Growing Up In New Zealand

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30793, 3 July 1965, Page 4

Growing Up In New Zealand

Among the Cinders. By: Maarice Shadbolt. Whitcombe and Tombs. 301 PPMr Shadbolt is already well known for two fine collections of short stories. In this, his first novel, he tells the story—sometimes comic, and, often moving—of a boy coming to terms with experience. Sixteen-year-old Nicholas Flinders, who tells his story in his own words, lives in a little town south of Auckland called Te Ika. While on a hunting* trip in the hills behind the town with his Maori friend Sam, he discovers a burial cave, and induces Sam to enter it without first tell-

ing him what lies inside. In his panic at on tapu ground, Sam rushes blindly over the side of a steep cliff and is killed. Nick tries to rescue him. and in 1 doing so breaks a leg. During i his convalescence, guilt fori; his friend’s death makes him I apathetic towards his ownjj

recovery, and his well-mean- ■ ing but ineffectual parents are unable to help him pull himself together. At this point his grandfather comes to see him. A survivor of the pioneering era, Grandfather Flinders is a rumbustious character, bel- ' ligerent and stubbornly inde--1 pendent, who, when not pitting himself against the land is engaging in lawsuits against his neighbours. He persuades . Nick—against his parents’ wishes—to stay with him for a while, and later he takes him on a trip to the scenes of his pioneering youth. They visit the ruins of the homestead where Grandfather Flinders grew up. and then range out over the North Auckland back-country. Nick learns the pioneering arts of

panning for gold, digging for Kauri gum. and felling trees: and as well he nurses his grandfather when the old man is taken ill in a deer-stalker’s hut. Eventually society catches up on the vagabonds. | and Nick returns to his ’family matured by his experiences, and ready to take

I his place once more in humdrum Te Ika. But the story does not end with Nick’s return home. There is a second journey this time to Auckland, where he has some clashes with urban sophistication. Unlike his grandfather, the people he meets cultivate him for selfish ends. He discovers that his brother Derek is planning to use his experiences as material for a novel, and in his anxiety to preserve his identity and tell the real truth about himself, Nick ap. proaches one of Derek's writer friends to copy down the story to his dictation. The writer turns out to' be Shadbolt himself, who at this point makes a brief entry as a character. This concluding section goes on rather too long. Some of the episodes appear contrived in a way that the earlier scenes do not, and the impact of the story as as whole is weakened. Nevertheless, this is a fine story of a boy growing up, and the deceptively artless vernacular is sustained with conscious skill.