commission Vincent, and we share a deep enthusiasm for movies and musicals older than us both. I\u2019m both fan and friend for reasons that extend beyond our sensibilities.)<\/p>\n
This part of New Zealand is its own ecosystem, although really every town, every village, every street is its own ecosystem if you zoom in close enough. Dollar stores, gas stations, pubs are their own landmarks, their own gathering points by virtue of there being nothing else. Even when you\u2019re holding a grudge of 30 years against someone for a perceived slight, you still make them a casserole when you know they get sick.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most crucially, Vincent doesn\u2019t bring an outsider\u2019s lens to this community. It would be so easy for this family to be rendered in the broad brushstrokes by someone who doesn\u2019t stop on the drive between Papakura and Hamilton, but Vincent deeply understands the dynamics of a family that may have types, but those types exist because even families need to put their individual family members into boxes, just to get through the day. She pulls out layers from beneath the third generation especially, the aforementioned Rita, the many-husbanded Judy and the flighty Jayne, to reveal depths, and deep humour. Without ever feeling schematic or formulaic, every character gets their chance to show their humanity, their best side, and their not-so-good side. Just like every Christmas lunch.<\/p>\n
The Gordons would perhaps not describe themselves as a happy family, and perhaps neither would those that orbit them. They have death, they have secrets, they have heartbreak. They certainly get on each other\u2019s nerves. In that way, they feel as real as any family you might sit behind in church on Christmas Eve, or see in the waiting room at a hospital. <\/p>\n
With Hoods Landing, Vincent has made the Gordons feel not just real but full of heart and soul, using the tools of a writer deeply skilled in the craft of fiction prose.<\/p>\n
Hoods Landing by Laura Vincent ($35, \u0100poro Press) can be purchased from Unity Books<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Brooks reviews Laura Vincent\u2019s tumultuous saga of a messy family set just south of Auckland. Originally published…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9904,489,156,77275,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-147884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-book-review","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-laura-vincent","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}