Whitcoulls Recommends: Sea Change and No Words for This

Sea Change by Jenny Pattrick. Jenny is a longstanding writer of great New Zealand fiction, perhaps best known for The Denniston Rose some years ago. Her new one is lovely. Set in a small village slightly north of Wellington, which is completely cut off after a massive magnitude 8 earthquake in the South Island’s Alpine Fault and a subsequent tsunami, a number of the inhabitants decide to ignore a relocation mandate and manage their own survival. Their plans come under threat when a mercenary property developer sees the opportunity to buy up many of the abandoned houses and build himself a mini empire. Full of characters you can really warm to, and an all too credible premise. 

No Words for This by Ali Mau. Ali has been a journalist and broadcaster on the NZ scene for many years, and recently was a leader of the local #metoo campaign during which time she met many brave women – and ultimately came to realise that if they could share their stories so could she. She’s  had a terrific career with many rewarding jobs and raised a family, but her world came crashing down one night when her sister called and opened the can of worms that was their childhood. This is a truly courageous book and beautifully written. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
AB joining me now as Joan mackenzie. Good morning, Hello,
What have you got for us today?

Speaker 3 (00:17):
The first book I've got is by Jenny Patrick, who
I'm sure many listeners will remember, wrote a book twenty
two years ago called The Denniston Rose, which in a
way I think started to change the landscape of New
Zealand fiction because it was really commercial, really accessible, fascinating
in its history and did incredibly well and it really

(00:38):
ultimately was a story about survival. While she's done it
again in this new book, which as I say, is
twenty two years later. It's called Sea Change, and it's
after a magnitude eight earthquake strikes the Alpine Fault in
the South Island and a tsunami arrives afterwards, which devastates
and cuts off a small village slightly north of Wellington,

(00:59):
and the government decided it was unsustainable and unsafe, and
they decreed a mandatory relocation of all of the inhabitants.
But a group of really resourceful and determined people decided
to stay and live off the grid and under the
radar and it's really well done because each of them,
in their own special way, has particular skills which, when
they're all pulled together, mean that the basic necessities for

(01:22):
a small community can be taken care of, and of
course the social fabric amongst them starts to really meld.
And I've found it really heartwarming to see the bonds
that they develop and how they're so focused on their
survival so cleverly. But it's all threatened when a really nasty,
unpleasant developer who has a holiday home there, decides this

(01:43):
is an opportunity for him to buy up a number
of these no longer lived in houses and build a
little estate, a little mini empire for himself. So he
sends his people over to check it all out, and
he's got a plan to take most of the area over.
And I will say it's fair to say there's a
number of reasonably stereotypical characters in here, the property developer

(02:05):
being so avaricious and so unpleasant being one. But I
thought it was a really heartwarming story based on something
which for us is unfortunately quite credible, which was the
earthquake and tsunami, And I thought that the courage and
the strength of the characters was just lovely.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Oh good to hear. And you've got a book that
I know a lot of people are talking about. Allie
Moore has written a memoir.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah, and she'll need no introduction to most listeners because
she's been on our screens and in our newspapers for
years and years now. But she was born and grew
up in Australia. She grew up in a family which
wasn't easy. Her father was a rough and tough newspaper
man and she eventually followed him into that world, the
world of journalism. But he was a difficult man to

(02:49):
please and a deeply misogynistic individual. So she grew up
both with him and in the newsrooms of Australia at
the time. And I don't know how she survived it,
because I'm damn sure that I wouldn't have anyway. She
eventually came to New Zealand and married here and had
kids and had a really good career. But one night
she got a phone call from her elder sister who

(03:10):
cracked opened something that had been festering for forty years,
which was the fact that when those two were children,
their father interfered with them and they suddenly had to
front up to the reality of what had happened to
them and how they were now going to deal with it.
And it was compounded when she discovered that her nephew
had also been abused by her father. So obviously there

(03:32):
were very dark elements to this book, but I will
say she writes beautifully and incredibly courageously, and it's the
story about how you confront this stuff, and if they'd
done something about it earlier, would her father have received
a different kind of justice, And would their relationship with
their mother, who protected him, have been different And the

(03:53):
kind of relationship their mother in her later years was
desperate to have with her daughters, to have them close again,
but everything had been so fractured that it wasn't possible.
It's a very brave book to have written, because at
the time of writing her parents are both.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Alive, just about to ask that if.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Father just wants everything to go back to the way
that it was before, but of course for Allie and
her sister, it's just not possible, and they're finding ways
to live with this. And of course, as many will know,
Allie's gone on to help so many women who found
themselves in similar very difficult positions. I thought it was
a very i'm going to say, deep and meaningful book,
and despite that fame, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Thank you so much. Joan so Alimow's memoir is no
words for this, and the first book that Joan spoke
about was See Change by Jenny Patrick.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio