Making skilled use of the repetitive nature of thought, he draws readers inside each voice in turn, using dialect (often including profanities) so naturally that it reads easily even for Americans. Duff (himself the son of a Maori mother and a white father) shows amazing facility with language in the intense, fast-paced, choppy internal monologues he gives his characters. Readers are treated to the mind's musings before and after events, the distinctive imagery of people locked in a present they're trying to forget. A lot to take in, but these are only the most active moments in a book whose main action is interior.
Beth receives a ``hiding'' for embarrassing her husband in front of his friends, her daughter is raped and commits suicide, her young son is carted off to juvenile hall, and his older brother dies in a gang fight, but Beth finds strength by summoning up her tribal heritage and teaching it to others. Instead, the men's lives consist of beer, gangs, fights, and beating their wives. As far as Beth is concerned, the Maoris would not have become impoverished lackeys with very little self-esteem had they stayed close to their warrior roots. Relegated to government housing in an unnamed city, she lives just two vacant blocks away from whites whose homes offer tantalizing glimpses of a privileged existence she and her family will never have. Beth, a Maori mother, feels nothing but anger and disgust at her people, who accept second-class citizenship as a given. Regardless of one's position on the controversy, the half Pakeha /half Maori Duff provides a compelling and insightful glimpse into the overwhelming struggles faced by the disenfranchised poor of any urban society-including America's own inner cities.Upon its New Zealand publication in 1990, this controversial debut novel rocketed to the bestseller list. Duff's choppy sentences, repeated phrasing and use of Maori slang may require some adjustment for American readers, but ultimately his staccato prose style is ideally suited to a world of not-so-quiet desperation.
Most vulnerable is Grace who dreams of escape into the Pakeha (white) world and whose brutal rape triggers the downward spiral of events.
With a gritty, realistic eye, Duff portrays Jake and Beth, who because of alcoholism, abuse and poverty can provide little protection against the gangs, drugs and violence that menace their children. In a Maori ghetto of urban New Zealand, Jake and Beth Heke battle entrenched poverty, racism and other ills that overwhelm their traditional Maori culture. Part of Hawaii's TalanoaContemporary Pacific Literature imprint, this first novel won the 1991 PEN Best First Book Award amid controversy over Duff's perceived condemnation of Maori society as largely responsible for the hopelessness plaguing its communities.
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