I thought I'd start by reading a little list of some of the professions people have in The Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley. Apart from the practical, everyday photographer or novelist, there’s an illiterate Archival Assistant, a Sufi Soup Cook, and an Imaginary Languages Poet. There are Cartographers — but they’re cultists. Druids officiate at funerals. There’s a Sheriff of Te Aro, to which I say 'Yee-Ha!' There's differential topologist, which I think is like non-computational geometrist, and has to be real since my niece is dating one. And there is my favourite character, a dog. A very professional dog, who offers a comprehensive description of the tasks and duties of a dog.
The
characters are busy in this book, they’re hellbent, but the book isn’t busy,
noisy, crowded, or antic — even in the midst of brilliant descriptions of antic
antics! It is lively and forceful, but also deftly plotted, strongly real in it’s
evocation of the world of the senses; it is thematically shapely, and
purposeful in its transmission of the author’s feeling for life.
On a
cold winter night, Danyl, the perpetually pantsless hero of Unspeakable
Secrets of the Aro Valley, having fled a mental health institution, returns
to the valley on a bus. Danyl wants to find his girlfriend Verity. He wants
something to eat and a place to lay his head. But the Valley seems more
deserted and desolate than even midwinter rain could make it — and it’s not
just atmosphere, it’s plot, more plot than a cemetery, right from the start. Danyl
is the hero of the moment and, in Danyl speak, the moment has plans for him, no
matter what other plans his brain might be entertaining, and it should be noted
that Danyl’s brain is a distinct entity from Danyl himself — which I know is an
experience we all share. Danyl’s brain might zap him, prod him to pay attention
to things, but tends to fall ominously silent whenever he's having a good idea.
That’s a bit of a theme, people having good ideas, congratulating themselves
about it, and heading off energetically into calamity.
Mysterious
Mysteries of the Aro Valley is a novel of ideas. All
arcane thrillers are novels of ideas in that this is the genre whose engine
is the deep, indelible pattern of beliefs on human history. Many of the ideas
in this novel are quite respectable, or
recognisable. Notions people have about, for instance, the mathematical nature
of the universe; or the best way to manage an archive, balancing the need to
preserve materials against the needs of researchers; or how to run a local body
election, and the proven strategy in our politics of a candidate presenting
himself as sensible and friendly. In every instance the author is interested in
the idea itself, and the process of the implementation of the idea. Then he
sees the satirical possibilities, and then he takes it all a step further,
beyond the boundaries of satire. He uses
the idea, the pursuit of the idea in the world, the logical absurdities of the
pursuit, to generate a story. I am filled with admiration at Danyl’s ability to
to go beyond type, the type of book this is. Not just to use exotic or
complicated ideas as plot, or to use the absurdities generated by a situation
then taken to a logical extreme as plot, to not just move in one direction
evolving his story from esoteric idea to plot, but to be able to keep moving
back and forth, building energy in the narrative by laying observation upon
learning, upon satire, upon byzantine plotting and have the whole thing keep
moving not like a machine, but like a well turned compost that’s fertile with humour, and mood, and drama, and character
byplay, and warmth.
Danyl
McLauchlan's feeling for place and space is spot on. The novel's streets,
buildings, and weather are all recognisably Aro Street. But when the flooded
stormwater drains of the Aro Valley flow away into a culvert and old drain inspection hatch, the reader follows
them to an underground river, and of course the underground river has its own
secrets and dangers. And the flow of real to speculative feels as natural and
logical as water running downhill.
Mysterious
Mysteries of the Aro Valley is an admirable advance on the Unspeakable
Secrets,
which was a delightful, engaging, and charming book. But this book is a
mystery, a comedy, a work of speculative fiction; it is gripping and enchanting, it has that definitive
quality of an arcane thriller (a genre that Danyl and I are both very
interested in) of making human life and history seem larger and more magical,
more full of portent and jeopardy, and more purposefully patterned. None of the
novel’s types and tones undermines the other. It’s all of a piece. It’s
simultaneously exotic, and close to home. It looks with proprietorial affection
upon the Aro Valley as a kind of a microcosm of Wellington, and of New Zealand,
and various New Zealand qualities like getting stuck in, and stuck, and keeping
your head down, and running into unseen obstacles.
The
novel achieves a tenderness for people, for ways of thinking
about things — enthusiasms, obsessions, wounds — a tenderness for a
neighbourhood, for human organisations, and human aspirations. Danyl said to me
yesterday was there one rule of comedy he’d absorbed, that something was
funnier if you remove most of the jokes. Just about every very funny bit in the
book could have been played for more laughs, but Danyl has other fish to fry,
he wants to tell a story, and he doesn't want to dilute what will matter in
that story to the characters or to the reader.
So,
in conclusion, read this book. Find out whether Danyl will be reconciled
with Verity and his brain. Meet Steve, the Aro Valley’s Jack Reacher, see the
election night bonfire, the orgy, the giant sponge. Touch the spiral. Test the
reality of your universe. Spurn your loved ones and your bedtime and laugh like
an Aro Valley drain.
Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley is available for purchase at all excellent bookshops at through our online bookstore. p/b, $30
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