Teenage combat zone

Press, 24 September 1988, Page 27

Teenage combat zone

Gemma, Brooke and Madeleine. By Heather Marshall. Hodder and Stoughton, 1988. 189 pp. $19.95. (Reviewed by Diane Prout) Three high school friends, united by their single-parent backgrounds and search for love, are the springboard for Heather Marshall’s exploration of teenage mores, drug-trafficking in secondary schools, and alternatives to the nuclear family. The locale is this reviewer’s old stamping ground in Lower Hutt. The place names are the same — Military Road, Mitchell Park/ the Epuni subway by night, and Witako Street. The landmarks, with one or two minor changes, are readily identifiable. The Hutt golf course, it seems, is still an area for sexual exploration a generation later. The author shows a warm understanding of the conflicts and uncertainties of her young characters. Gemma, the actress, searching for the ideal role, haunts the op. shops for costumes and props, but is secretly terrifed that her personality shifts are

signs of the madness that has confined her mother permanently to Porirua Mental Hospital. Brooke, the tender-hearted protectress of stray cats, yearns after the glamour boy of the seventh form and her feckless mother’s attention. Madeleine, passionate, selfish and beautiful, is the rebellious siren.

The problems, crises and tragedies of the book are typical of family and social life of suburban New Zealand in the 1980 s. Even if the final pairing of mothers and fathers seems a bit contrived and “Close To Home-ish” the dangers of alcohol, drugs, and superficial sex are only too realistically described.

Heather Marshall has a shrewd understanding of the difficulties of adolescence and the combat zone that living with the species entails. She has a good ear for the subtleties of playground repartee, but above all a tolerant and compassionate view of the miseries that attend this prickly phase.