{"id":973,"date":"2018-10-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-05T21:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=973"},"modified":"2025-05-03T13:51:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T01:51:34","slug":"the-imaginary-lives-of-james-poneke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2018\/10\/27\/the-imaginary-lives-of-james-poneke\/","title":{"rendered":"The Imaginary Lives of James P\u014dneke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tina Makarete<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Penguin Random House<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, October 27th 2018<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In her debut novel, Where The R\u0113kohu Bone Sings, <\/em>Tina Makereti delved into our country\u2019s forgotten history to bring the a lost story to life to life. She has returned to this fertile territory in her latest work, inspired this time by an 1846 article in the London Times<\/em> describing the trial in which the chief mate of the merchant ship Eliza <\/em>was convicted for assaulting 15-year-old James (H\u0113mi) P\u014dmara. Although the paper provides some insights into H\u0113mi\u2019s \u2018very extraordinary\u2019 history, the boy died shortly afterwards, leaving few hints of how he found his way to England or what he made of the alien world in which he found himself. In The Imaginary Lives of James P\u014dneke,<\/em> we hear what his story might have been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Makereti\u2019s James is only a toddler when his chiefly father leaves him in the care of missionaries after the rest of his family are murdered. A precocious child, he loves the way of the Book and the Word and the pen, but when his father dies battle just before his tenth birthday, the boy angrily rejects their English God and sets out to find his own way through the world. His vague plans to reunite his scattered tribe come to nothing however, and, although he finds a temporary home with another iwi, James longs to return to his studies. So when a travelling English artist invites him to travel to London and appear in an exhibition of his New Zealand paintings, he leaps at the chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcomed by the Artist\u2019s family as an honoured guest, James initially enjoys his role as a living exhibit, disconcerting his audience by first performing the haka then addressing them in the manner of an English gentleman. Over time, however, he becomes increasingly aware of the contradictory nature of his life; people flock to the exhibition in order to see their own world reflected in his face, yet he has lived so long amongst P\u0101keh\u0101 that seeing his own face in the mirror comes as a shock and he has lost all connection with his own whakapapa. And whilst his position within a well off household makes him a member of the privileged class, their world of manners and shows, zoos and exhibitions are magnificent but unreal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately it is among the poorer quarters of the city that James finds his real home, with the flamboyant sailor Billy Neptune and his cross-dressing girlfriend Henrietta (Henry) Lock, and an assortment of \u2018freaks\u2019 who, like him, earn their living as professional spectacles. Here he finds himself free to create his own identity from both the Ma\u014dri and P\u0101keh\u0101 worlds, but there is one aspect of his nature James must keep a closely guarded secret, and when, in a moment of weakness he reveals his true feelings, his happiness is instantly and irrecoverably shattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although quick to stress The Imaginary Lives of James P\u014dneke<\/em> is a work of fiction, the issues Makereti addresses are as relevant today as in the 1800s, particularly with respect to negotiating multiple social, cultural and sexual selves. What is most striking about the story,<\/em> however, is not its content but the voice of its narrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The novel is framed as James dying testimony, and the imaginary lives of the title are as much his creation as her. Personal\u00a0in intonation but\u00a0formal in language and strongly introspective, his words and images invoke both\u00a0the mannered tone of\u00a0educated\u00a0society and the\u00a0rhetorical style of whaik\u014drero: “The hour is late. The candle is low. Tomorrow I will see whether it is my friends or a ship homewards I meet. But I must finish my story for you first. My future, my descendant, my mokopuna. Listen.\u2019<\/em>” The effect is of\u00a0a\u00a0kaum\u0101tua’s voice issuing from a young man’s lips, forcefully conveying the extent to which James\u2019 experiences have aged him and how, at the end his life, he is finally able to reconcile the disparate strands of his identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a voice that spans the ages, as surprising to the contemporary reader as to its 19th<\/sup> century audience, and one that echoes long after the book is set down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tina Makarete
\n
\nOtago Daily Times review October 27th 2018<\/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":[278,370,421,500,18,120],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-278","tag-fiction","tag-historical","tag-nz-author","tag-odt","tag-tina-makarete"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","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=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1904,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions\/1904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}