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A Hibiscus Coast
Durban North, 1997. Following two shocking and insidious incidents of violence, nineteen-year-old Mary Da Costa is flying to Auckland ahead of her parents to make a new start. She is riddled with reservations - New Zealand is where her late brother was supposed to move - and all she really wants to do is keep to herself and work on her art.
On arrival, Mary comes under the wings of the South African ex-pat community, struggling with its own tensions between homesickness and belonging. Finding work at a local dairy, she meets self-appointed Māori leader Nepukaneha Cooper - or Buck, as he’s better known. He and his family have some history with these rugby-mad lovers of apartheid, even more now that they’re encroaching on his turf. If only he had the means to fight them off and realise his life-long dream of establishing a marae on the beautiful strip of coast he has always called home. Meanwhile, adrift between past and present, Mary is forced to dig deep in order to find her own truths and place in the world.
On arrival, Mary comes under the wings of the South African ex-pat community, struggling with its own tensions between homesickness and belonging. Finding work at a local dairy, she meets self-appointed Māori leader Nepukaneha Cooper - or Buck, as he’s better known. He and his family have some history with these rugby-mad lovers of apartheid, even more now that they’re encroaching on his turf. If only he had the means to fight them off and realise his life-long dream of establishing a marae on the beautiful strip of coast he has always called home. Meanwhile, adrift between past and present, Mary is forced to dig deep in order to find her own truths and place in the world.
324 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2021
68 people want to read
About the author
Nick Mulgrew
17 books22 followersNick Mulgrew is an award-winning writer, editor and publisher, currently based in Edinburgh. He is the author of six books, and since 2014 is the director of uHlanga, an acclaimed South African poetry press.
His novels include A Hibiscus Coast, winner of the 2022 K. Sello Duiker Memorial Award. Among other accolades, he is the winner of the 2016 Thomas Pringle Award, the 2018 Nadine Gordimer Prize (for his story collection, The First Law of Sadness), and is the recipient of a Mandela Rhodes Scholarship.
His novels include A Hibiscus Coast, winner of the 2022 K. Sello Duiker Memorial Award. Among other accolades, he is the winner of the 2016 Thomas Pringle Award, the 2018 Nadine Gordimer Prize (for his story collection, The First Law of Sadness), and is the recipient of a Mandela Rhodes Scholarship.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 16, 2021
A Hibiscus Coast charts the migration of a white South African family to New Zealand after a set of violent events in their hometown of Durban. Mulgrew employs a pastiche of magazine clippings, disembodied voices, flips into various points of views, and hard-earned narrative ventriloquism in order to get us into the mind of a South Africa in the 90s, in the midst of change, and then a very Maari-led New Zealand. I appreciated the ambition and range of technique used in the novel, as well as the deep desire of the book to connect equally to New Zealand and South Africa. I just think there were certain aspects of the book, as well as my own positionality, that made it hard for me to become fully invested.
September 14, 2021
This debut novel by South African author Nick Mulgrew is set in the late 90’s, travelling between South Africa and New Zealand. This book perfectly portrays the uncertainty, fear and paranoia of many South Africans during a time of change as we moved into the ‘new’ South Africa. I have never read a book based in the 90’s in South Africa before, and I personally loved it. It brought with it both nostalgia and great perspective.
I connected to this book in more ways than one. I was stoked to see a story set around my home town Toti, and the mention and newspaper clippings of the 1985 bombing which my mom was actually in. Other story lines of emigrating overseas, and the culture of South Africans overseas which I found comparable to what I have experienced some 20 years later.
I loved the parallel made between South Africa and New Zealand on the issue of land ownership and dispossession. I felt this perfectly puts into perspective that this is not a unique issue to South Africa, and was really cleverly thought out and articulated in the book. This book explores themes of belonging, family, loss and hope. It is beautifully written, well researched and has sentences you will want to rip out and etch into your mind forever. And the cover is PERFECT. 5 clapping stars from me👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼.
I connected to this book in more ways than one. I was stoked to see a story set around my home town Toti, and the mention and newspaper clippings of the 1985 bombing which my mom was actually in. Other story lines of emigrating overseas, and the culture of South Africans overseas which I found comparable to what I have experienced some 20 years later.
I loved the parallel made between South Africa and New Zealand on the issue of land ownership and dispossession. I felt this perfectly puts into perspective that this is not a unique issue to South Africa, and was really cleverly thought out and articulated in the book. This book explores themes of belonging, family, loss and hope. It is beautifully written, well researched and has sentences you will want to rip out and etch into your mind forever. And the cover is PERFECT. 5 clapping stars from me👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼.
April 26, 2022
This novel paints a poignant picture of the fractures in South African cultural identity. Mulgrew doesn't pull any punches about the hypocrisy and grotesqueness of South African racism and exceptionalism. The machismo, the arrogance, the vanity, the scheming, the glee of offensiveness. But he also explores the tragedy of white South African identity, particularly through the character of Mark, who is stuck in a culture and community that doesn't give him any serious emotional support.
He also contrasts this effectively with New Zealand culture, which has its own flaws but is a useful foil to South Africa. Nepukaneha 'Buck' Cooper is a very funny but also incisive character, and his conflicts with the South African ex-pat community in Orewa give Mulgrew a good chance to explore the legacy of colonialism in both national cultures.
The writing varies from incisive and tragic to funny and beautiful. Definitely worth a read.
He also contrasts this effectively with New Zealand culture, which has its own flaws but is a useful foil to South Africa. Nepukaneha 'Buck' Cooper is a very funny but also incisive character, and his conflicts with the South African ex-pat community in Orewa give Mulgrew a good chance to explore the legacy of colonialism in both national cultures.
The writing varies from incisive and tragic to funny and beautiful. Definitely worth a read.
August 1, 2021
Book Review:
A Hibiscus Coast
by
Nick Mulgrew
(Karavan Press)
In these turbulent South African times of violence and disquiet, many conversations have turned to emigration. In that context I found A Hibiscus Coast to be an honest, compelling and soothing look at family, migration and dispossession.
The author takes us to Durban North, 1997, where a suburban murder rocks a community, and drives one of its members to act upon a long held emigration strategy.
As in real life, nothing about emigration is simple. The characters are layered with different life events, losses and biases, and so we begin to see the messy, difficult, courageous and conflicted process unfold.
The main character, nineteen year old Mary, has to leave Durban ahead of her parents and is forced to make a new life for herself, within a South African ex-pat community in New Zealand.
Parallel to Mary's story, we meet Buck, a self appointed Maori leader, who is fighting to have a disused school granted to his people as a Marae, which is a cultural and spiritual place of meeting in Polynesian societies.
The South African ex-pat community, however, has their eye on the same establishment for their own South African Club. (A place where you would find 'the dunes of cheese Nik-Naks that glowed like fool's gold')
I loved how the author articulates the narrative of white South African culture in the nineties, and the way some South African emigrants react, speak and behave.
Author, Nick Mulgrew weaves and layers the stories of the Maoris and the South African club, alongside Mary's story of migration and loss with great skill.
I was immersed in Mary's search for her place in a new world, and her search for peace and closure in the one she left behind. The careless behaviour of some of those emigrants who, although delighted to be out of South Africa, brought their old attitudes with them to New Zealand, reminded me of the careless people in The Great Gatsby.
At the same time, I ached for the emigrants whose difficulties in a new country become almost unbearable.
Meanwhile, Buck Cooper struggles to find a place for a marae in his own land, a problem not dissimilar to South Africa, but not one that these South African emigrants ever had to face back home.
The story leads us to a point where Mary and Buck's worlds look like they are heading to hopelessness, but then they intersect.
A Hibiscus Coast is an intelligent reflection on different cultures, on trying to fit in, and on South African nineties culture. The author is able to articulate multiple aspects of South African culture with great skill, from the way they speak to one another to their reflections on the New Zealand Cavaliers Tour. I was also drawn in by his portrayal of Maori culture and the challenges these first nation people have faced.
Mulgrew gives us a glimpse into the Maori perspective of white South African immigration to New Zealand through Buck's eyes.
In conclusion, A Hibiscus Coast is a beautifully written, intelligent and heartwarming read, not to be missed.
(Also, how beautiful is that cover?)
A Hibiscus Coast
by
Nick Mulgrew
(Karavan Press)
In these turbulent South African times of violence and disquiet, many conversations have turned to emigration. In that context I found A Hibiscus Coast to be an honest, compelling and soothing look at family, migration and dispossession.
The author takes us to Durban North, 1997, where a suburban murder rocks a community, and drives one of its members to act upon a long held emigration strategy.
As in real life, nothing about emigration is simple. The characters are layered with different life events, losses and biases, and so we begin to see the messy, difficult, courageous and conflicted process unfold.
The main character, nineteen year old Mary, has to leave Durban ahead of her parents and is forced to make a new life for herself, within a South African ex-pat community in New Zealand.
Parallel to Mary's story, we meet Buck, a self appointed Maori leader, who is fighting to have a disused school granted to his people as a Marae, which is a cultural and spiritual place of meeting in Polynesian societies.
The South African ex-pat community, however, has their eye on the same establishment for their own South African Club. (A place where you would find 'the dunes of cheese Nik-Naks that glowed like fool's gold')
I loved how the author articulates the narrative of white South African culture in the nineties, and the way some South African emigrants react, speak and behave.
Author, Nick Mulgrew weaves and layers the stories of the Maoris and the South African club, alongside Mary's story of migration and loss with great skill.
I was immersed in Mary's search for her place in a new world, and her search for peace and closure in the one she left behind. The careless behaviour of some of those emigrants who, although delighted to be out of South Africa, brought their old attitudes with them to New Zealand, reminded me of the careless people in The Great Gatsby.
At the same time, I ached for the emigrants whose difficulties in a new country become almost unbearable.
Meanwhile, Buck Cooper struggles to find a place for a marae in his own land, a problem not dissimilar to South Africa, but not one that these South African emigrants ever had to face back home.
The story leads us to a point where Mary and Buck's worlds look like they are heading to hopelessness, but then they intersect.
A Hibiscus Coast is an intelligent reflection on different cultures, on trying to fit in, and on South African nineties culture. The author is able to articulate multiple aspects of South African culture with great skill, from the way they speak to one another to their reflections on the New Zealand Cavaliers Tour. I was also drawn in by his portrayal of Maori culture and the challenges these first nation people have faced.
Mulgrew gives us a glimpse into the Maori perspective of white South African immigration to New Zealand through Buck's eyes.
In conclusion, A Hibiscus Coast is a beautifully written, intelligent and heartwarming read, not to be missed.
(Also, how beautiful is that cover?)
November 7, 2021
The gentle cadence of
March 23, 2023
The book made me think about the superiority mindset of many white South Africans, doing some of the same historical injustices in New Zealand decades later: taking away the land of first nations. The author knew how to point in that direction.
I loved the lush writing at the beginning and the sassy main character. Unfortunately both petered out rather quickly. The story stayed somewhat interesting, so it's a solid 3☆ for me.
I loved the lush writing at the beginning and the sassy main character. Unfortunately both petered out rather quickly. The story stayed somewhat interesting, so it's a solid 3☆ for me.
March 9, 2022
Very good, but sometimes difficult to read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews