MONOTONOUS ISLAND LIFE

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33675, 26 October 1974, Page 10

MONOTONOUS ISLAND LIFE

Tryphena’s Summer. By William Owen. Collins. 326 pp. Thirteen years of living on Great Barrier Island in the Hauraki Gulf have given William Owen a deep sense of identification with the island and he has made it the setting for this novel. His affection for “the wild gullies and eroded ridges,” the chancy harbours and scattered settlements is evident in many passages of strong descriptive writing. If he is not quite so successful with the residents of Tryphena, and the captain and crew of the old scow Lady of Argyll, who people the book, it is not for want of trying. Owen knows his isolated inbred community thoroughly, Maori and pakeha, and portrays with a sure touch, the stifling monotony of a

life where the mere possibility of a council meeting can cause a whirlwind of speculation. A neighbour unexpectedly visits her husband down at the cowshed. Immediately Gladys Woods is on the phone, “What’s up? What’s all the excitement?” The present decrepit state of the Lady of Argyll—the ' island’s main link with I Auckland—is underlined by ; nostalgic references by Cap- ; tain Coleman, to the proud • old days of white billowing sails and races for a case of whisky. “Those old ships are gone and so are the old fellas. We’re just about the last of the breed.” Ship and settlement are together disintegrating. Much of the action on the island during this one summer, the feuds and fighting, the get togethers and gossiping, are centred on the young newcomer Wil-

fred Evans, who has bought “the old Schooner Bay place” and who sweats doggedly on, day after day, with his clearing operations, despite visits from such variously - motivated neighbours as romantic Barbara Hamilton and dotty Stan Tobin. It is commonplace for an author to weave a story around a well-known location. What makes this novel out of the ordinary is that the author says at the beginning, “the Great Barrier Island and Hauraki Gulf of this story are not meant to be either geographically or topographically accurate representations of those places.” Why not new names all round? “Tryphena’s Summer” was a runner-up in the Auckland Centennial Fiction Contest. The jacket painting of the scow in a high sea is by J. N. Speer.