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Image: Supplied/Archi Banal
Image: Supplied/Archi Banal

BooksDecember 19, 2021

Greta and Valdin: Time for a cultural reset

Image: Supplied/Archi Banal
Image: Supplied/Archi Banal

Anna Rawhiti-Connell reviews the knockout debut novel by Rebecca K Reilly. 

Reading and writing about Greta and Valdin feels like an act of radical self-acceptance. This is not something many people say about writing anything. Usually it’s a process plagued by doubt. Yet in this case, the only real cause for trepidation is that Reilly can see and hear cliché as if attuned to a frequency many of us would miss without narrowing our eyes or straining our ears.  

“He’s a calm, gentle and thoughtful person. These adjectives sound like something I would write in an undergraduate exam after reading a short text about the friendship of Pierre and Emile or whatever.”

Noted.

Reilly’s titular brother and sister narrators are painfully aware of their own foibles. Though the characters judge themselves harshly, there is a lightness and instant relatability in the way Reilly examines their anxieties, and in turn, our own. She skewers the serious business of compiling identity and gives you permission to do the same: a pressure-valve release. 

“I have a strong interest in urban planning because I used to live in Germany.”

It’s a firm statement from Greta about a serious interest, but like many of the things we claim to care about so passionately these days, it’s also based on knowledge that’s been flimsily acquired. It is easy to know a little about a great many things. Greta is not an urban planner and you are not an expert in whatever it is you’ve decided is vitally important to care about today. 

Greta and Valdin flick off deft observations about themselves throughout the book. After an evening of taking government career-aptitude tests that suggest she’s best suited to being an actor or a playwright, Greta decides it is time “for a cultural reset for me personally”. As someone who has also done this many times, I flinched and laughed.

Character dialogue and inner monologues about standing desks, late-stage capitalism, Ponsonby, Epsom and Pākehā who don’t sing: her lines are successfully cast and reeled in, fresh catch dangling, but they don’t ever feel cruel or unkind. You get the sense she’d like you to take them in, enjoy them, yes, but carry them heavily, no. 

It would be easy to slip into sitcom-speak, and bill this novel as a story of a queer brother and queer sister navigating the highs and lows of love and life in the big city with a Russian-Māori-Catalonian family as the supporting cast. The canned laughter blurb doesn’t do it justice but setting, sexuality, ethnicity and family history are not unimportant here. Reilly has said that “maybe not lots of other people were writing books about eccentric queer Māori people living in Auckland Central who were essentially big nerds but still getting off with a lot of hot foreigners” and that “I think it would be nice if any queer person, person with OCD or any of the more nerd Māori felt somewhat represented in this book”. 

She unpacks the experiences of having a mantle bestowed upon you by virtue of what is known and simple to assume. Valdin is asked to lead karakia at work because he is the “Māori one”. Greta deals with the foisted assumption she is bisexual because “it’s just very hard to convince anyone that wanting to look pretty doesn’t mean you want attention from men”. 

The two share narration, alternating chapters, their initials signposting who is taking the lead. This is handy for the first 100 pages, especially as we are introduced to the supporting cast of family, friends, lovers and ex-lovers, a couple of whom share the same name. Reilly also includes a list of characters at the beginning of the book, a legend you can refer back to as various relationships and family secrets unfurl and intersect.    

After a while Greta and Valdin’s voices and patterns of thought become familiar and the initials fade into the page. Valdin, anxious, and nursing a broken heart that sits so close to the surface you can almost see his aortic chamber constrict, has a tendency to spiral in anticipation of the most fleeting interactions. He analyses them in the aftermath too. After running into an old acquaintance, who used to inspire attempts from Valdin to hold fruit alluringly in front of him, he hides in a liquor store on Auckland’s Symonds Street until “the man from behind the counter comes to check I haven’t died”.  

Both narrators are desperate to find love and both have unrequited loves. They wonder what they’re going to do with their lives and deal with the unnerving insecurity these open-ended questions and uncertain relationships breed.

For me though, a sister to two brothers, Greta and Valdin is about family as much as it is the pursuit of romantic love. The way our layered family histories rear up out of nowhere sometimes. The way we worry about how our actions will be received by our family and yet march on because familial bonds are often the most expansive. The way that, over time, you learn to carry this worry a little more lightly. Families can be extraordinarily flexible, stretching to accommodate and forgive a multitude of sins – and this family cares about doing so for each other. 

There is a great love shared between Beatrice and Linsh, the parents of Greta, Valdin and Casper, the eldest brother. There are also things for their children to learn about this great love and the lives of their parents and uncles. Bad decisions and consequences are revealed and made, but these seldom result in great tragedy. Instead they play out as real-life consequences often do; fallout that can be forgiven, and bleeding, though staunched, that flows into the lives of the next generation. Human error doesn’t have to deal the character an almighty blow. Sometimes we cry in our bed for a day and then find things very funny. Sometimes we just graft on newly discovered pieces of ourselves not yet knowing how they will orient us in the future. Reilly’s characters do not grip revelations in a way that obviously forces plot forward, instead they absorb. 

Linsh and Beatrice are written as real parents of children in their 20s in the second decade of the 21st century – not caricatures who don’t know how to text or use social media. Linsh attempts to settle the stupidest, funniest fight via an online call to Russia. The recognisable inner monologues and glorious domestic insights (the flexible washing basket “that every person in the whole country has”; learning ”how to set the VCR to record McDonald’s Young Entertainers”) feel familiar because Reilly writes intergenerational family so well. She joins her contemporaries at this prolific juncture in New Zealand literature in just writing this country the way it is, unapologetically, without excuse.   

The siblings know things about each other in that way siblings do. Concerned advice is shared with one about the other. It is given genuinely but concealed within are the silly slights and inevitable jealousies that brothers and sisters nurse over time. Casper tells Greta he is concerned Valdin is disrespecting her. Greta is a little hurt that Valdin isn’t prioritising her. This hurt is remedied quickly and the wounds aren’t fatal, but they can always be exploited.

Knowing observations and in-jokes light up this book, like the unspoken language and understandings often shared by siblings. Yet Reilly is adept at nesting references that might belong to one city or one generation amongst scenes and dialogue that open them up to others.  The descriptions of Auckland perfectly exemplify the dichotomy of a city that is both beloved by its residents and cursed on a daily basis, by them and the rest of the country. “I look up at the Sky Tower as if it’s the Madonna. Please save me, beautiful stucco icon of the City of Sails”. 

Such references never feel exclusive. You don’t need to be very online or very Gen Z to understand them – it’s a book I could easily recommend to my mother – but the thrill of reading about places or specific cultural totems you know or can situate, isn’t dulled by this inclusivity. Mentions of dumpling restaurant New Flavour and Food Alley (RIP) result in the same kind of dopamine hit I recall when I first started borrowing Mum’s Barbara Anderson books and saw The Listener referenced in Girls High.

Greta and Valdin may be unkind to themselves but they extend a grace and generosity to others and receive the same from those around them. This is a generous book. Generous in the humour it delivers; generous in its story about love lost, family, and our fragility and hurt; generous in its embrace of contemporary New Zealand. I read it during lockdown and – without sounding too cliché or using adjectives from an undergraduate essay – it reminded me that it is OK to find humour in difficult times, and to find joy and acceptance amongst a whole lot of mess.

Greta and Valdin, by Rebecca K Reilly (Victoria University Press, $35), is available from Unity Books Auckland and Wellington.

Two kids on a couch, Christmas tree beside them, reading a book.
(Photo: Cavan Images via Getty ; Design: Tina Tiller)

BooksDecember 17, 2021

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending December 17

Two kids on a couch, Christmas tree beside them, reading a book.
(Photo: Cavan Images via Getty ; Design: Tina Tiller)

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.

AUCKLAND

1  Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland by Lucy Mackintosh (Bridget Williams Books, $60)

Answer to the question “What do I buy an Aucklander for Christmas if I want them to think I’m Number One?”

Oh, you want to know more than that? Okay. In the Herald, Simon Wilson calls Shifting Ground “a tremendous read”. More words follow: “It’s a history of the city focused on what we can learn by studying ‘place’. Landscapes, locations and the secrets and counter-narratives they reveal. Not history as we learn it from the written word, she says, so much as history that comes out of the ground. ‘Start with what’s under our feet,’ she says, and inform it with ‘mātauranga Māori, archaeology, geography, botany and material culture’. And, I would add, the arts of storytelling. The book is full of stories at the edge of stories, stories buried by the heavier tales of prevailing cultural understanding, stories that make you think again.”

2  Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (Viking, $35)

Lucy Barton stars in her third excellent novel. What an attention seeker.

3  Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love by Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad (Ebury Press, $55)

A delicious addition to any shelf. The Guardian gives a sweet summary: “In 2020, most of us finally turned to that ‘one shelf in the pantry’, the one full of overlooked ingredients, and tried to make a meal. The shelves of Yotam Ottolenghi and his test kitchen team, led by Noor Murad, may have been better equipped than most, but in this guide to making the most of what you have, it’s inspiration that shines, rather than reliance on fancy ingredients.”

4  The Promise by Damon Galgut (Chatto & Windus, $37)

This year’s Booker winner.

5  Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (Simon & Schuster, $35)

The book that forced Books editor Catherine Woulfe to use the word “uplifting”. In situ: “I hate the word ‘uplifting’ but really there’s no other word for it – the reading of this book lifted me up, left me more hopeful, more peaceful. It’s been weeks now and that feeling has lingered. It is exactly the book I needed.” 

6  Aroha: Māori Wisdom for a Contented Life Lived in Harmony with our Planet by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)

What more can we ask for over Christmas than Aroha? 

7  These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury, $33)

A new essay collection by the mastermind author of Bel Canto. Patchett shares stories and thoughts about her family, friendship and cancer, her decision not to have children, and appreciating the precious moments of life. The title essay was first published in Harper’s Magazine, if you want to try before you buy. 

8  The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris (Tinder Press, $35)

Historical fiction set at the end of the American Civil War. It was longlisted for the Booker, is part of both Oprah’s Book Club and Obama’s Summer Reading 2021 Selection, and Harris has been compared to Colson Whitehead. Accolades out its ears, basically. 

9  Snow Country by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson, $37)

A new novel that loosely follows Faulk’s 2005 book Human Traces.

10  Things I Learned at Art School by Megan Dunn (Penguin, $35)

Megan Dunn is a delight of a local writer, and her book of essays and memoir is one of our favourites this year. It’s filled with lines like, “The [high school] library was organised by the Dewey Decimal System and raging with prepubescent curiosity” and “The Mammoth Hunters. Not sure, never read it. Pretty sure it involved mammoths though.” And that’s within 200 words of this excerpt – serious bang for your buck.

WELLINGTON

1  Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (Simon & Schuster, $35)

2  Aroha: Māori Wisdom for a Contented Life Lived in Harmony with our Planet by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)

3  Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love by Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad (Ebury Press, $55)

4  The Promise by Damon Galgut (Chatto & Windus, $37)

5  Dune by Frank Herbert (Hodder, $28)

The 1965 sci-fi classic, whose new movie counterpart is currently gracing our big screens.

6  Imagining Decolonisation by Rebecca Kiddle, Bianca Elkington, Moana Jackson, Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Mike Ross, Jennie Smeaton and Amanda Thomas (Bridget Williams Books, $15)

A little book with big staying power. It has been a turbulent shocker of a year, quite frankly, but Imagining Decolonisation has been as steadily and stubbornly on the bestseller list as one thing chemically fused to … something else. (Sorry, but it is nearly Christmas.)

7  Silverview by John le Carré (Viking, $35)

Le Carré’s final novel. RIP, spymaster.

8  These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury, $33)

9  Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney (Faber, $33)

The newest of the Rooneys.

10  Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci (Fig Tree, $45)

Another lovely Guardian summary: “The actor Stanley Tucci is a famously charming man and in Taste, his belly-led memoir, he has written an utterly charming book. Happily, it is short on actorly anecdote and long on tips and recipes for the rustic pasta dishes that he grew up with as an Italian American in upstate New York, as well as the stories that underpin them.”

Bridget Jones (the one from Stuff, not the one from the brain of Helen Fielding) says reading it is “like a meal with a mate”.