Steve Braunias reviews a national treasure
And then there was the time I asked Fiona Kidman to say a few words, and she simply took over the whole joint, held it spellbound, was a dynamo of charm and warmth and generosity, and then sat down to wild applause. This was a few years ago at a literary event in Wellington. I was chairing a panel of debutantes – that is, a first-time novelist, a first-time poet, and a first-time something or other. Fiona sat in the front row. I got to thinking that here was an opportunity to invite one of New Zealand's most established writers - as the author of 10 novels (an 11th, This Mortal Boy, was published in 2018), as well as two volumes of memoir, six collections of poetry and seven of short stories – to speak to these new and emerging talents from her vantage point, and perhaps offer a word or two of advice. "Oh!", she said, surprised, when I put her on the spot; but she rose to the challenge in splendid and spectacular style, getting out of her chair to roam the stage, microphone in hand, and give a marvellous and entirely impromptu speech directed at each of the three young writers. They glowed with delight and the audience, too, lapped it up.
And yet she has never been any kind of showpony or extrovert. Her latest book So far, for now, a collection of personal and social essays, confirms her as a writer and a person of humility, modesty, and quiet strength. But another quality shows through, that was evident onstage in Wellington: Kidman is someone who cares about other people, and there are occasions when she cares very deeply. There is a powerful chapter that backgrounds her interest in Albert Black, hanged in 1956 for murder, and the subject of her sympathetic novel This Mortal Boy. There is an equally strongly felt chapter on Pike River.
Both essays have a common cause: justice. The families of the executed Black and the Pike River miners have both been denied it, in both cases by cabinet minister Andrew Little. Kidman called for Little to overturn Black's conviction from murder to manslaughter, but no action has been taken. As for Pike, and the recovery of the bodies, Little told Cabinet in March last year that he would not seek further funding to explore the mine, and permanent sealing began in July. Kidman's book bears witness to these injustices.
She writes of meeting Little, West Coast MP Damien O'Connor, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at a Pike River gathering in Greymouth, in April 2019. It makes for excruciating and shameful reading. "The Prime Minister went around the room glad handling. She stopped at the table where I was sitting, chatted about make-up and jewellery with a group of delighted women and then moved on. Other government ministers circled carefully. I spoke to Andrew Little. We had met, I reminded him, at the select committee hearing, two years earlier. Yes, he said, yes, thank you, of course. I approached Damien O'Connor. I'm talking to this lady, he said, bending towards an elderly woman dressed in red." What a superb telling.
Elsewhere she also writes of nude massage, birth control, grandparents. Some of the essays in So far, for now are minor pieces of writing, little separate items of mild interest; the book is an assemblage, a scrapbook, there to stoke the fires of the Kidman literary factory, keep her name in print. (Her previous book, also published by Vintage, was All the Way to Summer in 2020, a selection of short stories taken from earlier books). It lacks the ebb and flow of narrative memoir, of a life being led one day at a time. It makes for a slight book. You read these scattered and unconnected essays, and sometimes yearn for them to be held over to form the third volume of her memoir. CK Stead has published that many. Kidman is worth three, too.
Much of So far is a book of ghosts. Albert Black and the man he killed, the 29 men who never came out of the Pike River mine…The very strongest chapter is the very first, about the death of her husband Ian. Those with hearts of stone will weep. It is a beautifully measured account of what happened and what it was like. There is one moment when she holds back, but the grief is made even more profound. "I heard Ian fall. The thud. The sound will stay with me always. There are some writers who would tell you the last detail. I'm not one of them. I thought I was, but I'm not."
Kidman is a writer of sensible rather than decorative or exuberant prose. Form and function do the work; her mission, always, is to tell a story. The remainder of that opening chapter goes through the things that happened after Ian fell – the slow ambulance ("there was nothing to hurry for"), a phone call to monks in Island Bay (Ian was a Buddhist), the funeral (Annette King gave the eulogy) – in plain language but every word is exact, every word takes on the shape of grief.
The writer remains alert. Even in death, and even among a good, kind, decent nursing staff, someone will say something shocking and random. A nurse says to Kidman: "It's all right, it was an accident." What an italic! Kidman turns it over, studies its implications, and writes, "How could it have been anything else? Why did I need to be assured? When later came, I thought, Well, it happens, I suppose. You read about these things in the newspaper. I wondered how it had been determined as an accident, as opposed to not being one."
She returns to the subject – at once gross, and darkly comical – in the concluding chapter, "On widowhood." It ties up the book in a nice bow, loops back. "My husband died from an accident at home and it seems, from everyone I've talked to, that sudden death is a likely trigger for what looks from the outside like an unseemly response." Interesting, if a bit ungainly. But actually the preceding sentence, written more cleanly and plainly, transcends this observation with a universal message. "Death", she writes, "is not interested in what you want; it gets on with its business and you can't stop it from happening when it's ready." Only someone who has experienced it would have that kind of insight and it's a mark of Kidman's skill that she turns it into a nicely turned epigram.
Another stand-out chapter is her review of a new edition of the letters of poet Denis Glover. It's developed from a piece I commissioned her to write for ReadingRoom, published last year (not 2017, as incorrectly stated in the book's acknowledgements). The original version was outstanding literary journalism. The new version, expanded, is even better, a portrait in vivid colours of the drunk, gentle, bitter Glover, written with empathy and understanding. Glover could be an utter shit. Kidman doesn't bear any grudges. He's almost loveable in her telling. Not so her sketch in the same chapter of that pompous ass Allen Curnow. She writes of recording both poets reading their work for RNZ: "Whatever the difficulties in recording Denis, they were small by comparison with Curnow, who insisted on keeping his distance and called me Mrs Kidman, a more circumspect reminder that I should properly be at home in the kitchen." This is the very essence of a literary portrait: gossip so good that it reads as a character study.
An actual memoir, of the author making or trying to make sense of her life, would have been preferable. There are bits and pieces here that first appeared in Canvas, a Te Papa anthology, as a lecture. Scattered leaves... But it's churlish to labour the point. The opening chapter on Ian's death is among the best pieces of writing Kidman has ever published. Her closing chapter on life after Ian's death is less present, as you might expect – bereavement gradually loses its edges, becomes vague, formless. Ghosts of the dearly departed appear in dreams, sometimes in daylight. Kidman writes of seeing Ian's outline in the garden shed. And then: "I saw him move away, taking his time, the way he had not done when he died." There are some writers who wouldn't know how to tell you that. They'd overdo it, put too much of themselves in it, ruin it. Kidman isn't one of them.
So far, for now: On journeys, widowhood and stories that are never over by Fiona Kidman (Vintage, $36) is available in bookstores nationwide.
