The sequel to the award-winning Auē explores themes of resistance, trauma and long-buried secrets.
Becky Manawatu described her debut, 2022's Auē, as "a breath in". Its follow-up, Kataraina, she has called "a breath out". It continues that first novel's themes of intergenerational trauma and violence within a largely Māori community based around the town of Kaikourā, on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. Auē won multiple awards in New Zealand and became an international bestseller; while Kataraina fleshes out its backstory, it can also be read as a thrillingly immersive standalone.
The main focus of this new novel is a minor character from Auē, Aunty Kat, the maternal aunt of brothers Ari and Taukiri whose story was covered in the previous book. Almost erased by domestic abuse in Auē, here she is accorded her full name, Kataraina Te Au, and a narrative that swings back and forth from her birth in 1981 to the present: early January 2020. Kataraina, the only surviving sibling of three, with a brother dead through gang warfare and a sister believed drowned, has been in a coma in hospital following a beating from her partner, Stuart Johnson. Stuart was then shot dead by Beth, the young daughter of Kat's childhood friend, neighbour, and - most recently - lover, Tom Aiken. This episode formed the dramatic climax of Auē.
Since the killing of Stuart, a stretch of water on his property, owned (or rather appropriated) by his family for decades and known locally as Johnson's Swamp, is fast increasing in shape and size, for no logical reason. "The land had been septic," according to Tom. "Johnsons spent more than a bloody century draining it. Like, man, let it be. All around was humped and hollowed, except this bit in the middle that seemed to, well, seemed - excuse this poetry shit again - to slip into chaos. It's hard to describe, but just looking at the ground made you feel confused, like you were looking at something you shouldn't be looking at."
This "septic" aspect colours the history of the swamp and its part in the various incidents that shape Kataraina's story and that of her whānau (family). The ugly reality of coercive control thrums through the generations, from the unspoken violence meted out to Katarina's beloved Nanny Liz by her husband, Jack, to Kat's own situation with Stuart. Yet Nanny Liz is also an emblem of resistance to Kat. Aged 15, sneaking out to meet a married Pakehā (white New Zealander) - her fisher father's boss - Kataraina borrows a coat from her grandmother as psychological protection: "Nanny Liz’s faux-fur jacket watched like a cat".
Each of the book’s chapter headings refers to Stuart’s death, suspended through history: “many years after the girl shot the man”, “one day before the girl shoots the man” and so on, until “the moment the girl shot the man”. It is interweaved with the much older tale of a young Māori woman’s encounter with a British mercenary at the swamp while gathering spearmint, a cataclysmic event that echoes through each chapter. It is relayed polyphonically, as if occurring simultaneously in the past and the present, with information given incrementally. “Our ancestor once lived close to the house where he was shot. She was at the river when a man approached her with some peaches from a can, but then he attacked her.” The woman fights back.
This incident is integral to Tom's assertion that the swamp contains "something you shouldn't be looking at", as a group of environmental scientists in the present day investigate its mysterious swelling. The land is viewed, to some extent, as tapu (sacred). Cairo, one of the scientists, recalls how her friendship with colleague Hana came about: "over a cigarette on a beach, which Hana ... had only brought with her because she fantasised about smoking a tobacco pipe or cigarillo in Ōkarito, like Kerewin. Turned out they'd both read The Bone People before going there; art informed their work, whakapapa informed their work." This exchange (whakapapa is essential to Māori genealogy and ties together history, culture, identity and the land) is crucial to the context of the book and to New Zealand (Aotearoa in Maōri) literature more generally. Kerewin is the chief protagonist of Keri Hulme's 1984 Booker prize-winning novel The Bone People: Manawatu is, like Hulme and also Cairo and Hana, of Māori heritage. Her writing is often compared to Hulme, both in its subject matter and its free-associative structure.
Manawatu's blend of myth, legend and direct ancestry is unforced; when the swamp finally disgorges its secrets, the corporeal fuses with the supernatural. A taniwha or female water spirit, by turns malignant and benign, rises to the surface along with actual human remains. Vengeance seethes and simmers. Yet this is far from an unearthly or fey novel, but one rooted in materiality: food and laughter, fear and sex. "We burst from the trees, we were always bursting from the trees," reflect two of the characters. An unstoppable life force dominates Kataraina: both the person and the novel.