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Vienna, 1903: Thirty-three-year-old Marta Mueller, natural historian and talented artist, meets Bernard Schmidt, a copra planter from German East Neuguinea (now Papua New Guinea) who is looking for a wife. For Marta, who longs to travel the world, Bernard is a window of opportunity and a chance to start anew. A few months later Marta is married and sailing for the Pacific. Her new husband's friends are a strange Australians, Samoans, Europeans and natives mix uneasily and unconventionally in the hot, humid, and unstable environment of German-ruled Neuguinea. Marta must find her feet, and herself, far away from her family during her marriage and, later, the British-Australian conquest and formation of Papua New Guinea. Eventually, Marta finds a real, if unconventional love, and achieves greater success in her artistic and scientific work than she might ever have dreamed.
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First published September 3, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 18, 2010
I wasn't sure about this when I first started it - there were a couple of times where I found that the author used words that jarred (like the repeated use of "ennui" and "post-prandial") or had slightly ambiguous/confusing details that threw me out of the story - but as I got into it further, I really started to love it. The narrative is very well-crafted, and the author's research comes across as impressive. It's about a time and a place I'm not too familiar with (Edwardian Papua New Guinea) but the descriptions of the era were so evocative I was deeply drawn in. The characterisations were well-rounded and believable, and I felt colonialism was portrayed very realistically with both the evils and benefits shown but not in a heavy-handed way (albeit only really from the colonials' perspective, but this is to be expected as that is the novel's standpoint). The author's deep love of language and description is apparent with some amazing passages that brought the tale to life. And I really loved the way the author illustrated Marta's relationships with both Bernard and Royal, they were all too human and fallible and lovely and real. It's a book that I found stays in the memory and glows like a jewel, and I look forward to reading more of this author's work.
August 3, 2011
Really enjoyed this story set in the 1900's in Papua New Guinea, it flowed very nicely and the characters were very interesting for their times.
August 28, 2017
A common trope of literature and women’s experiences of colonising is the opening up of opportunities not otherwise available in the metropolitan world, where the relative ‘freedoms’, as in weakened conventions, of colonial life weakens the barriers and constraints on women’s opportunities. Kelly Ana Morey has made good use of this trope in this engaging story of Marta Mueller, daughter of the Viennese intellectual middle class and settler in Neupommern and Neumecklenberg – now better known as New Britain and New Ireland (Latangai), part of Papua New Guinea.
Marta, in her thirties, unmarried, not pretty in any conventional sense, intellectual and well-read is certainly ‘on the shelf’, well past marriageable age in turn of the 20th century Vienna. What’s more the Muellers are an unconventional family – with three talkative, intelligent, artistic, free thinking daughters across a span of just under 20 years, one of whom has serious mental health issues with a significant eating disorder, with Herr Mueller a scientist at the Natural History Museum encouraging the skills of being learned, but certainly no radical. Into this comes Bernard Schmidt, an unmarried planter from Neumecklenberg as the German colonies were formerly known. Hoping to court Gretchen, but foiled by her ill-health he marries Marta and they set out for a new life in late 1903…..
Of course, as per the trope, Marta flourishes: the marriage may not satisfying for either of them but Neuguinea offers Marta opportunities she never had as she negotiates her way through the rudimentary life of the colonies, finding her place in a society made up of German, Australian, Samoan and Neuguineans – although it is quite unlike the ‘society’ she knew in Vienna. Times change, Bernard strays, the marriage flails, war comes, Neuguinea ceases to be a German colony in the copra war, Marta finds unconventional love and repute as a natural history artist – but all this we learn from the blurb.
Much as I enjoyed Morey’s previous novels, she seems to have found a confident, mature and rich voice in a much more conventional narrative where the psychological distress, the anger of characters, the domestic failures of those earlier works continues here but in a way that emerges through the actions not the introspective reflections of characters (in this sense, there are elements of Grace is Gone here). She also seems more confident in handling a crucial element of the back story, which is hinted at throughout, but only in a way that eventually comes obvious when the narrative arc is revealed in towards the end.
In addition, the novel’s core is a small group of people – Marta, Bernard, his friend Royal and Marta’s sister Augusta (a form Morey has used well in her previous work) but this time with a great cast of supporting characters at home and in the colony. This colonial cast is really well draw – settlers, other Pacific Islanders and marginal but crucial indigenous characters whose very marginality intensifies the realism of the depiction of colonial life – to create a strong sense of Neupommern and Neumecklenberg as creole societies with distinctive ways of being and doing things, ways of life and existence, always with the big corporations seeking dominance of the copra market lurking threateningly in the background.
What is more, Morey’s exploration of the experience of the ‘transfer’ of power from German the Australian rule in the context of WW1 is deftly done. Her viewing and writing position from within the German colonist community makes that transfer distant, disruptive, secretive and distressing, were the waiting seems the worst thing. Of course it is not, but the dispossession itself becomes very matter-of-fact, because of the waiting and uncertainty.
In the past I have suspected that Morey needed a good editor, and when I saw this was published by Huia, a press often in need of a good editor, I was concerned; this was unfounded. There is a deftness to this novel and a powerful narrative drive with excellent use of flashbacks and character’s story-telling that gives us insight to their character (both the fictional and the psychological ones) enhancing the power of the novel.
Well worth it, rewarding and engaging – a very good novel indeed.
Marta, in her thirties, unmarried, not pretty in any conventional sense, intellectual and well-read is certainly ‘on the shelf’, well past marriageable age in turn of the 20th century Vienna. What’s more the Muellers are an unconventional family – with three talkative, intelligent, artistic, free thinking daughters across a span of just under 20 years, one of whom has serious mental health issues with a significant eating disorder, with Herr Mueller a scientist at the Natural History Museum encouraging the skills of being learned, but certainly no radical. Into this comes Bernard Schmidt, an unmarried planter from Neumecklenberg as the German colonies were formerly known. Hoping to court Gretchen, but foiled by her ill-health he marries Marta and they set out for a new life in late 1903…..
Of course, as per the trope, Marta flourishes: the marriage may not satisfying for either of them but Neuguinea offers Marta opportunities she never had as she negotiates her way through the rudimentary life of the colonies, finding her place in a society made up of German, Australian, Samoan and Neuguineans – although it is quite unlike the ‘society’ she knew in Vienna. Times change, Bernard strays, the marriage flails, war comes, Neuguinea ceases to be a German colony in the copra war, Marta finds unconventional love and repute as a natural history artist – but all this we learn from the blurb.
Much as I enjoyed Morey’s previous novels, she seems to have found a confident, mature and rich voice in a much more conventional narrative where the psychological distress, the anger of characters, the domestic failures of those earlier works continues here but in a way that emerges through the actions not the introspective reflections of characters (in this sense, there are elements of Grace is Gone here). She also seems more confident in handling a crucial element of the back story, which is hinted at throughout, but only in a way that eventually comes obvious when the narrative arc is revealed in towards the end.
In addition, the novel’s core is a small group of people – Marta, Bernard, his friend Royal and Marta’s sister Augusta (a form Morey has used well in her previous work) but this time with a great cast of supporting characters at home and in the colony. This colonial cast is really well draw – settlers, other Pacific Islanders and marginal but crucial indigenous characters whose very marginality intensifies the realism of the depiction of colonial life – to create a strong sense of Neupommern and Neumecklenberg as creole societies with distinctive ways of being and doing things, ways of life and existence, always with the big corporations seeking dominance of the copra market lurking threateningly in the background.
What is more, Morey’s exploration of the experience of the ‘transfer’ of power from German the Australian rule in the context of WW1 is deftly done. Her viewing and writing position from within the German colonist community makes that transfer distant, disruptive, secretive and distressing, were the waiting seems the worst thing. Of course it is not, but the dispossession itself becomes very matter-of-fact, because of the waiting and uncertainty.
In the past I have suspected that Morey needed a good editor, and when I saw this was published by Huia, a press often in need of a good editor, I was concerned; this was unfounded. There is a deftness to this novel and a powerful narrative drive with excellent use of flashbacks and character’s story-telling that gives us insight to their character (both the fictional and the psychological ones) enhancing the power of the novel.
Well worth it, rewarding and engaging – a very good novel indeed.
November 21, 2010
A great read. A complete, believable world.
February 3, 2011
Great book! Historical fiction, but with irony and humour. I liked this a lot.
December 27, 2013
I learned that the Germans and Australians occupied land in Papua New Guinea. A good read with well-developed characters that stay true to themselves. All is not revealed until the end...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews