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Dunedin
Shena Mackay's perceptive black comedy takes us between New Zealand in 1909 where Jack McKenzie arrives from Glasgow to become a pastor in the New World, and present-day London where his descendants are leading very different existences. Past and present merge in Mackay's most poignant novel.
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First published January 1, 1992
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About the author
Shena Mackay
52 books32 followersShena Mackay was born in Edinburgh in 1944 and currently lives in London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and also Honorary Visiting Professor to the MA in Writing at Middlesex University.
Her novels include the black comedy Redhill Rococo (1986), winner of the Fawcett Society Book Prize; Dunedin (1992), which won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award; and the acclaimed The Orchard on Fire (1995) which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Her novel Heligoland (2003) was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Novel Award.
Her novels include the black comedy Redhill Rococo (1986), winner of the Fawcett Society Book Prize; Dunedin (1992), which won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award; and the acclaimed The Orchard on Fire (1995) which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Her novel Heligoland (2003) was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Novel Award.
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unfinished
September 11, 2019I started this last year and got to page 189, where I’ve remained inextricably stuck ever since. Finally, I’ve convinced myself to admit that it’s a lost cause. After loving The Orchard on Fire, I thought I’d get on well with another Mackay novel, and I was intrigued by the dual timeline of this one: it opens with a brief section in 1909 New Zealand and then jumps to 1989 London. I kept thinking we were going to get links back to the historical chapter; although it’s clear that brother and sister pair Olive and William Mackenzie, the main characters in the 1989 storyline, are related to those earlier Mackenzies, I got bored of waiting to figure out how. After all these months, all I can remember is that William is traumatized from a student’s death in Paris on a trip he was chaperoning; and in a moment of madness Olive kidnaps a baby on the Tube. Mackay writes vibrant descriptions with a lot of sensual detail (comparable to A.S. Byatt), but the plot missed the mark for me in this one.
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September 29, 2019Shena Mackay rendkívül tehetséges író, könyvei újraolvashatóak, mondatai szótárazásra késztetnek, szereplői hol szerényen beleolvadnak az esztétikus és-vagy társadalmi színezetű tájleírásba, hol sarkukra állva figyelmet követelnek életnagyságú apróbb vagy magaslatibb megmozdulásaikra. A Dunedin is ilyen szövedékű könyv, egyszerre sok minden, öntudatosan épít túlrészletezésekre és hiányosságokra, teljesen szintetikus módján szinte hiperrealisztikus.
Egy (nagyon rövid huszadik-) századdal korábbi családtörténet részletei fogják keretbe, a napjainkban (vagyis a kilencvenes évek, és az épp hogy hordozható mobiltelefónia hajnalán) lezajló, egymást kerülgető és keresztező párhuzamos történeteket. Egy foglalt ház, London*, a rettegett szegénységbe való lecsúszás körül sasszézó, egymásra utaltságukban utat kereső emberek, afféle társadalmi hajótöröttek a Dunedin szobáiban bonyolódó életükkel és drámáikkal. A narrációt átható humor és irónia nélkül talán el sem lehetne viselni ezt az életet. A főszereplő Olive olyan keserűen, küszködően, emberien negatív (de nem gonosz), hogy komolyan mondom: akár magyar is lehetne – mintha a megfelelő depriváltságok birtokában már el is nyerne egyfajta kulturális állampolgárságot…
Ám az állampolgárság, a lakhely, jövedelem, osztály és rassz, jogosultság, egyáltalán: létjogosultság tragédiája, ahogy időről időre előtüremkedik a mindennapiság mintás tapétái mögül, leginkább a kifejtetlensége jogán kaphat helyet ebben a könyvben. Ahogy nem kap nagyobb terjedelmet az egyik tragédia a másiknál, a gyermektelenség és a gyerekkori emlékek kísértése az intézményesített diszkriminációnál, a kiközösített élet az öregedő úttalanságnál: valahogy mindent felerősít ahelyett, hogy egymást elnyomná ez a rengeteg borzalmas történet. És mindez nagyon szépen meghangszerelve, bár időnként nehéz volt átvágni magamat a szövegbozóton, bőven megérte a küzdelmeket az összkép.
A brit (skót, Új-Zélandi) kultúra mélyvize teli van zavarossal, ez mindenképp csakis úszóknak való kaland.
*Úgy tűnik, a londoni lakhatási válság és házfoglalások irodalma erős volt abban a késő 80-as, kora 90-es években, ez lesz már a harmadik ilyen témájú olvasmányom az elmúlt évben – persze könnyen lehet, hogy csak arrafelé húz a kezem.
Egy (nagyon rövid huszadik-) századdal korábbi családtörténet részletei fogják keretbe, a napjainkban (vagyis a kilencvenes évek, és az épp hogy hordozható mobiltelefónia hajnalán) lezajló, egymást kerülgető és keresztező párhuzamos történeteket. Egy foglalt ház, London*, a rettegett szegénységbe való lecsúszás körül sasszézó, egymásra utaltságukban utat kereső emberek, afféle társadalmi hajótöröttek a Dunedin szobáiban bonyolódó életükkel és drámáikkal. A narrációt átható humor és irónia nélkül talán el sem lehetne viselni ezt az életet. A főszereplő Olive olyan keserűen, küszködően, emberien negatív (de nem gonosz), hogy komolyan mondom: akár magyar is lehetne – mintha a megfelelő depriváltságok birtokában már el is nyerne egyfajta kulturális állampolgárságot…
Ám az állampolgárság, a lakhely, jövedelem, osztály és rassz, jogosultság, egyáltalán: létjogosultság tragédiája, ahogy időről időre előtüremkedik a mindennapiság mintás tapétái mögül, leginkább a kifejtetlensége jogán kaphat helyet ebben a könyvben. Ahogy nem kap nagyobb terjedelmet az egyik tragédia a másiknál, a gyermektelenség és a gyerekkori emlékek kísértése az intézményesített diszkriminációnál, a kiközösített élet az öregedő úttalanságnál: valahogy mindent felerősít ahelyett, hogy egymást elnyomná ez a rengeteg borzalmas történet. És mindez nagyon szépen meghangszerelve, bár időnként nehéz volt átvágni magamat a szövegbozóton, bőven megérte a küzdelmeket az összkép.
A brit (skót, Új-Zélandi) kultúra mélyvize teli van zavarossal, ez mindenképp csakis úszóknak való kaland.
*Úgy tűnik, a londoni lakhatási válság és házfoglalások irodalma erős volt abban a késő 80-as, kora 90-es években, ez lesz már a harmadik ilyen témájú olvasmányom az elmúlt évben – persze könnyen lehet, hogy csak arrafelé húz a kezem.
December 6, 2017
I was so disappointed when the narrative of the story switched from that of Jack Mackenzie, a Scottish minister newly arrived in New Zealand in 1909, to that of his descendents, Olive, William and Jay, living miserable existences in London of the eighties, supposedly under some curse, the effect of a stolen shruken head that Jack had taken from the home of his Maori mistress while in NZ. I really struggled with the story after that and so many of the sub-plots were left unexplained and unresolved.
December 17, 2022
I came to Shena Mckay’s Dunedin by chance. I have to admit that I was rummaging the shelves of a charity shop that was offering three for a euro and I had already picked two. Neither this book nor indeed the author had across my consciousness before then.
The form of the book is a rather unequal sandwich. The bread on either side, the closing slice particularly thin, takes us to New Zealand in 1910. Themes of racial superiority, colonialism, blind paternalism and resentment from afar do appear, as does the unquestioning myopia that all religions produce. The themes emerge but then disappear, or rather dissolve. One expects them to reappear, but they rarely do, and then only insubstantially. In the pages of Dunedin, we seem to skim across reality, rather than engage with it.
At the book’s heart is a look at the relationship between the individual and culture. The individual is who we are, but culture is the medium which allows out our consciousness to find expression and identity. When these aspects of human existence, the individual and the culture, are in conflict, then a possible result is a loss of identity or at least an unrequited search for one. Identity conferred by family is part of culture, and it is the idea of family that threads its way through this book, albeit in a rather disconnected and anonymous way. In the end, we are all part of a family by accident of birth.
I suppose this is the heart of Dunedin. The book’s problem, identified many times elsewhere, is the character of Jay, who is someone who appears when required, but is one of the family. He is there. He is around. Other characters are conscious of him, but rarely listen to him, understand him, or even tolerate him. Perhaps that’s the point. Jay is young, of mixed race, hails from New Zealand and lives on the streets in London.
The wide filling in the sandwich is the book’s central section, which is set in South London. Now I used to live there and the detail of Sheena Mckay’s description indicate that she did too. The deep significance of the line “2B or not 2B” cannot fail to be understood by anyone who was a traveler to Brixton.
Two characters, William and Olive, brother and sister, themselves descendants of the family we met in Dunedin in 1910, now transferred to the mother country, share a rambling and possibly ramshackle home. They also have histories, relationships, professions, successes and failures. There is the suggestion of a plot relating to a stolen baby, but nothing here seems to develop. Again, that’s perhaps the point.
Sheena Mckay’s Dunedin is a work of great imagination, at least. The author regularly the surprises the reader with image in language, pictures conferring surreal character to pictures emerging out of multiple stimuli. But it’s not enough. There simply is not enough empathy developed with and through these characters, in the end, to care much about any of them.
So, would I read another of Shena Mackay’s books? Most certainly I would. None of us knows what we like, but we all like what we know. The process of writing this review has reminded me how vividly many of the images evoked in this book have lodged in my experience. It’s always interesting to be surprised.
The form of the book is a rather unequal sandwich. The bread on either side, the closing slice particularly thin, takes us to New Zealand in 1910. Themes of racial superiority, colonialism, blind paternalism and resentment from afar do appear, as does the unquestioning myopia that all religions produce. The themes emerge but then disappear, or rather dissolve. One expects them to reappear, but they rarely do, and then only insubstantially. In the pages of Dunedin, we seem to skim across reality, rather than engage with it.
At the book’s heart is a look at the relationship between the individual and culture. The individual is who we are, but culture is the medium which allows out our consciousness to find expression and identity. When these aspects of human existence, the individual and the culture, are in conflict, then a possible result is a loss of identity or at least an unrequited search for one. Identity conferred by family is part of culture, and it is the idea of family that threads its way through this book, albeit in a rather disconnected and anonymous way. In the end, we are all part of a family by accident of birth.
I suppose this is the heart of Dunedin. The book’s problem, identified many times elsewhere, is the character of Jay, who is someone who appears when required, but is one of the family. He is there. He is around. Other characters are conscious of him, but rarely listen to him, understand him, or even tolerate him. Perhaps that’s the point. Jay is young, of mixed race, hails from New Zealand and lives on the streets in London.
The wide filling in the sandwich is the book’s central section, which is set in South London. Now I used to live there and the detail of Sheena Mckay’s description indicate that she did too. The deep significance of the line “2B or not 2B” cannot fail to be understood by anyone who was a traveler to Brixton.
Two characters, William and Olive, brother and sister, themselves descendants of the family we met in Dunedin in 1910, now transferred to the mother country, share a rambling and possibly ramshackle home. They also have histories, relationships, professions, successes and failures. There is the suggestion of a plot relating to a stolen baby, but nothing here seems to develop. Again, that’s perhaps the point.
Sheena Mckay’s Dunedin is a work of great imagination, at least. The author regularly the surprises the reader with image in language, pictures conferring surreal character to pictures emerging out of multiple stimuli. But it’s not enough. There simply is not enough empathy developed with and through these characters, in the end, to care much about any of them.
So, would I read another of Shena Mackay’s books? Most certainly I would. None of us knows what we like, but we all like what we know. The process of writing this review has reminded me how vividly many of the images evoked in this book have lodged in my experience. It’s always interesting to be surprised.
January 12, 2015
FINALLY I finished this SHIT. I don't even try and call it a book, although it looks like one - it has pages and there are words written on the pages which form sentences.
But then that's all.
I don't even know what this is about. It isn't a story, it is a description of a few days of some people's lives who happen to be related somehow. This writing should have stayed in a drawer, marked as "playing with plots and characters".
It is definitely annoying that there is no end, all is left hanging. There's this old NZ-based family: we get from the beginning that the minister will sleep with the Maori girl, and yes, probably there will be a child, so why leave this to the last page? There's the protagonist, Olive, who you cannot like at all, but pity (a little). Nothing really happens to her, and in the end of the book I think she goes to kill herself - but we don't really know her thoughts, we only know that she used to be a spoilt child, then she had a shop which brought enough money, and somehow she was unlucky in love though as her persona is described she must look quite stunning. Then there's her brother, the retired William who falls in love with a friend of Olive's and makes her a baby (at what age? teachers go retired at age 70 where I live). There's Terry, an ex-love of Olive, I don't know why he's got this chapter or two in the book. And Jay, coming from NZ, who, we soon realise, is a cousin three-four-five (?) times removed from Olive, but he has bad luck and ends up in a kind of crude mental hospital. This hospital is investigated by a priest of some kind who is killed because of it and abuse in the place goes on, supposedly, and we cannot give a chance to Jay to survive.
The thesaurus-rich description drove me wild. Pages and pages of description of birds in a tree and what they remind Olive of was simply a nightmare. Things kept reminding the characters to other things - I don't know how this is called in general medicine (something like side-chained thinking) but one can get totally cured by taking certain prescribed pills!
How could this book get any prizes? How could this get printed? What is the value of such shit? I read other reviews and they state similar opinions, only some readers do not seem to mind that there's no story behind the lines.
AVOID THIS BOOK LIKE PLAGUE.
But then that's all.
I don't even know what this is about. It isn't a story, it is a description of a few days of some people's lives who happen to be related somehow. This writing should have stayed in a drawer, marked as "playing with plots and characters".
It is definitely annoying that there is no end, all is left hanging. There's this old NZ-based family: we get from the beginning that the minister will sleep with the Maori girl, and yes, probably there will be a child, so why leave this to the last page? There's the protagonist, Olive, who you cannot like at all, but pity (a little). Nothing really happens to her, and in the end of the book I think she goes to kill herself - but we don't really know her thoughts, we only know that she used to be a spoilt child, then she had a shop which brought enough money, and somehow she was unlucky in love though as her persona is described she must look quite stunning. Then there's her brother, the retired William who falls in love with a friend of Olive's and makes her a baby (at what age? teachers go retired at age 70 where I live). There's Terry, an ex-love of Olive, I don't know why he's got this chapter or two in the book. And Jay, coming from NZ, who, we soon realise, is a cousin three-four-five (?) times removed from Olive, but he has bad luck and ends up in a kind of crude mental hospital. This hospital is investigated by a priest of some kind who is killed because of it and abuse in the place goes on, supposedly, and we cannot give a chance to Jay to survive.
The thesaurus-rich description drove me wild. Pages and pages of description of birds in a tree and what they remind Olive of was simply a nightmare. Things kept reminding the characters to other things - I don't know how this is called in general medicine (something like side-chained thinking) but one can get totally cured by taking certain prescribed pills!
How could this book get any prizes? How could this get printed? What is the value of such shit? I read other reviews and they state similar opinions, only some readers do not seem to mind that there's no story behind the lines.
AVOID THIS BOOK LIKE PLAGUE.
December 4, 2014
Clearly the work of a writer who has just about perfected their style, Dunedin is a more polished affair than the two books of hers I last read (Old Crow and Music Upstairs), but I found Dunedin less enjoyable to read than either. Mackay’s writing is at times breathtaking, her characterisation brilliant - often done by letting a character’s actions define them rather than lengthy descriptive prose (for example Olive filling an empty Ecover bottle with Ariel) - and for that reason I could read Mackay all day long.
But as a novel it was unfulfilling. I spent three quarters of it wondering when the narrative was going to go back to turn of the Century New Zealand, where it had started so promisingly, then realised that the tour of suburban South East London (and it’s seedier side too) and it’s perennially unhappy characters *was* the main narrative of the book, top and tailed by the characters’ ancestors in New Zealand.
I just couldn’t reconcile the two, or work out what the link was (other than the superficial fact that the characters were descendants of Mackenzie). If you can get past that, and read it as a set of very well formed characterisations of 1980s London suburbia, it’s probably a far more enjoyable book.
But as a novel it was unfulfilling. I spent three quarters of it wondering when the narrative was going to go back to turn of the Century New Zealand, where it had started so promisingly, then realised that the tour of suburban South East London (and it’s seedier side too) and it’s perennially unhappy characters *was* the main narrative of the book, top and tailed by the characters’ ancestors in New Zealand.
I just couldn’t reconcile the two, or work out what the link was (other than the superficial fact that the characters were descendants of Mackenzie). If you can get past that, and read it as a set of very well formed characterisations of 1980s London suburbia, it’s probably a far more enjoyable book.
October 29, 2013
I don't think I have ever read a book as slowly as this one, which I started at the end of August and was still reading until nearly the end of October. This had nothing to do with the book, I was just very busy with a project that prevented me from reading very much for a few weeks.
In fact, slow reading suited this book very well as the story meandered along without any sort of suspense, wandering along paths without ever reaching a destination, lingering to observe but rarely, if ever, stopping to explain. The author establishes several sub-plots that other writers would pursue relentlessly - a chance meeting with a cousin from the other side of the world, an opportunistic crime, a sinister organisation violating human rights for an unknown purpose, a multiple murder - but none of them really go anywhere. These events all remain separate without any connections being made, without explanation, without enlightenment, without resolution. There are no outcomes. And yet, it doesn't seem to really matter, it's like a train journey during which you get glimpses into other people's lives but travel on before truly understanding what you are seeing. I suppose this could be intensely irritating but somehow it isn't. The saving grace of this book is that it is beautifully written. I despair sometimes of finding really well-written books, but in Shena Mackay, I believe I have discovered someone who really can write. She is a perceptive observer of people and places. In a book full of loneliness and despair, there are remarkable passages that are quite comic (the creative writing course, for example). The descriptions are lyrical and poetic, the dialogue is excellent, the writing is clear and sharp. Ms Mackay's vocabulary is amazing, I was quite sure at first that she was constantly referring to a thesaurus, but however she crafted this novel (she may just be well read and clever) it was worth it. I think I would enjoy Shena McKay's writing whatever she was writing about, despite the fact that I doubt I can have grasped why she wrote this book. I thought at first that the unhappiness and misfortune of the characters in the novel was the result of the fall from grace of one of their forbears, but the fact that one grandchild ended up happy seems to belie this. None of the unhappy events seemed to have any connection to each other or to the family line, so the New Zealand bits were only part of a continuing family saga. If the story had a point at all, I missed it, but despite this, this is one of the better books I have read this year, and I will definitely try another Shena Mackay book in the future.
In fact, slow reading suited this book very well as the story meandered along without any sort of suspense, wandering along paths without ever reaching a destination, lingering to observe but rarely, if ever, stopping to explain. The author establishes several sub-plots that other writers would pursue relentlessly - a chance meeting with a cousin from the other side of the world, an opportunistic crime, a sinister organisation violating human rights for an unknown purpose, a multiple murder - but none of them really go anywhere. These events all remain separate without any connections being made, without explanation, without enlightenment, without resolution. There are no outcomes. And yet, it doesn't seem to really matter, it's like a train journey during which you get glimpses into other people's lives but travel on before truly understanding what you are seeing. I suppose this could be intensely irritating but somehow it isn't. The saving grace of this book is that it is beautifully written. I despair sometimes of finding really well-written books, but in Shena Mackay, I believe I have discovered someone who really can write. She is a perceptive observer of people and places. In a book full of loneliness and despair, there are remarkable passages that are quite comic (the creative writing course, for example). The descriptions are lyrical and poetic, the dialogue is excellent, the writing is clear and sharp. Ms Mackay's vocabulary is amazing, I was quite sure at first that she was constantly referring to a thesaurus, but however she crafted this novel (she may just be well read and clever) it was worth it. I think I would enjoy Shena McKay's writing whatever she was writing about, despite the fact that I doubt I can have grasped why she wrote this book. I thought at first that the unhappiness and misfortune of the characters in the novel was the result of the fall from grace of one of their forbears, but the fact that one grandchild ended up happy seems to belie this. None of the unhappy events seemed to have any connection to each other or to the family line, so the New Zealand bits were only part of a continuing family saga. If the story had a point at all, I missed it, but despite this, this is one of the better books I have read this year, and I will definitely try another Shena Mackay book in the future.
August 26, 2020
Excited to start reading this book and wasn't disappointed....to begin with.
The first part of the book is about a very old fashioned and stern Scottish pastor and his family who migrated to New Zealand in the 1800's. While the story centered around the activities and behaviours of the errant pastor mainly, I found the start of the book very imagination capturing. Sadly, it didn't last.
Then the book jumped from the historical time to a modern time and went on about the adult grandchildren of the long gone pastor. Unfortunately, the storyline got badly bogged down talking about the feelings of the girl and her brother, so much, that it became very boring and felt as though my boots were dragging through knee high mud in order to progress to the next part of the story. It just dragged on and on, and while I persisted for some time, I eventually tossed the book aside as I'd really had way too much of the girls 'feelings' and felt it was dragging my own emotions down with it.
I could not finish this book and ended up giving it away.
The first part of the book is about a very old fashioned and stern Scottish pastor and his family who migrated to New Zealand in the 1800's. While the story centered around the activities and behaviours of the errant pastor mainly, I found the start of the book very imagination capturing. Sadly, it didn't last.
Then the book jumped from the historical time to a modern time and went on about the adult grandchildren of the long gone pastor. Unfortunately, the storyline got badly bogged down talking about the feelings of the girl and her brother, so much, that it became very boring and felt as though my boots were dragging through knee high mud in order to progress to the next part of the story. It just dragged on and on, and while I persisted for some time, I eventually tossed the book aside as I'd really had way too much of the girls 'feelings' and felt it was dragging my own emotions down with it.
I could not finish this book and ended up giving it away.
May 21, 2018
Plenty of unpleasant characters in this story. Interesting plot - how the sins of the fathers impact the lives of their children and their children’s children.
Worth a read.
Worth a read.
October 4, 2019
I normally love Shena Mackay's novels, but this one was a bit disappointing. In fact parts of the story were quite disturbing.
July 25, 2018
I loved 'The Orchard on Fire' and picked up this Shena MacKay. The book began brilliantly- a family of new settlers in New Zealand. I'm always amazed at the recklessness and superiority of new settlers and this section of the book brought about the same feeling I had when I read it. The second section set in London several years later, also began well. Olive and her brother William with their problems which are very first world. This is not a criticism, just a label that's appropriate. And then the story unraveled. The book was at least 200 pages too long with irrelevant characters and irrelevant writing.
Such a pity. The book had great potential. Like Astonishing splashes of color, another book I loved and felt similar to the London section of this book.
Such a pity. The book had great potential. Like Astonishing splashes of color, another book I loved and felt similar to the London section of this book.
April 3, 2024
As a non-English native speaker, some of the choices of words used to describe things were a bit difficult to follow. The story is quite interesting in that the main turn of events is rather predictable to the readers but the characters are not aware of them and it made what the characters do (and where they end up) unpredictable.
March 10, 2025
Some great bits, some average bits, some outstanding bits, but a rather disjointed experience overall. Shena Mackay is definitely at her best when writing about squalor and decay and there were some cracking descriptions of this sort of thing. She really has a beautiful turn of phrase but the plot left a little to be desired.
February 22, 2023
Was expecting great things having fallen in love with Dunedin a decade ago but when the plot suddenly switched to London, the storyline became incredibly erratic and freakish in parts. I persevered to the end but wish I had not bothered.
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