Talia Marshall’s Whaea Blue is one of the most anticipated books of the year. Here’s why, and a taster.

Talia Marshall (Ngāti Kuia, Rangitāne o Wairau, Ngāti Rārua, Ngāti Takihiku) is a writer in a class of her own; frankly one of the very best writers in Aotearoa today. For those of us who follow her work — who gulp down each new piece whenever they appear online and on her Substack — Whaea Blue is a banquet of riches, the full force of a singular voice wrapped in one of the best covers of 2024. Marshall’s writing is a feat of craft and voice and a restless nature that always surprises the reader: all together this makes for a potent, immersive and energising reading experience.

Whaea Blue is alarming in its honesty, and in its unsettling intelligence: in her endorsement for the book, Becky Manawatu uses the word “frightening”; Victor Rodger uses “whirlwind”; Emma Hislop, “fearless”.  Whaea Blue is all of those words as well as funny, sometimes even romantic. Marshall’s work is frightening because it is so acutely observant: of those around her and of herself. A whirlwind because the mind at work questions, and shifts, and turns. Fearless because there is nobody else that writes like this: so raw and refined, knowingly and openly chaotic.

The following excerpt is a chapter called ‘Dolphin Princess’ and relates to an earlier chapter in the book called ‘This is the way he walked into the darkest, pinkest part of the whale and cried don’t tell the others’. In that earlier chapter Marshall and Roman (a recurrent character in the book) have one a hell of a fight on the way to Beau and Nanny Shy’s unveilings. The excerpt gives a taste of what Talia Marshall fans are talking about and will no doubt leave you wanting a whole lot more. / Claire Mabey

Dolphin Princess

After the unveiling for Beau and Shy, we are on the ferry crossing back to Te Waipounamu. I have picked a fight with a couple because it is very early in the morning and people around them (me) are trying to sleep but they are very loud about their love. I have already had to endure a marae sleep—I shouldn’t also have to encounter a couple in love. 

They call me an overstayer, and she tells me it’s clear that I’m not getting any. So I almost start a movement, even as my son and Roman move to another part of the open lounge so they don’t have to defend my honour. Fuck those two, I think—and fuck these two, because the others in the lounge are on my side: heads start breaching the surface of blankets to tell the couple to shut the fuck up too.

My leadership of the movement is brief, because I get a bit excited and mortify my new followers by hissing a war cry, telling them all I’m tangata whenua, when no one has asked. Over the other side of the lounge Roman is shaking his head at me, but it’s too late for him to pretend not to know me. 

It is not even 7am and I’ve ruined the rest of the day in the car for my son with my self-destruction.

But the woman was wrong about both things. I was getting plenty. Roman remarks once we are in the safety of the vehicle that they must have thought I was an overstayer because of my hair and clothes. He decides the pyjamas I’m wearing are too tropical, that I look like a Pacific Islander. This is almost a compliment from him because he loves anything to do with Tonga, insisting that Nātis came from there, when they weren’t growing out of the mountain. 

There is a video he is fond of watching when I stay with him in Gisborne two years later. It is a big event for the Tongan royal family, but most of the video is just the preparation of the feast. When I ask Roman why he enjoys it so much, he counters that it’s the tinkling of the cutlery because he retains the ability to surprise me. He changes the video to a blind boy taking part in a kava ceremony who can sing and sing and sing.

Whaea Blue by Talia Marshall (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $40) is available to purchase from Unity Books.