But it only took a few pages before The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt took over my life. I was ''hooked'' as they say, and read its 306 riveting and stimulating pages in virtually one sitting.
Lena Gaunt is a female musician born in 1910, trained in the cello but whose specialty becomes the ''theremin'', an electronic instrument invented in the late 1920s. It begins with 80-year-old Lena being approached by a documentary film maker after performing at a musical festival in Perth.
This allows a narrative device that lets Lena pass ''suitable for public consumption'' information to the film-maker, while reflecting on more personal episodes of her life.
With locations ranging from Perth to Malaya, Sydney, Paris, St Ives in Cornwall, England, New York, and dear old Tomahawk Beach in Dunedin, and a life filled with dramatic moments and interesting supporting characters, there is never a dull moment. Indeed, once 17-year-old Lena moves to Sydney, she leads a full life in every sense of the word, mixing with musicians, artists and writers, and experimenting sexually and with drugs, though never to excess.
It's in Sydney that Lena meets the raffish artist, Beatrix (Trix) Carmichael, a woman twice Lena's age who wears mannish clothes. No guesses as to what follows, although their move from Sydney to ''grey stone and damp'' Dunedin, where Trix has landed a teaching job, adds some complicating features to their lives.
However, this is Lena's story, with the sea an ever-present factor in a life that reflects the many moods, colours and temperatures of the varying oceans she lives next to, and the classical composers whose music she interprets. The only fault I could find in this wonderful first novel was one or two continuity lapses, where the subject material changes without any apparent signal, e.g. no text markings. Otherwise, five stars and thumbs up.
- Ian Williams is a Dunedin writer and composer.
