Book of the Week: Airana, in light

The main concern I have with Airana Ngarewa, even though he has received good reviews and very good media for his bestselling debut novel The Bone Tree, published last year, and has already won more approval for his new book, the short story collection Pātea Boys, there is something patronising about all this praise, which can feel like a pat on the back, at worst a pat on the head, and we are not actually acknowledging or realising that this guy is really, really good, seriously good, is going about things with a depth and an artistry that signals he might be capable of producing a masterpiece.
The Bone Tree was no masterpiece. It had a pomposity to it. It wasn’t ready; more drafts, longer editing, maybe years of it, were required. At best it was promising. It’s the short stories of Pātea Boys which suggest greatness.
The best of these fictions are among the very best New Zealand short stories of this century, up there with Alice Tawhai, Emma Neale, Breton Dukes, Charlotte Grimshaw, Airini Beautrais. His stories may be better. His work has a glow, a certain kind of New Zealand light that no one else right now is sensitive to, or recognising. Of course it’s a provincial light. Of course it’s a Māori light. Māori provincial fiction – by Becky Manawatu (Westport), Monty Soutar (Gisborne) – is doing things and seeing things in a different, more striking way than urban literary whitey.
Pātea Boys is in two halves, one in English, the other translated in te reo. I think the very best story is “Egmont Street”. Like many of the stories, the characters are young Māori, just kids, not doing anything much, broke, funny, maybe trapped. It’s set in a playground in a park. There are five kids, “none of them playing, just sitting, watching the cars pull up and pull away, the old men smoke on the corner, the late sun of the sky settle and the red dusk rise.” Look at the easy lyrical confidence of the prose; look at the town, which he has made you see in 32 words. You know these New Zealand towns. You know they shut down at 6 other than the pub and the takeaways. You know the only thing on the road after midnight is a logging truck or some other truck hauling some other freight, its headlights picking out low buildings, a town clock, and then nothing, just farmland and waste. These towns are Airana Ngarewa land in Pātea Boys. Sometimes, specifically, it’s Pātea itself, as in “The Pātea Māori Club” (one of the weaker stories; there are others in the book where he also tells too much and shows too little) and “Bombs for the Boys”.
I should – actually I don’t have to, but oh well – declare an interest. I was among the first editors to publish his short fiction. Bravo to the very first; it would surely have given him the encouragement to keep writing, to keep chasing the vision he had that has evolved into the territory of young kids and small towns in Pātea Boys. He emailed on December 23, 2020: “I am not entirely sure of the tikanga but I would like to submit two short stories to be considered for the Newsroom.” One of them was “Pātea Pools”, retitled here as “Bombs for the Boys”. I was knocked out by it and replied, “It’s such a fresh piece of writing, the freshest I’ve read in a really long time in fact.” It remains as fresh, reading it again in this collection. Young kids, small town, immense feeling, and a light, considered touch. Nothing much happens. Good. It allows Ngarewa the space to float over the setting, a pubic swimming pool in summer, and observe.
After it was published in “the Newsroom”, I sent a link to Witi Ihimaera: “I had a feeling you might like it … It’s gentle and warm and evocative.” Really, I sent it to him because I felt the story was resonant of Ihimaera’s classic debut collection of stories about rural Māori, Pounamu Pounamu. He responded, “His story shows stylistic chops and tensile strength, and the twist at the end that brings the narrative to splashdown. I look forward to the next leap!” And there he is, in 2024, on the front cover of Pātea Boys, commending it thus: “Delight in the spray sparkling in the light.” I think he means a certain kind of New Zealand light.
Pātea Boys by Airana Ngarewa (Hachette, $36.99) is available in bookstores nationwide.