Ted Dawe

I actually thought this was a stunning novel about a young boy struggling to find his place with his whakapapa always on his mind, the weight of expectations of his family, and how adrift he feels in his new school surroundings. It was a really good exploration of how youth can become disconnected from the past as they work to adapt to the harsh realities of a new environment. The more time Te Arepu spent away from his home and family, the more he began to identify as Devon. There are some graphic sex scenes, issues with consent, adult figures exploiting teens, and frequent drug use. I thought the characters were utterly engaging and loved the way they connected with each other both in his home town and at the boarding school. In parts the writing was wonderful however, I couldn't get enough sense of when this story took place with some mixed messages throughout. Still thoroughly enjoyed this one.… (mehr)

I absolutely loathed this book for a multitude of reasons; i too was disappointed in the way that the river's significance dwindled away to nothing. The rest of the novel for me operated in a moral and cultural void - perhaps this was what Dawes was trying to achieve; a vision of Maori adrift in the Pakeha city without tikanga and taonga to connect him to whanau. Im not sure and Im sure some boys' boarding schools were/are like this .. Again the timing seems all over the place - they're taking ecstasy pretty freely which has got to be in the last 20 years ....… (mehr)

Te Arepa lives on the East Coast with his grandfather, Ra. Nearby is a river significant to his iwi. During a eeling trip Te Arepa catches an enormous eel which drags him into the river and underneath the water. Whilst there he feels visited by his Maori Tipuna as well as his Spanish ancestor Diego Santos.

Later, a poem he writes about the experience earns him a scholarship to a privileged boys boarding school in Auckland. There he is renamed Devon and experiences a very different type of life that makes his small town seem dull and boring. The choices he makes have predictable consequences.

Yes, as the media storm said, there are descriptions of sex and drug-taking. But, if anything, they didn't add to the story and I feel were added in as an afterthought to cause controversy and heighten publicity about the book. As a librarian, I don't agree with censorship. The blurb on the back cover of the book seems to have been written for another story. I kept waiting for the river to be significant and come into the story and by the last pages I was disappointed.

I find that I have to also agree with Morag Gray's review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/669590443 There is significant weirdness with the timeline of the story: "Ra remembers his own grandfather, Diego, a Spaniard who arrived in New Zealand a fugitive and helped save their tribe from Ngapuhi, who, armed with muskets, were slaughtering smaller, unarmed tribes. This puts Diego's arrival, as an adult, in New Zealand as some time in the 1820s or early 1830s. Presumably Ra was therefore born in the 1850s or 1860s. Let's say 1860. Even if he was fifty when his daughter, Te Arepa's mother was born (1910), and she was thirty when Te Arepa was born (1940), that makes Ra 92 at the start of the book and the date no later than 1952. However, we must assume at least the 1970s or 1980s because Te Arepa's cousin Paikea (who is a lesbian) drives in kilometres per hour, and his schoolmate Wade's father drives a Ford Fairmont. Wade's grandfather was in Austria at the end of World War 2."… (mehr)