Poems that are time-transporting, generously nostalgic, vividly lyrical, and towards the end, refreshingly sexy.
This is an impressively taut, affecting debut. I didn't enjoy the second person narrative point of view in the first story and almost gave up on the book because of it - it felt more discombobulating than inviting me in as an imagined protagonist. But I'm so glad I persisted. The contrasts and intersections between Māori and Japanese cultures, both customary and contemporary, is fertile for storytelling and the author (tangata whenua in Aotearoa NZ) draws on her own lifechanging experiences as a gaijin, worker and mother in Tokyo. I found myself believing in the character motivations, their relationships and connections to land, and got swept into and along the spaces between the lines where deep grief lives. The way Lenihan expresses fathoms without drowning us is admirable. And when I went back to read the first story, I could appreciate that the narrative perspective was not an ambitious or experimental strategy - it was appropriately unsettling for what happens at the end. I am looking forward to whatever Colleen Maria Lenihan creates next.