{"id":1059,"date":"2019-02-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T21:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1059"},"modified":"2025-05-03T13:51:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T01:51:10","slug":"ocean-of-milk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2019\/02\/02\/ocean-of-milk\/","title":{"rendered":"Ocean of Milk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong><strong>Belinda Aycrigg<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em><em>Lasavia Publishing<\/em><\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, February 2nd 2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Ocean of Milk<\/em> is a surreal, hallucinogenic exploration of modern life through the eyes of a woman experiencing everything as if for the first time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The novel, which opens with the banishment of the Vedic Goddess Kali from the Celestial Realm and her re-awakening into an ugly world of which she has neither knowledge nor memory, comprises three main sections. The first details her struggle to find her way in an alien landscape full of unfamiliar objects that assail her senses relentlessly. Walls and billboards bombard her with words, trees hurl great arms laden with dull green weapons and walls whisper with the voices of the living wood they used to be. The Two Dollar Shop oozes a choking slick of ocean-smothering oil, ice cream invokes the plaintive cry of a cow searching for her brutally murdered calf, broccoli heads scream in memory of being torn from their stems, and anything non-fair-trade organic fills her with fear of being beaten for not working fast enough. And then there is her family: Small Dark and Small Fair (who are, she learns, her sons Mattie and Sammie), Husband, and her parents, Nani and Prof. Kali soon develop a rapport with the children but the adults struggle to come to terms with the fact that the woman they love has become a stranger and increasingly frustrated by having to keep her under constant supervision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">When memories return, they are of heavenly rather than earthly life, and it becomes an increasing struggle to determine what is and is not permissible \u2013 planes and cars are appropriate methods of transport, levitation, flying, or translocating people to another astral plane are not \u2013 and Kali\u2019s erratic behaviour eventually sees her sectioned and CYFS threatening to take the children into care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The second part deals with her time on the psychiatric ward and her daring rescue of Mattie and Sammie who are at risk of irreparable harm from the forces of conventional medicine, and the novel climaxes with a battle that pits her (now split into three different selves), her sons and an assortment of spirits and enchanted animals against the malign forces of authority and convention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">It has been a long time since a book has left me as ambivalent as this one. On the one hand, I loved being immersed in an environment where the familiar is rendered strange and incomprehensible, and Kali\u2019s attempts to deal with emotional and sensory overload have a beautifully child-like practicality and humour (my favourite scene takes place in the library, where she carefully rearranges the books so that they are happy with their neighbours). But I struggled with the constant invocation of the dangers of allopathic medicine and science, particularly the strong anti-vaccination message that runs through the book and which is both irresponsible and dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Although it is possible to interpret the story as a parody of alternative living and Kali\u2019s experiences as those of a woman in the midst of a psychotic break rather than a goddess leading the misguided to enlightenment, the prevailing sentiment is anti-establishment be it medical, legal or educational; Mattie has Asperger\u2019s because of the pitocin used to induce labour, the childless CYFS worker confesses to separating families out of jealousy, and in her acknowledgements Aycrigg thanks the author of Cure Tooth Decay (which claims that teeth can heal themselves naturally) for allowing her to quote excerpts of his book. But for me, the most telling aspect was the juxtaposition of the Husband and Prof. The former is a wholehearted believer in alternative living whose only crime is minor and unintended emotional neglect of his depressed wife. The latter, who spends his days torturing baby animals in the name of research, is the voice of science, reason, gender roles, and physical discipline, whose attempt to trick his daughter into seeing a conventional psychiatrist precipitates the crisis that threatens to tear the entire family apart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Although I share some of the concerns of the novel, particularly around environmental sustainability, I ended up wondering if these are as misguided as some of the other messages of the book. For that, I am extremely sorry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Belinda Aycrigg Lasavia Publishing Otago Daily Times, February 2nd 2019 Ocean of Milk is a surreal, hallucinogenic exploration of modern life through the eyes of a woman experiencing everything as if for the first time. The novel, which opens with the banishment of the Vedic Goddess Kali from the Celestial Realm and her re-awakening into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[305,306,370,500,18],"class_list":["post-1059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-305","tag-belinda-aycrigg","tag-fiction","tag-nz-author","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2003,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions\/2003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}