Stonedogs

A novel that exposes the underbelly of society in new Zealand not seen by the casual visitor, or by many who live a sheltered, well off life.

Craig Marriner won the fiction category of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in 2002 (Montana Book Awards at the time) for this - his first publication. More importantly, he upset the establishment of NZ authors by being ‘an outsider'. He didn't come from university, he didn't graduate from creative writing courses, and the author snobs bagged him. Great example here, with a very good postscript by Steve Braunias.

Referred to, for publicity purposes, as New Zealand's answer to Irvine Welsh and Quentin Tarantino, there are perhaps some parallels. Like Welsh, Marriner uses dialect for many of the conversations (a raw Maori pronunciation which takes some adjusting to, and may trouble international readers who are not familiar with the ‘lazy' pronunciation we Kiwi's often fall victim to); he embraces the violence and the drug abuse that Welsh and Tarantino often glorify; he also has a go at the big picture philosophy that Welsh in particular captures so well without lecturing (Marriner in far less successful, as I note further below). Marriner and Welsh also both capture the underclass, where perhaps Scotland and New Zealand have something in common, but something very different from each other. Then there is, of course, the dark humour present in all three, although for me Tarantino operates in a space much further from the gritty realities of life, where he pushes way beyond the realms of possibility, and is therefore much safer than the other two. I guess the more I examine the parallels, the more I can by into them.

The other obvious take away from this book is Marriner's inclusion of so many contemporary New Zealand references and colloquialisms - perhaps a trap for young authors. While this can produce a very contemporary book, it tends to date a book also - a toss-up perhaps as to whether this is worthwhile? These will almost all mean nothing to either international readers, or local readers who were not aware of NZ society for, say, the 5 years prior to publication (mid 90's to 2000). Similarly, without some understanding of small-city NZ, some of the events might seem odd or ill-explained.

There a a few flaws in the book. I consider he didn't differentiate the characters enough, with speech mannerisms etc, and even one of the police used the same slang term, which came across as sloppy (this is probably something the editor should have resolved). Then there were the philosophical interludes - these just read like the author wanted to show off, or prove his intelligence, but really they just interrupted the flow of the narrative. I largely skipped over these, and feel they would have been best left out completely, saving 20 or so pages in this book. It perhaps suffers also from being a first novel, in that the author wanted to put all his ideas into it - some could have been pared back a little.

Then, in balance there were some good aspects. I liked that Marriner resisted the fairy-tale ending (enough said, no spoilers). I also liked that the reader had to work to understand some aspects of the story. A couple of times I realised something important had happened, but I had missed the pertinent feature, so had to skip back a page; there were some important details which were only mentioned in passing, but came home to roost later in the book. It was cleverly done. There remains one detail I did not figure out, but no doubt it is mentioned in the earlier narrative somewhere. The last few chapters jump around a lot, and it is not a novel to finish in a rush, it takes a little unpicking.

I own a copy of Marriner's second novel - I actually bought it before I bought this one, but wanted to read them in publication order. While it received far less acclaim than this one, I will read it in due course.

I recommend this with some hesitancy, as a reader would need to cope with the con's mentioned above to benefit from the pro's.

For me it is a 4 star read, impressive for a first novel.