Escape into poetry

Press, 3 March 1984, Page 18

Escape into poetry

The Poetry Girl. By Beverly Dunlop. Hodder and Stoughton, 1983. 184 pp. $13.95. (Reviewed by Diane Prout) Beverly Dunlop’s apprenticeship as a writer for young children in the New Zealand Department of Education during the last decade has been consolidated in the last two years with two books. The first, “The Dolphin Boy,” a best-seller in 1982, established her reputation as a writer of quality fiction. Her second, “The Poetry Girl” was written in the same year as she was accorded the Choysa Bursary for Children’s Literature.

The writer has drawn on her family background in Taranaki and the Waikato for many School Journal articles, but her personal understanding of the ways of country life comes through most effectively in “The Poetry Girl,” a sensitive and at times moving account of a country girl’s emerging sexuality and social difficulties within an unsympathetic home and school. Natalia Olga Kondrotovitch is a slow learner. Tall and gawky, she is forced into the humiliation of an extra two years at intermediate level in the small primary schools she attends. Rows between her mother and her Russian immigrant father cause her to adopt the defence mechanism which gives the book its title. Where Jimmy Sullivan in lan Cross’s “The God Boy” washes his hands compulsively and sings in times of family crisis, Natalia memorises and recites poetry to ward

off the ugly and destructive words that crowd in on her. Almost every adolescent issue is explored in the novel. Feelings of loneliness, physical inadequacy, and academic failure are sympathetically evoked. Natalia’s inability to fit into the three schools she attends turns into chronic illness and absenteeism which causes her teachers and fellow pupils to ridicule her mercilessly. Her fierce and desperate need for dependable friendship, followed by betrayal of trust, should strike home keenly to adolescent readers seeking to cope

with that most difficult aspect of

growing up. One point, however, seems to stand out and that is the almost total lack of insight and understanding of her teachers. “Sir” is portrayed either as shell-shocked and incompetent, or as sarcastic and impatient with this problem pupil whose only talent is for English. It seems difficult to believe that such teachers were typical of the late forties and that possibly the author is drawing on her own unhappy memories of primary schooling. Things do improve for Natalia. She learns to ride a horse on the new farm where the family eventually settle after the father’s attempted suicide and struggles through to high school where her brother Alex assures her that life will get better. “The Poetry Girl” is sometimes funny, mostly poignant, and should appeal to 10 to 14-year-old girls, and their parents.