Something Old

Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.

“BREAKWATER” by Kate Duignan (first published in 2001; republished as a “VUP Classic” by Victoria University Press in 2018; $NZ30)

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of reading Kate Duignan’s newly-published and very accomplished novel The New Ships. While I had heard of the novelist, I had not up to that point read any of her work. Then, a few weeks ago, through the post there came an interesting collection of review copies from Victoria University Press. They were three books in the press’s new “VUP Classics” series – re-prints of work that has earlier appeared under the VUP imprint. I was sent new impressions of Bruce Mason’s famous dramatic monologue The End of the Golden Weather (first published 1962), of Bill Manhire’s poetry collection Lifted (first published 2005) and of Kate Duignan’s first novel Breakwater (first published 2001).

Having admired The New Ships, I at once pounced on Breakwater and read it. Kate Duignan is also known for her short-stories, but I was surprised to discover that Breakwater was her only novel before The New Ships. So there was a seventeen-year gap between them. Had Duignan’s central concerns changed between these two works? I think not, for in both she is essentially interested in matters of family relationships and parenthood, but the focus has shifted a little. Breakwater is set exclusively in New Zealand (mainly Wellington), whereas in The New Ships, Duignan is also interested in New Zealand’s connections with Europe.

But enough of these redundant comparisons. Considered in its own right, Breakwater is a very assured account of stresses placed on two women who have become single mothers.

Ella is a biology and zoology student, aged about 20, who gets pregnant, decides to keep the baby, but does not want to stay with the baby’s father, who is a decent and concerned enough bloke with whom she remains on reasonably good terms. So she’s into the life of a young, single mother trying to finish her degree and survive without a partner. If Duignan were a lesser writer, what follows for Ella could have become a tract on the travails of the single mother. We get a realistic account of the young woman’s morning sickness and cravings and realisation that she shouldn’t drink or smoke while pregnant. There’s the delicate matter of what she should say to her family, who live up near Gisborne. More important, there’s the problem of where she and the baby will be able to live and how she will afford child-care. And there is a very realistic scene of the pains of childbirth.

But this is no tract. Ella is a credible and contradictory character, wanting her independence but knowing she will have to rely on others. We are never incited to wag the finger at society for not addressing a “social problem”, as the people Ella encounters are, in the main, as helpful as circumstances allow.

This is where the other single mother comes in. Through Tessa, a fellow student, Ella is introduced into the home of Tessa’s middle-aged mother Louise, who is willing to let Ella and her baby board with her. Louise is single because her useless and abusive husband disappeared years previously. On her own she has raised her young-adult children, Tessa and Jacob, while running a restaurant. So there is a relationship and a contrast between two women of different ages. In Louise there is some wistful nostalgia for lost opportunites in her life (she sometimes tries to read canonical literature to “improve” herself). There is certainly a practical business sense and a desire to make her own way in the world. But there is also much instinctive maternal feeling.

I have made this seem much more patterned and formulaic than the novel is. Duignan’s chief achievement in Breakwater is her ability to set both Ella and Louise in a credible context – and that means creating interaction with many other believable characters.  Tessa’s brother Jacob is a general arts student, moody and apparently manic-depressive, who hangs out with a guy called Chris, a law student who has been favoured by Jacob’s mum because he has such nice manners. But both Jacob and Chris are filled out in detailed back-stories which give a very nuanced sense of how two young men can be close friends but also essentially so different in character. Louise’s brother Kevin seems a blokey bloke, a laconic professional fisherman without a family – yet in the event showing more empathy for others than we at first realise. Dare I say that this is a novel by a woman, and mainly about women, which does not make a case by denigrating males? Some males in Breakwater do reprehensible things, or at least things which have negative consequences for others – but they are seen to have their motives and a display degree of genuine remorse (NB genuine remorse - not the type of remorse that the convicted display in courtrooms).

I see Duignan’s narrative skill most in a birthday party scene, involving many characters – including a number of minor and peripheral one. The reader never gets lost in the cross-talk and hasty connections made in such a situation, because Duignan has taken the care to flesh out her characters and in the process make them easily identifiable.

At this point, however, I hit the brick wall that I often hit when reviewing new novels. When writing the “Something Old” sections of this blog, I am often happy to reveal all the developments of a plot on the understanding that the book in question is probably already well-known. In the case of Breakwater, however, even though it is a reprint, I am more inclined to treat it as I would a new novel. And I believe it is not reasonable to give away its major turning-point – although, regrettably, the blurb-writer for this new impression does just that.

Suffice it to say that almost exactly at mid-point, where Part One becomes Part Two, something traumatic happens in Louise’s family which places even more stress on her, her children and Ella. How all characters react to this brings their motives and concern for others under even closer scrutiny. The trauma is treated by Duignan as unsentimentally and realistically as everything that has gone before it, and we understand why two characters in particular have been developed in such detail earlier in the novel.

Breakwater is a well-written novel which I would criticise in one particular only. Towards the end, there appears to be some strain in tying it and all its characters together, so that both Louise and Ella reach a neat point of reconciliation with their lives – a symbolic closure. This seems a little pat, even if we have been shown how resilient both women are. Even so, this is an engaging and carefully crafted novel.

Frivolous footnote: I spent some time trying to figure out the full significance of the novel’s title, Breakwater. I understand there is a literal breakwater mentioned a number of times, and this is also the name of the restaurant where Louise works. Perhaps the roaring sea is relevant, and one of the “improving” books Louise tries is Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.  I thought maybe a breakwater represented a parting of ways in life – just as a breakwater divides the incoming waves. But then another thought occurred – is it also a reference to the breaking of waters before childbirth? I really do not know.