Michael Schmicker's Blog - Posts Tagged "blokes-muddling-through"
Blokes Muddling Through (BOOK REVIEW)
Modern life is rough on old-fashioned men.
Patriarchal, proud, stoical, breadwinners are anachronisms in a world of women’s liberation, plumbers on call, and hamburgers from McDonalds. Who needs a strong man these days? In “Blokes Muddling Through,” New Zealand author P.D.R. Lindsay casts a sympathetic eye on a half-dozen Kiwi husbands, fathers and grandfathers struggling to cope with life changes they mostly resent and resist. The poetic result is a spare collection of melancholy, bite-sized stories filled with bitter musings and dark surprises.
A recently widowed sheep rancher struggles to understand his grandchildren, “plugged into their techy gadgets, speaking in weird jargon, afraid of a bit of healthy dirt.” He suspects the kids are trying to “push him out, move him into a town house, or one of those gated retirement villages,” so they can turn his honest, working ranch into a tourist attraction. In another, a dairy farmer fights with his wife over their son’s decision to become a potter instead of taking over the family farm. She wants the boy to try his wings, instead of becoming just another “red necked, ultra-conservative, back block, cow cockie.” In a third, two elderly men – a pakeha (European) and a native Maori whose ancestors have farmed side-by-side for six generations – face up to the fact that their deaths will spark legal battles and drastic changes to the land they love. Whose children are worse, asks the pakeha: “my greedy, money-loving bastards, or your political shit-stirrers?” A fourth finds sad-sack, suburban husband Tom – “I’m not a fan of changes. Why fix what’s fine?” – watching in dismay as his wife hits 50, determined “to get out of the straitjacket I had enclosed her in.” Soon she’s taking film appreciation courses and fancy cooking classes, and planning a vacation to Greece – without him. (This is my favorite story, with a clever twist worthy of Alfred Hitchcock.)
This quartet of carefully observed, finely crafted stories is decidedly dark reading in the aggregate, so Lindsay wisely includes some comic relief in the anthology. “Kidnapped” will make you laugh out loud. Crotchety suburban gardener Arnold Sidebottom despises the young university students rooming down the street – “Louts, cheeky sods! Fancy they’re so clever.” When they grab his prize-winning garden gnome, it’s all-out war. “Fred’s Wall” is set in England, where a low-brow, no-nonsense, retired school bus driver takes tourists to visit the ruins Hadrian’s Wall – “All that fuss for a few tumbledown stones,” he snorts – until he finds himself smack dab in the middle of a pitched battle between Roman legionnaires and hairy Scots. They’re just filming a movie – right, Fred?
Six, stubborn, getting-on-in-age guys trying to figure things out.
Married to one? “Blokes” is the perfect read for that rainy day when you find yourself wrapped in a shawl, tea in hand, staring out the window, wondering what to do with your muddler.
Author Lindsay is a prolific short story writer, with over 100 pieces published in literary journals, magazines and e-zines in the UK, U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Her novel “Tizzie” recently made the 2014-Novels Long List for the prestigious M.M. Bennetts Award for Historical Fiction.
Patriarchal, proud, stoical, breadwinners are anachronisms in a world of women’s liberation, plumbers on call, and hamburgers from McDonalds. Who needs a strong man these days? In “Blokes Muddling Through,” New Zealand author P.D.R. Lindsay casts a sympathetic eye on a half-dozen Kiwi husbands, fathers and grandfathers struggling to cope with life changes they mostly resent and resist. The poetic result is a spare collection of melancholy, bite-sized stories filled with bitter musings and dark surprises.
A recently widowed sheep rancher struggles to understand his grandchildren, “plugged into their techy gadgets, speaking in weird jargon, afraid of a bit of healthy dirt.” He suspects the kids are trying to “push him out, move him into a town house, or one of those gated retirement villages,” so they can turn his honest, working ranch into a tourist attraction. In another, a dairy farmer fights with his wife over their son’s decision to become a potter instead of taking over the family farm. She wants the boy to try his wings, instead of becoming just another “red necked, ultra-conservative, back block, cow cockie.” In a third, two elderly men – a pakeha (European) and a native Maori whose ancestors have farmed side-by-side for six generations – face up to the fact that their deaths will spark legal battles and drastic changes to the land they love. Whose children are worse, asks the pakeha: “my greedy, money-loving bastards, or your political shit-stirrers?” A fourth finds sad-sack, suburban husband Tom – “I’m not a fan of changes. Why fix what’s fine?” – watching in dismay as his wife hits 50, determined “to get out of the straitjacket I had enclosed her in.” Soon she’s taking film appreciation courses and fancy cooking classes, and planning a vacation to Greece – without him. (This is my favorite story, with a clever twist worthy of Alfred Hitchcock.)
This quartet of carefully observed, finely crafted stories is decidedly dark reading in the aggregate, so Lindsay wisely includes some comic relief in the anthology. “Kidnapped” will make you laugh out loud. Crotchety suburban gardener Arnold Sidebottom despises the young university students rooming down the street – “Louts, cheeky sods! Fancy they’re so clever.” When they grab his prize-winning garden gnome, it’s all-out war. “Fred’s Wall” is set in England, where a low-brow, no-nonsense, retired school bus driver takes tourists to visit the ruins Hadrian’s Wall – “All that fuss for a few tumbledown stones,” he snorts – until he finds himself smack dab in the middle of a pitched battle between Roman legionnaires and hairy Scots. They’re just filming a movie – right, Fred?
Six, stubborn, getting-on-in-age guys trying to figure things out.
Married to one? “Blokes” is the perfect read for that rainy day when you find yourself wrapped in a shawl, tea in hand, staring out the window, wondering what to do with your muddler.
Author Lindsay is a prolific short story writer, with over 100 pieces published in literary journals, magazines and e-zines in the UK, U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Her novel “Tizzie” recently made the 2014-Novels Long List for the prestigious M.M. Bennetts Award for Historical Fiction.
