H-J Kilkelly reviews the latest novel from Tina Makereti.

“…for within the damp and nebulous borders of swamp, water carries messages, stories, and even, gossip.” This was the line that got me – ki roto i taku puku, ki roto i taku ngākau. Engari, more than anything, in my body. And this was just page one.

The Mires by Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) is a departure from her previous historical settings, this time propelling us into an all-too-relatable modern world of catastrophic challenges to both our environment and our social connections. Despite that terrifying contemporary familiarity, The Mires is truly magic from beginning to end.

A gorgeous cover (by Jessica Cruickshank) belies a barrage of hefty topics including climate change, xenophobia, violence, white supremacy, colonisation, immigration, the devastation and degradation of our welfare system, and terrorism. To deal with such kaupapa in a warm, gentle fashion may seem impossible, yet Makereti achieves this with such quiet grace, you can’t help but feel under some kind of spell. Mired, if you will, in the exact intoxicating swampiness of which forms the book’s ultimate protagonist.

The book subtly conveys how the movement of humans echoes the movement of water. It’s a well-researched phenomenon that water has a healing effect on us; regardless of whether we’re aware of this or not. The sense of what’s under the land as we walk over top of it, the power of water finding its way, regardless. Water is in all of us and water is the connector through this book, through the lives of the characters and through the story world that is built so clearly. 

Having been thinking a lot lately about the daylighting of streams, this book felt acutely relevant, as we look to how the liberation of water acts as a response to climate change – by reducing runoff, creating habitats for species in need of it, improving aesthetics and, at its core, cleansing. A metaphor for how we counteract violence, both actual and implied. 

The Mires delicately weaves the lives of three women across age and country, intersecting in a group of flats built on swampy Te Ātiawa whenua, “sometime in the near future”. Janet, the “I’m not racist” Pākehā woman, uneasily coexists alongside her neighbours and is ill-equipped to deal with an increasingly diverse community. She’s the precise archetype of that person we refer to as “well-meaning”.

Janet has more in common than she realises with next door’s Keri, a survivor of domestic violence, who finds herself navigating parenthood of a matakite teenage daughter, Wairere; and Walty, her preschool age son. Keri’s tenacity shines through the pages as she does everything within her power to keep her children fed, safe and comforted. 

Completing the trio of women is Sera, mother to four-year-old Aliana, wife to Adam, and a recent refugee of a climate disaster (fires and droughts, a notable absence of water). Where exactly Sera and her family are from is never stated, nor do we know much about their “culture”, this instead being cleverly left for the reader to pepper with our own assumptions – and perhaps prejudices. 

Proximity throws these women together in a rising tide of resistance against danger that creeps closer with every page, revealing itself in different settings and escalating violences. With the arrival of Janet’s son, Conor, the vibrations become amplified, and discomfort creeps in harder and faster with each portrait of his developing white supremacist extremism. The building of this character, fuelled by his sense of entitlement (everything being everyone else’s fault; fears exacerbated by internet trolls he finds community with) feels eerily accurate: both understandable and pathetic at the same time. 

Inevitably, the community he thinks he has is not the one who has his back. It’s obvious the white supremacists are disconnected and unprepared, leaving each other to not only their own devices, but ironically, potentially in the care of the very “threats” they seek to eliminate.

The “quicksand of grief” provides a powerful metaphor for displacement and isolation. We feel palpably that each character exists in their own exile, whether perceived or literal. “We’re all just being processed, aren’t we? And somehow we are all in exile too.” Even for those residing on our turangawaewae, these scars are haunting, ongoing, and confronting.

Tension builds in beautiful descriptions that offer the reader a small window within which to be convinced that maybe it’s not as bad as we think: most notably in Conor’s flashes of uncertainty. 

And then the climax comes strong and fast, all of a sudden. While we hope we’re wrong, we know exactly what is being planned for. Alongside Wairere, we see it coming, yet it still arrives with an intensity and suddenness that I feel utterly unprepared for. Just like real life. 

Disappeared husbands are hinted at throughout the novel, and I’m more than once left wanting to know just how disappeared they are – but also I suspect that’s the point, deftly de-centering the men from the narrative. Even Conor, a vehicle for escalation throughout, is merely a device to move forward the danger, which is not a criticism of Makereti’s characterisation, but a strength. Conor, she shows us, could be anyone, and that is definitely the point.  

Janet’s growing recognition of who her son might be establishes an incredible tension, as we, the reader, also battle internally with how we might deal with such a scenario in our own lives. My favourite portrayal of motherhood in this book, which also echoes the need for community that forms the book’s core, occurs in a tender scene between Keri and Wairere. How often does it happen that when in deep pain we want to reach out to those around but but that deep pain makes us resist, and hide. Those teenage feelings of knowing that talking with those we trust can help, but not doing it, is portrayed so well it brought me to tears when the floodgate was finally opened. 

This novel reflects the waterways upon which both our world and our stories are built: the whakapapa of long lines of women come forth, bursting the banks as they navigate the wheke-ness of motherhood; the inevitable push and pull of wants for our children and how we protect them from an ever-encroaching world, our tentacles grasping at what we can, where we can. Like the very mires for which the book is named, a bogginess for which it can sometimes feel impossible to extricate ourselves from. We are repeatedly asked: how do we find the power to do what we need to do?

To review an utterly magical and important book such as this feels a privilege … and a scar. The Mires clearly speaks to how connection and understanding can be a powerful force for change; in recognising the things that bind us, represented by the powerful, watery flow underpinning the book, we are forced to see just how intimately connected we all are.

The Mires by Tina Makereti ($40, Ultimo Press) is available to purchase from Unity Books.