Plenty of interesting bits, and I quite like Makereti as a writer, but unfortunately I still don't love historical fiction. 3.5 ( )

The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke is another of the titles longlisted for the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Literary Awards. But it was on my TBR months before the longlist was announced, thanks to an enticing review at Alys on the Blog. I've mentioned this blog before: along with Booksellers NZ, it is the blog to follow if you want to keep up with what's new and interesting in New Zealand books.

Tina Makereti is the author of Where the Rekohu Bone Sings, which I reviewed in 2016 and included in my Best Books of that year. It was an impressive debut, but I'm not quite so enamoured of The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke. I have to admit that my attention wandered a bit in the middle section of the novel...

The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke revisits some of the themes of Where the Rekohu Bone Sings. Once again a character leaves what has become an insecure home and ventures into the unknown in order to seek opportunities for a better future. The story of James' childhood in a New Zealand wracked by war is poignant: he sees and experiences terrible things that no child should see. But missionaries teach the orphaned boy English and a chance encounter with an artist leads to a passage to England and employment as a specimen in an exhibition. (The Artist, as James calls him, is the sort that came to the antipodes for the purpose of making a book. Such books, about the quirky new colonial possessions of the empire, were very popular in 19th century England.)

As in Makereti's debut novel, community is an important theme, but this novel invites the reader to consider inclusion and exclusion, together with civilisation and savagery. James is always caught between the rigid artifice of separate communities and he is always 'other', both in the way he takes pride in his individuality and in the way that others define him because of his race. Yet even as his awareness of being exploited grows, James is no pathetic victim. He is in London on his own terms: he endures the curious gaze of the audience because that is his means of learning. Because he is housed as a gentleman with The Artist's family, he has access to a library and polite society, and because he is an exhibit he gets to attend Royal Society gatherings. But his education is furthered in other unanticipated ways: without the approval of his hosts, he makes the acquaintance of other misfits: performers in freak shows, drunks, and gamblers. The solidarity of this community is forged from an awareness that they are at the bottom of a stratified society.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/02/27/the-imaginary-lives-of-james-poneke-by-tina-... ( )