Rich futuristic parable

Press, 27 June 1987, Page 23

Rich futuristic parable

Running Away From Home. By Rachel McAlpine, Penguin, 1987. 248 pp. $18.99 (paperback).

(Reviewed by

Diane Prout)

Rachel McAlpine’s second novel is a surrealistic and comic fantasy about the serious issues of conservation, bureaucracy, and the nuclear threat. The story is told by Dot, who describes her mother’s flight from suburban realities like Alice down the rabbit hole. A bizarre sea voyage down the North Island coast on a mangrove takes her away from her job at the Department of Philosophy and ‘‘plants” her in a more natural environment.

Kehua, an ancient Maori ghost, shows Fern visions of the land’s history and apocalyptic horrors to come. Fern has a secret weapon, however — a marvellous psychedelic breast which works like a laser where

quality of life is threatened (by exploiters, rapists, and war-mongers). While daughter Dot plays

Diplomatic Wife in Washington and

worries about her mother’s aberrations, Fem makes friends with eccentrics, whose function in the novel is symbolic rather than realistic. Sexual stereotypes are parodied and inverted, the most comic of all being General Merit, an archetypal militarist intent on starting a nuclear war and retiring to The Sleeping Islands with Dot, who has been tricked into having his child. It is impossible to convey the flavour of this futuristic parable. It is

written with zest and irony, predictably rich in poetic imagery. It is certainly one of the most original books to come out on New Zealand attitudes to environmental and political matters.