If you come from a big town in a big country (let’s say New York or London), you could spend your entire life reading nothing but books set in your own home town. I’m sure you don’t, but you could.
Certainly, if you come from America, you could spend your entire life reading American books and watching American TV, and although there are regional differences within America, those differences probably don’t constitute any sort of barrier.
Then there are those of us who come from very small countries. Those of us from New Zealand are rarely able to sink into a novel written in exactly our own culture. Instead, we develop the ability to deduce meanings from context. Sometimes I wonder how much harder we work. Sometimes I wonder how well I do.
Oh, there are a number of locally produced novels in my own home town of Christchurch, but not a lifetime’s worth. Only a subset of those are set in contemporary Christchurch, and only a smaller subset are grounded firmly in any particular setting. (I have blogged before about Literary Xenophobia.)
That’s why it is such a joy to read a book set locally. Kate de Goldi’s The 10pm Question is set in Christchurch; not only that, it’s set firmly in North West Christchurch, and I don’t think I’ve ever read anything — ever — in which the main character follows the same route to school that I once followed to school. (Albeit 15 years ago. Albeit, I think de Goldi’s fictional school is made up.)
It was so nice to open the first page and read about a cat eating ‘Go Cat’ rather than ‘Azmira’, or some other foreign brand I’ve had to guess many times from context. Likewise, Frankie Parsons is eating Just Right for breakfast, and I know exactly what Just Right tastes like, because I have eaten it too. I have never eaten Quaker Oats or Go Lean Crunch; and Cheerios are small red-skinned sausages as far as I’m concerned.
Kate de Goldi’s characters speak like people I know. They use the same phrases. I can really imagine the intonation, not just guess at it from what I’ve seen on TV.
When the Christchurch city library crops up, I know exactly what it’s like to sink into a beanbag in the children’s section because I’ve been there myself:
That was the great thing about the library. It was both teeming with people and very private. Everyone was either busy selecting books or returning them or was sprawled in a beanbag, lost in their own reading world.
I’ve been to Sparks in the Park and I remember certain Christchurch personalities:
Transistor man was IH and listened all day to a large old-fashioned transistor radio held on his shoulder.
In fact, it’s as if I’m a character in the book:
He knew the name of every person they passed by and seemed always to have some connection with them, no matter how minute. He knew someone they played Touch with, or who went out with their cousin, or flatted with their sister or had just dumped their brother.
I know the landmarks, sometimes very well:
Between the College of Ed and the Postal Services Centre they went to Havana and sat outside the heater lamps, waiting for hot chocolate.
I don’t know Havana, but Christchurch weather is less suited to al fresco dining than to sitting hunched outside around heater lamps. I know that culture very well.
I know people who grow trees of ‘black boy peaches’. I come from a family who keeps ‘earthquake water bottles and the bird flu bags of rice and pasta’. I know this book. That’s why I enjoyed it so much more than usual. I didn’t have to do any work.
So last week, just as I was absorbed in a Christchurch-centred book, revelling in its familiarity, it was the opposite of serendipity (zemblanity?) to learn that so much of my beautiful home town will never be quite the same again.
