Fiona Kidman

Every year the Ngaio Marsh Awards for New Zealand Crime Fiction include something that makes this reader marvel at the depth and quality of work coming out of that country. Dame Fiona Kidman came to THIS MORTAL BOY as (paraphrasing her own words) an accidental crime writer, but she has form in the central concept, where she has often recreated the past of characters, developing a fictional story based on true events or people. THIS MORTAL BOY is just such an undertaking.

Albert Black was the show more second last person executed in New Zealand, and I believe I saw somewhere that Kidman came across his story after talking to a witness to the events that lead to his conviction (this occurred in the mid 1950's). Black was Irish, born to a desperately poor family, an immigrant to New Zealand in search of prospects and a better life. Kidman takes readers back to Black's childhood in Ireland, and most tellingly gives us a glimpse into his families anguish at the conviction and the prospect of his execution. The novel concentrates on the story of Albert Black however, so we don't get the same sort of insight into the victim Alan Keith Jacques (aka Johnny McBride). Working backwards and forwards through the past and Black's life in New Zealand, Kidman seamlessly, tellingly, compellingly, draws a picture of a young man on the cusp of life who made the sorts of choices, and therefore mistakes, that many make.

Kidman has pulled off one of those forms of novel where a true story is woven into a fictional account that doesn't play fast and loose with the truth or the ultimate outcome. A fight over a girl, leading to Black's decision to arm himself with a knife, after which an encounter with the same man who beat him the night before, turned into a single knife blow that killed his rival in love and Albert Black was ultimately executed. The build up to this event provides real insight into a febrile society. Post war, social change had arrived in New Zealand, and young people, in particular are very different. The free love, drugs and rock and roll 1960's are on the horizon, whilst 1950's bodgies and widgies subculture was thriving. The tensions around the "generation gap" were starting to be felt and there was an overwhelming belief that the younger generation were out of control. Needless to say it's a heady mix for a young Irishman from a deprived background to land into. The opportunities that present themselves on his arrival in Auckland are almost too much for him to handle, and the smack in the head that is falling in love, sends him spiralling into some really bad decision making.

Somewhere in all of this, the line between fiction and fact becomes blurred in a manner that readers unaware of all the facts of Albert Black's crimes will be hard-pressed to pick. Kidman uses a series of letters from prison, accounts of final visits with friends and switching timelines and places to draw out a story of an immensely vulnerable young man in a time that's not best suited to understanding and forgiveness. In particularly heart-breaking fashion we also see the affects of his crime, trial and punishment on his mother. Back in Ireland, desperate to get to her son, to understand what has gone so horribly wrong, the portrayal of this woman is moving. You're left considering the ease with which young men do stupid things, a sneaking suspicion that murder was too harsh a decision, and the anguish of that mother and her belief in her son; in stark contrast to comments attributed to NZ Attorney General, John Marshall, "... we could do without these deplorable migrants". Readers have no option but to pause and consider if this is really what he said, what were the implications of that attitude on the trial and sentence?

THIS MORTAL BOY is sensitively written, beautifully constructed, considered and well balanced. It carefully delivers a number of points for the reader to contemplate - lack of compassion, lack of understanding of peer pressure, overt political interference in the judicial system, and the finality of capital punishment. It's not, however, a novel that shouts moral conclusions from the rafters. Rather it lays out the story of two young men who make stupid decisions, who lack self-control and wisdom and end up in an awful place. Whether or not they both deserved to die for this is left to the reader to consider, as is the role of the state and the judiciary when it comes to careful and cautious consideration of the facts, and the right to compassion and clear moral leadership. Needless to say, THIS MORTAL BOY, is a mighty undertaking and a very worthy Ngaio Marsh Award Winner.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/mortal-boy-dame-fiona-kidman show less

This Mortal Boy is shortlisted for the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards but that's not the only reason I'm reading it: Fiona Kidman is one of five Kiwi authors in a session called Inside Peek at the Auckland Writers Festival in May, and I will be there in the audience, wanting to ask her: whatever was the trigger for her to write about capital punishment in this compelling way?

There are books which I don't want to end because I'm enjoying them so much, and then there are books like this show more one, where the ending is known and I don't want to read it. It would make no difference to me whether Albert Black were guilty or not, I find the idea of hanging a young man of twenty absolutely repellent. As you know if you read my review of Seven Hanged (1908) by Leonid Andreyev (translated by Anthony Briggs) I think all capital punishment in any circumstances is repellent.

Fiona Kidman (whose Acknowledgements show that the book is meticulously researched) brings the story alive. The novel traces Albert's impoverished early life in Belfast, his optimistic migration to New Zealand, and his absorption into the 1950s youth subculture of Auckland's teenagers in the era of Bodgies and Widgies. Left in charge as caretaker of a house with an absentee landlord, he has unsupervised freedom when he is too young to handle the situations that arise. His biggest problem is a young thug known as James McBride, an alias he has adopted from the character in the Mickey Spillane pulp fiction novel The Long Wait.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/03/28/this-mortal-boy-by-fiona-kidman/ show less

I love it when this happens: I started reading All Day at the Movies last night at about nine o’clock, fell asleep very late at night with the book over my nose, and didn’t get out of bed this morning till I finished the book at about eleven. It wasn’t that the novel is a page-turner; it was more that it was so utterly absorbing that I just didn’t want to put it aside.

Fiona Kidman DNZM OBE (b. 1940) is a prolific New Zealand novelist, poet, scriptwriter and short story author. show more She’s written more novels than are listed at her Wikipedia page, because (on the day I looked) the list doesn’t include The Infinite Air (2013, see my review) or this latest novel, All Day at the Movies (2016). With the possible exception of The Captive Wife (2005, which I loved but have not reviewed on this blog) I think it may be her best yet.

Beginning in the brutally conservative 1950s, the novel is constructed as a chain of interconnected stories, tracing the fortunes and secrets of a New Zealand family. Far from being the ‘golden age’ so often associated with the postwar period, this era was a difficult one for women. For Irene Sandle, widowed in the last year of the war, her only solace is the child born from Andrew’s last leave, but she lost a satisfying job at the library because in the 1950s there was no such thing as maternity leave.

When she went back to ask for her position after the birth, it had been filled. The land girls who had worked in the countryside came flocking after jobs in town. She did have a war widow’s pension after all, and a roof over her head, the head librarian explained. It wouldn’t be fair to take her back. That wasn’t exactly the point, because the roof was over her parents’ house. For a time that was all right, but it wasn’t any more. (p.18)

Chafing for freedom that she can’t have under her parents’ roof, Irene takes little Jessie with her to Motueka, where she finds work as a manual labourer on a tobacco farm. To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/10/07/all-day-at-the-movies-by-fiona-kidman/ show less

I loved this book. I felt an immediate connection to the period as the event took place the year I was born and in the city of my birth. My father also worked in the central city so he must have been aware of these events. Sadly he passed away in 1975 so I am unable to question him about it.
I found this book very relevant to events that have happened in Christchurch recently. In 1950's New Zealand the Irish were looked on as inferior citizens. I was stunned as I too have Irish ancestry.
The show more author depicts post war New Zealand society accurately, through well drawn characters and credible dialogue.
Despite knowing the outcome of the story, I was moved to tears by the unjust sentence handed down. This sentence gave me pause for thought: 'The law, as it stands at this moment, seems cruel and unjust, a carapace for power and revenge, designed by men who have been to war and can't let the past go, must hunt down enemies for the rest of their lives.' This was the thinking of Albert Black's defence lawyer.
I think this author has brought to the attention of readers the awfulness of capital punishment and the impact of it on family, friends and community. This is a well researched piece of writing. show less