{"id":544,"date":"2010-07-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T23:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=544"},"modified":"2024-12-31T14:18:45","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T01:18:45","slug":"past-perfect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2010\/07\/17\/past-perfect\/","title":{"rendered":"Past Perfect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Karen Zelas<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Wiley Publications<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, July 17th 2010<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">When I finished <em>Past Perfect <\/em>by Karen Zelas I was left in something of a quandary.\u00a0 On the one hand, I\u2019m not sure the world needs yet another novel about a woman going through a midlife crisis. In this respect, the story\u2019s protagonist Sue Spencer checks all the conventional boxes.\u00a0 Breast cancer scare, tick.\u00a0 Straying husband, tick.\u00a0 Career sacrificed for motherhood, tick.\u00a0 Wayward teenage son, tick.\u00a0 Elderly parent with Alzheimer\u2019s, tick. Her chosen path of self-discovery involves researching her family genealogy, starting with her great great great grandmother Brigitte Dujardin, who arrived at Akaroa in 1840 as a 17 year-old bride. She follows the trail to France and back, finding revelations, temptations, and resolutions on the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Despite this, Zelas avoids the more obvious clich\u00e9s. Although Sue\u2019s story is interleaved with extracts of Brigitte\u2019s letters home to her mother, she doesn\u2019t conveniently stumble over this correspondence, which provide a snapshot of physical, political, social and personal challenges facing the French settlers. The letters provide information Sue must find for herself while condensing her own research in an accessible form for the reader.\u00a0 Nor does her life parallel Brigitte\u2019s, a conceit I particularly dislike. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The writing is also better average.\u00a0 Some metaphors left me slightly startled (lovemaking like <em>\u201ctrying to catch an eel \u2026[that] slipped away into the murky depths and all you had in your grasp was slime\u201d<\/em>), but others lingered in my mind.\u00a0 Of Sue\u2019s father\u2019s passing, for example, we are told \u201c<em>The pause had grown into silence and the silence into death\u2026[t]he edentulous mouth hung open.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">On balance, though, I was left feeling that <em>Past Perfect<\/em> didn&#8217;t quite live up to the promise of its title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/while-gods-walk-among-us-aotearoa-other-lives-are-not-so-blessed\">https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/while-gods-walk-among-us-aotearoa-other-lives-are-not-so-blessed<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Karen Zelas<br \/>\n<br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review July 17th 2010<\/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":[115,370,122,18],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-115","tag-fiction","tag-karen-zelas","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","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=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1460,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions\/1460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}