Susan Hancock

The Peastick Girl Susan Hancock

The Peastick Girl tells the story of Teresa Matheson, her sisters Mollie and Cass, and the untimely and mysterious death of their mother. Teresa has returned to Wellington after five years in Melbourne where she has written a quest novel for younger readers, had two affairs, and met the demon Arkeum. Haunted by childhood memories and visions she is isolated in a house near her family home. What is and what might have been intriguingly converge. She is rescued by the return of Nikolai, her Russian lover. In a remote, seemingly fairytale location she finally stumbles across the truth of her past and finds an ambiguous peace. A sharply focused and often humorous account of New Zealand life-a world of men, Rugby, feminists who feel they've lost their way, Russian émigrés and powerful but disaffected Maori women-The Peastick Girl is a complex tragi-comedy of manners. Written in prose of eloquent intensity, this does for New Zealand passions and landscapes the kind of thing the Brontës did for Yorkshire. Chris Wallace-Crabbe, The Age Wellington is as central to this novel as Egdon Heath is to Hardy's Return of the Native... Katherine Mansfield's city has become a wild place dominated by rain, light, wind and sound. Rod Edmond, NZ Studies Network (UK) A brave, sensuous and wildly original novel-I've never read anything quite like it. Helen Garner Hard not to be blown away by this staggeringly beautiful novel. Marion May Campbell