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Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley
A sleepy bohemian neighbourhood.
An ancient legend from the ancient past.
A brilliant but troubled young writer.
A voluptuous healer.
A shadowy cult and its sinister leader.
A trail of riddles; a hidden artefact.
An explicit sex scene, then a struggle for ultimate power.
And a final, unspeakable secret.
Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley is a dark and hilarious odyssey through Wellington’s underbelly.
An ancient legend from the ancient past.
A brilliant but troubled young writer.
A voluptuous healer.
A shadowy cult and its sinister leader.
A trail of riddles; a hidden artefact.
An explicit sex scene, then a struggle for ultimate power.
And a final, unspeakable secret.
Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley is a dark and hilarious odyssey through Wellington’s underbelly.
- GenresFiction
437 pages, Paperback
First published July 5, 2013
4 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 23, 2016
Quirky, weird, and philospohical in parts, earthy and humourous in others, this novel follows an aspiring writer and unlikely hero, Danyl, on his adventures (or more often, misadventures) investigating the strange activities of a cult in the Aro Valley led by The Campbell Walker. Danyl and his friend Steve make enjoyable pair to follow as they blunder through their investigations. Both charmingly deluded, cowardly and tenacious in equal measure, they prove surprisingly effective at uncovering the dark occult secrets of the Aro Valley, rather like Scooby and Shaggy accidentally stumbling upon secret passages.
I thoroughly enjoyed the male characters: self-declaringly wise and knowledgeable post-grad Steve, the volatile and crazy Campbell Walker, and Danyl is a particularly loveable loser. The female characters, Verity and Stasia, functioning as both antagonists/romantic interests at various points in their respective roles as long-suffering ex-girlfriend and sexy mystic healer, are fine but they didn't quite zing on the page for me in the way the other characers did.
A really original and fun read. I enjoyed seeing Wellington as the setting for a strange, occult tale and will never see the Aro Valley in the same way again.
I thoroughly enjoyed the male characters: self-declaringly wise and knowledgeable post-grad Steve, the volatile and crazy Campbell Walker, and Danyl is a particularly loveable loser. The female characters, Verity and Stasia, functioning as both antagonists/romantic interests at various points in their respective roles as long-suffering ex-girlfriend and sexy mystic healer, are fine but they didn't quite zing on the page for me in the way the other characers did.
A really original and fun read. I enjoyed seeing Wellington as the setting for a strange, occult tale and will never see the Aro Valley in the same way again.
November 16, 2013
REVIEW FROM NZ LISTENER
Issue 3819 15th Jul 2013
By Toby Manhire
The best line in Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley – and there are plenty to choose from – is halfway down the acknowledgements on the last page: “Thanks to Campbell Walker, who has confirmed in writing that he will not be taking legal action.” The real-life Campbell Walker, who gives his name to the kitsch and creepy villain in the debut novel by biologist and blogger Danyl Mclauchlan, will be familiar to Wellingtonians of a certain age as the beret-wearing, eye-rolling staffer at the Aro St Video Shop and maker of hyper-realist low-budget films.
“When I was living here, in the mid-90s, Campbell was working incredibly long hours at the video store,” says Mclauchlan, pointing across the road from a table in the Aro St Cafe, another institution in Wellington’s dank bohemian idyll. “It kind of made him quite a powerful figure in the community, because he could waive your late fees, or cancel your membership if he didn’t like you. I remember one of my friends, Matt Grainger, was the film critic for the Dominion, and he made Black Hawk Down his film of the year. Campbell threw him out of the store and banned him for life. And so Campbell was someone I knew who was a figure of fear, almost.”
After his novel was accepted for publication, Mclauchlan contacted Walker, who had recently moved to Dunedin. “I sent him this message, saying, ‘Hi, Campbell. Long time, no see. Listen, this is sort of awkward, but I’ve written a novel that defames you quite extensively. How do you feel about that?’ I told him I’d made him the villain. And I think he assumed at that point he was an incredibly glamorous, beguiling villain. And so he was really excited by that and wrote back and said, ‘That’s fine, sure, I waive every legal right.’”
Walker has since read the novel. “He said he really enjoyed it, instead of feeling slighted,” says Mclauchlan, with a disappointed stare.
Walker is not the only Unspeakable Secrets character named after a real person. The protagonist, who finds himself lured into Walker’s Byzantine Aro Valley cult, is Mclauchlan. “I’d been reading all these various thrillers that inspired the book, and one thing I noticed was the main characters often really seemed like the author’s male fantasy about themselves,” he says.
“The heroes were brilliant, and very brave, and incredibly attractive to all the female characters. And they had very similar jobs and backgrounds to the authors of the book. The author is an academic so the hero is an academic; the author is a business journalist so the hero is a business journalist … So I decided to do the opposite, and write a book in which the hero was essentially the author, and didn’t have any of these attractive qualities. Because I know lots of writers and journalists and academics and very few of them are incredibly brave or sexually irresistible.”
This might be his first novel, but 38-year-old Mclauchlan already has a loyal readership as a blogger. The Dim-Post, one of a handful of New Zealand political blogs that will not send you into a spiral of despair, began five years ago focused on satire, although he has since branched out to include smart political commentary alongside the parody.
Back in 2008, there were just a few online satirists, but recent years have seen many more spring up. Some are even funny. “I kind of feel the torch has been passed on to a new generation of dicks on the internet,” says Mclauchlan.
The most celebrated of the new breed is, of course, The Civilian, which received an unlikely burst of publicity when witless Conservative Party leader Colin Craig issued its author with a legal threat. By way of solidarity, Mclauchlan posted an appallingly hilarious spoof interview with Craig, in homage to Fifty Shades of Grey. Sample sentence: “As I hung upside down beside him, both of us screaming in exaltation and pain while hot wax from the candles strapped to our ankles ran down our thighs, I couldn’t decide what it was that separated him from other minor party political leaders.”
On the whole, political blogging “seems a lot less influential now than it was around 2007 or 2008”, says Mclauchlan. “I guess other forms of social media, like Twitter, seem far more influential.” And it was never going to be an earner. The day job is at Victoria University’s School of Biological Studies, in the field of bio-informatics, or computational biology. His current project, which doesn’t sound a million miles away from the world of politics, is building a database of wasp pathogens.
Unspeakable Secrets is promoted on its outside cover as “a classic Kiwi comic mystery erotic horror adventure novel” (“something I said as a joke to the publisher, and he stuck on the back of the book and wouldn’t take it off”). That certainly captures the novel’s entertainment quotient. But it’s also a clever book, tightly plotted and told in a manner something like a pastiche of Paul Auster writing a pastiche of Dan Brown.
Mclauchlan insists he knows nothing about postmodernism, but concedes he’s a fan of Auster and Jorge Luis Borges. “They’re interested in riddles and labyrinths and self-referentiality, and I’m interested in those things as well.” But their influence was fleeting compared with that of Dan Brown, who never left his shoulder. “Just like Virgil was with Dante,” he deadpans.
“I’d lived overseas, and done lots of travelling and ended up reading all these airport novels. There was this fashion, kicked off by The Da Vinci Code, for thrillers and mysteries in which the secrets of the universe are all hidden behind riddles and mazes in exotic locations like Jerusalem or the south of France or Rome or wherever. Then I moved back and thought, ‘Why not write a satire in which the mystical secrets of the universe are hidden in the Aro Valley?’”
With no experience in composing fiction, and disinclined to study creative writing, Mclauchlan conducted a different kind of computational research. “I was searching the internet for advice for writers, and I remember one site I came across was about slash fiction, which is where people write erotic stories about fictional characters – so you have hundreds of thousands of weird sex scenes people have written in which Voldemort has sex with Bilbo Baggins or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or whatever.”
And there the biologist-blogger discovered a rule to live, or at least write, by. “One of the pieces of advice was: never write a lesbian three-way. If you generalise that, it’s actually amazingly good advice. If you think about the technical challenges of writing a scene in which you introduce three characters and then have them interacting with each other in similar ways, it would be impossible not to make that confusing for the reader.
“So when I read that, I realised I had lots and lots of scenes like that. And now I use it as a kind of test when I write a scene: is this a lesbian three-way? It would have been useful if I’d had a mentor who could have read the first draft and said, ‘No, no, these are all lesbian three-ways.’”
UNSPEAKABLE SECRETS OF THE ARO VALLEY, by Danyl Mclauchlan (VUP, $35).
Issue 3819 15th Jul 2013
By Toby Manhire
The best line in Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley – and there are plenty to choose from – is halfway down the acknowledgements on the last page: “Thanks to Campbell Walker, who has confirmed in writing that he will not be taking legal action.” The real-life Campbell Walker, who gives his name to the kitsch and creepy villain in the debut novel by biologist and blogger Danyl Mclauchlan, will be familiar to Wellingtonians of a certain age as the beret-wearing, eye-rolling staffer at the Aro St Video Shop and maker of hyper-realist low-budget films.
“When I was living here, in the mid-90s, Campbell was working incredibly long hours at the video store,” says Mclauchlan, pointing across the road from a table in the Aro St Cafe, another institution in Wellington’s dank bohemian idyll. “It kind of made him quite a powerful figure in the community, because he could waive your late fees, or cancel your membership if he didn’t like you. I remember one of my friends, Matt Grainger, was the film critic for the Dominion, and he made Black Hawk Down his film of the year. Campbell threw him out of the store and banned him for life. And so Campbell was someone I knew who was a figure of fear, almost.”
After his novel was accepted for publication, Mclauchlan contacted Walker, who had recently moved to Dunedin. “I sent him this message, saying, ‘Hi, Campbell. Long time, no see. Listen, this is sort of awkward, but I’ve written a novel that defames you quite extensively. How do you feel about that?’ I told him I’d made him the villain. And I think he assumed at that point he was an incredibly glamorous, beguiling villain. And so he was really excited by that and wrote back and said, ‘That’s fine, sure, I waive every legal right.’”
Walker has since read the novel. “He said he really enjoyed it, instead of feeling slighted,” says Mclauchlan, with a disappointed stare.
Walker is not the only Unspeakable Secrets character named after a real person. The protagonist, who finds himself lured into Walker’s Byzantine Aro Valley cult, is Mclauchlan. “I’d been reading all these various thrillers that inspired the book, and one thing I noticed was the main characters often really seemed like the author’s male fantasy about themselves,” he says.
“The heroes were brilliant, and very brave, and incredibly attractive to all the female characters. And they had very similar jobs and backgrounds to the authors of the book. The author is an academic so the hero is an academic; the author is a business journalist so the hero is a business journalist … So I decided to do the opposite, and write a book in which the hero was essentially the author, and didn’t have any of these attractive qualities. Because I know lots of writers and journalists and academics and very few of them are incredibly brave or sexually irresistible.”
This might be his first novel, but 38-year-old Mclauchlan already has a loyal readership as a blogger. The Dim-Post, one of a handful of New Zealand political blogs that will not send you into a spiral of despair, began five years ago focused on satire, although he has since branched out to include smart political commentary alongside the parody.
Back in 2008, there were just a few online satirists, but recent years have seen many more spring up. Some are even funny. “I kind of feel the torch has been passed on to a new generation of dicks on the internet,” says Mclauchlan.
The most celebrated of the new breed is, of course, The Civilian, which received an unlikely burst of publicity when witless Conservative Party leader Colin Craig issued its author with a legal threat. By way of solidarity, Mclauchlan posted an appallingly hilarious spoof interview with Craig, in homage to Fifty Shades of Grey. Sample sentence: “As I hung upside down beside him, both of us screaming in exaltation and pain while hot wax from the candles strapped to our ankles ran down our thighs, I couldn’t decide what it was that separated him from other minor party political leaders.”
On the whole, political blogging “seems a lot less influential now than it was around 2007 or 2008”, says Mclauchlan. “I guess other forms of social media, like Twitter, seem far more influential.” And it was never going to be an earner. The day job is at Victoria University’s School of Biological Studies, in the field of bio-informatics, or computational biology. His current project, which doesn’t sound a million miles away from the world of politics, is building a database of wasp pathogens.
Unspeakable Secrets is promoted on its outside cover as “a classic Kiwi comic mystery erotic horror adventure novel” (“something I said as a joke to the publisher, and he stuck on the back of the book and wouldn’t take it off”). That certainly captures the novel’s entertainment quotient. But it’s also a clever book, tightly plotted and told in a manner something like a pastiche of Paul Auster writing a pastiche of Dan Brown.
Mclauchlan insists he knows nothing about postmodernism, but concedes he’s a fan of Auster and Jorge Luis Borges. “They’re interested in riddles and labyrinths and self-referentiality, and I’m interested in those things as well.” But their influence was fleeting compared with that of Dan Brown, who never left his shoulder. “Just like Virgil was with Dante,” he deadpans.
“I’d lived overseas, and done lots of travelling and ended up reading all these airport novels. There was this fashion, kicked off by The Da Vinci Code, for thrillers and mysteries in which the secrets of the universe are all hidden behind riddles and mazes in exotic locations like Jerusalem or the south of France or Rome or wherever. Then I moved back and thought, ‘Why not write a satire in which the mystical secrets of the universe are hidden in the Aro Valley?’”
With no experience in composing fiction, and disinclined to study creative writing, Mclauchlan conducted a different kind of computational research. “I was searching the internet for advice for writers, and I remember one site I came across was about slash fiction, which is where people write erotic stories about fictional characters – so you have hundreds of thousands of weird sex scenes people have written in which Voldemort has sex with Bilbo Baggins or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or whatever.”
And there the biologist-blogger discovered a rule to live, or at least write, by. “One of the pieces of advice was: never write a lesbian three-way. If you generalise that, it’s actually amazingly good advice. If you think about the technical challenges of writing a scene in which you introduce three characters and then have them interacting with each other in similar ways, it would be impossible not to make that confusing for the reader.
“So when I read that, I realised I had lots and lots of scenes like that. And now I use it as a kind of test when I write a scene: is this a lesbian three-way? It would have been useful if I’d had a mentor who could have read the first draft and said, ‘No, no, these are all lesbian three-ways.’”
UNSPEAKABLE SECRETS OF THE ARO VALLEY, by Danyl Mclauchlan (VUP, $35).
December 26, 2017
Very funny in places, especially if you know Wellington and Aro Valley but probably even for those who don't. Danyl's really good at weaving together a story unexpectedly related quips, which add to the humour.
Maybe the whole book was too long and drawn out in places. I found the book's humour the main attraction, but the mystery not so much, and from about half way through I was starting to wish it'd hurry up and finish. I am normally a slow reader but this book was veeery slow for me to read, both because it's long and because towards the later stages I had less motivation to pick it up and continue.
If a good director managed to make a movie of this book some day, and retain the humorous side, I'd definitely go and see it.
Maybe the whole book was too long and drawn out in places. I found the book's humour the main attraction, but the mystery not so much, and from about half way through I was starting to wish it'd hurry up and finish. I am normally a slow reader but this book was veeery slow for me to read, both because it's long and because towards the later stages I had less motivation to pick it up and continue.
If a good director managed to make a movie of this book some day, and retain the humorous side, I'd definitely go and see it.
August 1, 2021
Its a good concept - I mean, the Aro Valley is weird, and there's that whole philosophy school in it, plus some toplogical weirdness at the top. But none of that is really in there. And after a while the fun of seeing a story written somewhere you know wears off, and you're just left with the realisation that it isn't really very good, and that the protagonist is an unlikeable dick who doesn't wear pants.
Apparently there's a sequel. I won't bother.
Apparently there's a sequel. I won't bother.
October 26, 2023
I don't even know.
The characters were the most concering part, we only meet 3 woman, and all of them have some sort of sexual attributes to them. The main character is a creep, always describing these women's chests as "impressive" and having a physical effect on him every other page. I just want one conversation between him and a woman where none of his thoughts are of him writing a book with an "explicit demeaning sex scene" with her as a "tedious shrew". He also does not have pants on for a good 70% of the book, he talks about his dick in erection, or needing to piss a bit too much, and he had tripped over his pants, while their down, in front of a person, twice, which shouldn't have even happened once, and the author describes him as a "magnificent, dying buffalo"... There's even a huge cult in a castle, but this guy is still weirder than them. I could honestly keep going on about the main character, like about his own song he is always tempted to sing after doing a simple task, but that would go on for a bit.
The way this book was written just confused me, before even finishing a scene the perspective would shift into the past or fast forward into the future, it took a while to understand when the writer was talking about a past interaction or a current one. The time setting was confusing as well, this type of book feels like it would be set in the early 1900s, but then I see some instances where they mention more 1950-1980 items, but then we've got 2000s in there, it was a weird timeline, and I did want more clarity on that rather than digging for it. But the ending of the book was definitely more intriguing after he was distanced from women for a bit, but that didn't last long, the action was fine just really drawn out. It had a couple of funny lines, but I can't tell if I found the actual words funny, or it was so dumb I just had to laugh. I do think this is aimed at an older older audience, but it doesnt change the fact how weird and confusing it was. If this book was satire, I would've found it better, but I don't think it is, so two stars.
// SPOILER // (sort of)
in the blurb it says there's an "explicit sex scene" but it's like two pages, lasts probably 5 minutes, and she's just beating him up for a 4 of those minutes.
The characters were the most concering part, we only meet 3 woman, and all of them have some sort of sexual attributes to them. The main character is a creep, always describing these women's chests as "impressive" and having a physical effect on him every other page. I just want one conversation between him and a woman where none of his thoughts are of him writing a book with an "explicit demeaning sex scene" with her as a "tedious shrew". He also does not have pants on for a good 70% of the book, he talks about his dick in erection, or needing to piss a bit too much, and he had tripped over his pants, while their down, in front of a person, twice, which shouldn't have even happened once, and the author describes him as a "magnificent, dying buffalo"... There's even a huge cult in a castle, but this guy is still weirder than them. I could honestly keep going on about the main character, like about his own song he is always tempted to sing after doing a simple task, but that would go on for a bit.
The way this book was written just confused me, before even finishing a scene the perspective would shift into the past or fast forward into the future, it took a while to understand when the writer was talking about a past interaction or a current one. The time setting was confusing as well, this type of book feels like it would be set in the early 1900s, but then I see some instances where they mention more 1950-1980 items, but then we've got 2000s in there, it was a weird timeline, and I did want more clarity on that rather than digging for it. But the ending of the book was definitely more intriguing after he was distanced from women for a bit, but that didn't last long, the action was fine just really drawn out. It had a couple of funny lines, but I can't tell if I found the actual words funny, or it was so dumb I just had to laugh. I do think this is aimed at an older older audience, but it doesnt change the fact how weird and confusing it was. If this book was satire, I would've found it better, but I don't think it is, so two stars.
// SPOILER // (sort of)
in the blurb it says there's an "explicit sex scene" but it's like two pages, lasts probably 5 minutes, and she's just beating him up for a 4 of those minutes.
July 29, 2024
Jeg samlede denne bog op på et antikvariat i Wellington, efter anbefaling fra en af butikkens ansatte. Jeg var på jagt efter en forfatter fra New Zealand - gerne noget gys.
Jeg vil dog nærmere kvalificere denne roman som et ret godt eksempel på moderne 'Weird Fiction' - og det er bestemt en positiv kasse at lande i. Der er langt mere humor i bogen, end der er gys, men altid med en særegen mystik.
Fra start af sætter historien et højt tempo, uden at sætte læseren af undervejs, og det besynderlige afsæt bliver i løbet af bogen til en interessant og til tider direkte spændende skattejagt. Dertil er der tilsat nogle ret skønne (og ofte fjollede) karakterer - jeg er særligt vild med the Campbell Walker (Et tip med hatten til Ramsey Campbell?).
Der er tydeligvis tale om en forfatter der kender sin gyser-litteratur, og forstår hvordan humoren skal bruges i sammenspil med dem. Nogle gange mindede det lidt om Michael Shea, selvom denne roman ikke var interesseret i at skjule sin humoristiske side.
Sproget fungerede rigtig godt for mig, med få men gode metaforer. Dejligt levende!
Det er ikke nogen perfekt roman - den blev en smule eklektisk i sit forsøg på at få samling på alle trådene, og selve mysteriet endte på en eller anden måde med at virke underordnet. Slutningen landede okay.
Jeg er ret imponeret over denne roman, især som en debut. Jeg er faktisk lidt ked af at jeg ikke fik købt forfatterens anden romanen, som også var til salg i antikvaritet!
Jeg vil dog nærmere kvalificere denne roman som et ret godt eksempel på moderne 'Weird Fiction' - og det er bestemt en positiv kasse at lande i. Der er langt mere humor i bogen, end der er gys, men altid med en særegen mystik.
Fra start af sætter historien et højt tempo, uden at sætte læseren af undervejs, og det besynderlige afsæt bliver i løbet af bogen til en interessant og til tider direkte spændende skattejagt. Dertil er der tilsat nogle ret skønne (og ofte fjollede) karakterer - jeg er særligt vild med the Campbell Walker (Et tip med hatten til Ramsey Campbell?).
Der er tydeligvis tale om en forfatter der kender sin gyser-litteratur, og forstår hvordan humoren skal bruges i sammenspil med dem. Nogle gange mindede det lidt om Michael Shea, selvom denne roman ikke var interesseret i at skjule sin humoristiske side.
Sproget fungerede rigtig godt for mig, med få men gode metaforer. Dejligt levende!
Det er ikke nogen perfekt roman - den blev en smule eklektisk i sit forsøg på at få samling på alle trådene, og selve mysteriet endte på en eller anden måde med at virke underordnet. Slutningen landede okay.
Jeg er ret imponeret over denne roman, især som en debut. Jeg er faktisk lidt ked af at jeg ikke fik købt forfatterens anden romanen, som også var til salg i antikvaritet!
November 21, 2017
Funny. Very entertaining in you live in Wellington, especially if you live in the Aro Valley. Maybe you won't fully get this book if you don't. Very surreal. Very entertaining. I totally lost the plot in places, but it didn't really matter!
July 17, 2020
3.5 but it was nicely silly, plus I loved knowing the setting so well. This could totally be true!
August 4, 2025
A 3.5 for the sometimes stilted language and hokey occultist sub-plot. But rounded to 4 because genuinely funny in places, excellent characters, and use of Aro Valley as setting.
August 28, 2017
A sprawling shaggy dog story, taking in one of central Wellington’s most distinctive areas (and my home for many years) made slightly unsettling by the liberties taken with geography, topography and the occasional building. Danyl, the character, like many of The Valley’s denizens seems to aspire to cultural significance, struggling as he is to write his novel about a strange cult that has emerged, linked (or not) in some unlikely way to a paedophile Satanist and with an unspecified relationship with the new alternative healing centre where the doctor’s used to be (paedophile Satanists aside, a believable Aro Valley phenomenon). Yet this is precisely the experience that Danyl (the character) has…..
That is to say, Danyl the novelist has called on a common postmodern trope of the novel being about the construction of the novel (Dennis Potter used this form well, see for instance Blackeyes ) and by making his character Danyl a novelist both exposed and disrupted the writerliness of Unspeakable Acts.
Danyl and his mate Steve seem to bumble around the Valley, half uncovering events and plots, all the while Danyl is trying to win back his former girlfriend Verity, wondering whether he is trying to secure a date with Stasia (of the healing centre) to make Verity jealous and win her back (almost always a flawed strategy) or because he actually fancies Stasia (rather than lust after her). Amid all this there is the manuscript of his novel, in a mysterious box a Verity’s new house, a mysterious robe wearing new cult gathered around the enigmatic Campbell Walker (it was their association with his previous cult that allowed Danyl and Verity to meet), an apparently potent artefact, a Satanist in Holloway Road, a shrine near Mortimer Terrace (or thereabouts) and an unused well the top of Epuni Street – all held together by a circuitous, rambling shaggy dog narrative that works. And despite all of this, it may be that Danyl’s most significant problem might be that he has only one pair of trousers.
Enjoyable and entertaining with a fine sense of the absurd – but I wonder whether it’d resonate for anyone who hasn’t lived in or around The Valley.
That is to say, Danyl the novelist has called on a common postmodern trope of the novel being about the construction of the novel (Dennis Potter used this form well, see for instance Blackeyes ) and by making his character Danyl a novelist both exposed and disrupted the writerliness of Unspeakable Acts.
Danyl and his mate Steve seem to bumble around the Valley, half uncovering events and plots, all the while Danyl is trying to win back his former girlfriend Verity, wondering whether he is trying to secure a date with Stasia (of the healing centre) to make Verity jealous and win her back (almost always a flawed strategy) or because he actually fancies Stasia (rather than lust after her). Amid all this there is the manuscript of his novel, in a mysterious box a Verity’s new house, a mysterious robe wearing new cult gathered around the enigmatic Campbell Walker (it was their association with his previous cult that allowed Danyl and Verity to meet), an apparently potent artefact, a Satanist in Holloway Road, a shrine near Mortimer Terrace (or thereabouts) and an unused well the top of Epuni Street – all held together by a circuitous, rambling shaggy dog narrative that works. And despite all of this, it may be that Danyl’s most significant problem might be that he has only one pair of trousers.
Enjoyable and entertaining with a fine sense of the absurd – but I wonder whether it’d resonate for anyone who hasn’t lived in or around The Valley.
February 23, 2017
Picked this up as it is set down the road from where I am currently residing. Interesting book.
October 8, 2013
I so wanted to enjoy this book. A secretive cult operating out of the Aro Valley that's a five minute walk from my home, sending up the conspiracyists and generally strange characters we all know and love? I was all for it. But although the bumblings of the main character, authorial stand-in Danyl, were funny at first, long before the book ended I had lost patience with his endless incompetence, and with the plot meandering as drunkenly as Danyl, I couldn't keep myself interested. I did finish, though, and so, I'm happy to report, did the plot, winding its way eventually to a conclusion that tied up its loose ends.
However, I will admit that I suffered from genre disorientation - the kind of graphic novel-esque slapstick this book was built on was really not what I expected or wanted, and my perception is unfairly tainted by disappointment. If I'd come to the book wanting a gentle, wry lazy-hero read, this book and I would have been much better suited to each other. With a couple of exceptionally cliche turns of phrase (at one, point, Danyl's 'seed' dries on the 'downy fur of his belly' - hurrrrrgh), the prose is fun to read and has the dry snap of the author's very good NZ political blog, http://dimpost.wordpress.com/.
Overall, the book reminded me of David Wong's "John Dies At The End" - a similar concoction of magic realism (seemingly - spoilers) and madcap misadventures by the main characters. The difference is that while I had some sympahy for David and John's characters in 'John dies at the End', Danyl just wasn't that likable.
Danyl McLauchlan, if you ever read this, I'm sorry. I like to like the people whose heads I'm in, and this just wasn't my book. Nevertheless, I'm still displaying it prominently in my library. The good people of Wellington can make up their own minds.
However, I will admit that I suffered from genre disorientation - the kind of graphic novel-esque slapstick this book was built on was really not what I expected or wanted, and my perception is unfairly tainted by disappointment. If I'd come to the book wanting a gentle, wry lazy-hero read, this book and I would have been much better suited to each other. With a couple of exceptionally cliche turns of phrase (at one, point, Danyl's 'seed' dries on the 'downy fur of his belly' - hurrrrrgh), the prose is fun to read and has the dry snap of the author's very good NZ political blog, http://dimpost.wordpress.com/.
Overall, the book reminded me of David Wong's "John Dies At The End" - a similar concoction of magic realism (seemingly - spoilers) and madcap misadventures by the main characters. The difference is that while I had some sympahy for David and John's characters in 'John dies at the End', Danyl just wasn't that likable.
Danyl McLauchlan, if you ever read this, I'm sorry. I like to like the people whose heads I'm in, and this just wasn't my book. Nevertheless, I'm still displaying it prominently in my library. The good people of Wellington can make up their own minds.
April 1, 2015
For those of us living in the Wellington region Aro valley is probably best know as a particularly damp, lightless labyrinth of twisting street, and alleys, inhabited primarily by students and aging hipsters. For years I would travel hours to get to Aro Video, the BEST, video store in the country.
As a result my curiosity was peaked. Add to that the most wonderful book cover I have ever seen, Ben Cauchi's mysterious and evocative ambrotype self-portrait, and it was inevitable that I would read this book sooner-or-later.
Danyl McLauchlan's book seems like a first book in many ways; it is self-conscious and over complicated but it has a solid narrative drive that is enhanced by a real, and consistent, humour that rolls on to the very end. It is a ripping good yarn, much in the spirit of Ronald Hugh Morrison, with a tantalizingly obscure premise that drives the narrative in a fascinating, riveting way. I literally could not put it down.
I'm not quite sure what happened at the end. In my desperation to find out the ultimate secret I read the final chapters so quickly that it was hard to keep the tangled story lines straight. However, it was satisfying all the same.
My one anal-retentive complaint is of a minor historical inaccuracy-during WW1 undesirable aliens were not rounded up but merely required to register with local police. There were only 300 odd detainees that were considered risky but they were the minority aliens in the country at the time.
I look forward to Danyl's next effort.
As a result my curiosity was peaked. Add to that the most wonderful book cover I have ever seen, Ben Cauchi's mysterious and evocative ambrotype self-portrait, and it was inevitable that I would read this book sooner-or-later.
Danyl McLauchlan's book seems like a first book in many ways; it is self-conscious and over complicated but it has a solid narrative drive that is enhanced by a real, and consistent, humour that rolls on to the very end. It is a ripping good yarn, much in the spirit of Ronald Hugh Morrison, with a tantalizingly obscure premise that drives the narrative in a fascinating, riveting way. I literally could not put it down.
I'm not quite sure what happened at the end. In my desperation to find out the ultimate secret I read the final chapters so quickly that it was hard to keep the tangled story lines straight. However, it was satisfying all the same.
My one anal-retentive complaint is of a minor historical inaccuracy-during WW1 undesirable aliens were not rounded up but merely required to register with local police. There were only 300 odd detainees that were considered risky but they were the minority aliens in the country at the time.
I look forward to Danyl's next effort.
Read
December 25, 2013A previous reviewer summed up my feelings about this book - protagonist too annoying, narrative too meandering. I enjoyed parts of it but it left me with the nagging feeling that I just wasn't cool enough to get the jokes (which is probably true). My abiding impression was of a book that didn't really succeed but that would make quite an amusing, offbeat movie. I would probably even pay to see it.
August 11, 2013
Brilliant book! Funny and complicated, a great mystery - and all set in Aro Valley. Looking forward to Danyl McLauchlan publishing some more books!
October 13, 2013
Great quirky bags of fun to be had in this rattling good read. Highly recommended if you enjoy off-beat thrillers with plenty of laughs.
July 3, 2016
finished better than it began.
April 6, 2014
What a great read - at least a for those of us with a passing familiarity with Aro Valley. It is very funny, in a dark sort of way, and the ending definitely leaves things open for a sequel.
October 7, 2016
I will never look at the Aro Valley the same way again...
October 22, 2016
Hilarious!
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