Black Earth White Bones

Chris Else

Random House

Otago Daily Times, March 24th 2007

It is hard to know how to begin to describe Black Earth White Bones; I am forced to resort to the non-specific, catch-all adjective “lovely”.

Set on the imaginary (but entirely believable) Pacific atoll, the Independent Republic of Ventiak, it is a mixture of mystery, romance and magical realism in which very little and a great deal happen simultaneously.

There is little to distinguish this island kingdom from any other Pacific paradise, other than an indigenous delicacy (the kalavativava fruit), a curious religious practice known as “sky-gazing”, and the mysterious, periodic and island-wide swarm of ants known as the “rage”.

Kiwi expat Kit Wallace is a poet who has been living at the Royal Albert Hotel on the main island of Miamalau for 10 years, in a state of self-imposed exile. His days drift gently by in a mixture of poesy, drinking and satisfyingly unrequited love, disrupted only momentarily by panic about his credit balance.

The arrival of two nagali (white) men, contracted to an overseas-owned mining company that has already desolated the neighbouring island of Tiavu, sends ripples though throughout the calm pool of everybody’s existence. Not only are the pair seemingly involved in a scheme to defraud the Ventiakans of millions (with governmental collusion), one of the men was once one of Kit’s students. His presence drags back memories of a past Kit has spent years physically and emotionally fleeing, while simultaneously tantalising him with a solution to his financial embarrassment.

As he struggles with his conscience, the island marshals its own resources in defence. Forces are stirring deep within the rocks, and the ants (called vavanala, “living earth” in Ventiakan) are gathering. Suffice it to say, that justice is done (although is it by the hand of man or land or God?) in a most satisfying manner.

What struck me most about Else’s writing was his ability to enfold me completely in his world. Both his use of language and of a plot, in which as much is left unsaid as is, evoked that indefinable “otherness” of life in the islands, where it is too hot to hurry, and where things work themselves out in their own way and time.

Meanwhile, the mixture of second and third-person narration transformed Kit, and the idiosyncratic collection of social refugees with which he shares the hotel’s upper floor, from acquaintances to friends.

By the time I had finished I had an overwhelming desire to scour the Air New Zealand website for cheap fares — Rarotonga perhaps, or maybe Samoa? I have no idea what came over me!