Sole without joy ends Gee’s trilogy

Press, 16 July 1983, Page 18

Sole without joy ends Gee’s trilogy

Sole Survivor. By Maurice Gee. Faber and Faber 1983. 231 pp. $18.95. . (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley) After the immense critical success of “Plumb” and “Meg” it seems brave, or foolhardy, of Maurice Gee to write such a different book for the third volume of the trilogy. “Sole Survivor” is very different in atmosphere and attitudes, and may well startle some readers who enjoyed the first two, but it is in fact the widely differing standpoints of the three narrators which give the trilogy its astonishing richness.

While all three deal with the effects of family relationships on the process of personal development, each one has a different general emphasis. “Plumb,” set in the New Zealand of 70 years ago, showed the effect of a man’s strongly held beliefs on his actions in religion and in politics; “Meg” dealt more with the domestic area of life. In this third book Raymond Sole, Meg’s son and a reporter, returns the story to the arena of politics, bu the political scene is very different from that seen in “Plumb,” and Raymond is a very different man from his grandfather. Maurice Gee maintains that as a novelist he is simply telling one man’s story, and that he writes in the particular not the general. But it is difficult to avoid drawing general conclusions about the author’s view of New Zealand politics today. Duggie Plumb, Raymond’s cousin, and the politician whose story forms the core of this book, is a man interested only in power and in the manipulation of others. Gee, examining again the. ways people’s growth can be twisted or stunted, shows brilliantly how Duggie’s childhood forms his character, but he shows too how dangerous things are happening in the political system, and how failed relationships within the family are reflected in the increasing divisions within society. As in “Plumb,” the structure of this novel has been carefully crafted so that an elaborate series of ironic parallels add depth to a seemingly artless narrative. “Sole Survivor” may, at first, appear simply a continuation of the family story, but both within itself and in conjunction with the two previous works it has a richness and a complex patterning which is all the more impressive for seeming so natural. Each of the three books is

artistically satisfying on its own; they are similar in some respects, but very different because they are modelled on such very different characters. Innumerable specific examples of this generalisation spring to mind, but perhaps one of the most telling, in suggesting both the different characters of Plumb and Sole and the different morality of their times, reaction of Plumb to the discovery of his son Alfred’s homosexuality, and that of Raymond Sole to his daughter’s lesbian relationship. Despite Sole’s tolerance, “Sole Survivor” is the most depressing of the three novels to read, mainly because Raymond Sole is an empty man. There is a joylessness about the book and even the comedy in it is black comedy. “Plumb” and “Meg” each ended with a faint note of hope. Plumb is “ready to die, or live, or understand, or love,” Meg hopes that she and Fergus “will treat each other kindly.” But Raymond can manage only a stoic acceptance: “Then I’ll go. Get on with it.” Avoiding the temptation to comment on the inexplicable error in binding which flaws this edition, and concentrating on the craftsmanship not of the publisher but of the author, one must express gratitude for a trilogy - which gives a view of New Zealand society and individuals, at once so compassionate, complex, ironic and satisfying.