Roads from home

BY MICHAEL FALLOW

Easy come, easy go? Not in this story.

You read of authors wallpapering their rooms with rejection slips.

The first publisher to be offered Lynley Dear's debut novel, Ithaca accepted it.

"I recall thinking ... it wasn't supposed to be that easy," she says.

The Invercargill writer's story isn't about things coming easily. Far from it. Though much of the novel is set in Invercargill, spanning four generations of a family that arrives in the 1920s, the title refers to Odysseus' hometown. After the Trojan War he spent a decade striving to get back there.

The publisher rejected that name, and determined that this should be released as two novels, not one. She had huge misgivings about both calls, but came to accept she was in the hands of hard-headed professionals.

The first novel, rechristened – ahem – The Longest Way Home was due for publication in October 2007.

Something else happened in October 2007.

Hazard Press, which had published more than 400 titles, among them books by Fleur Adcock, Kevin Ireland, Bob Jones and Joe Bennett, was declared bankrupt.

Suddenly her contract was nothing if not troublesome.

Protracted negotiations with lawyers and liquidators about the possible salvaging of Ithaca came to naught.

The files for her novel had effectively disappeared into the morass.

So she recreated those files, including page and cover design, herself.

Its title restored and unity intact, Ithaca has this week been published entirely without literary funding.

Published by L.R.H., it says. That stands for Little Red Hen – apt because of the "I'll do it myself" sentiment, and because Beatrix Potter, who published her first work, Peter Rabbit herself.

As for Hazard: "To be fair to them, they published quality New Zealand literature for 21 years. People forget to give them credit for that."

She laughs. "When I came along, I was the kiss of death."

The novel fills a gap, dealing with the neglected area of emigration from Scotland to New Zealand in the 1920s, rather than the pioneering arrivals who came earlier, under sail.

It also deals with mental health issues in the 1950s, and is bookended by events in the Middle East, starting with the Crusades.

None of this is ungrounded. She has a Crusader forebear in her paternal family and she mixes into one character the experience of both her grandmothers, one of whom spent time in Seacliff, the institution Janet Frame wrote of.

"I've wrought havoc with the family tree."

It's a lonely business writing a novel, Mrs Dear says. "There has to be a real, genuine need to get you at that desk, day after day, dawn after dawn, with .... months and years of no feedback."

The engine, in her case, was the personal connection with her own forebears and issues about which she has long felt strongly.

Much of the writing of Ithaca was done from 4am stirrings.

"Be impressed. I am not a morning person.

"But I would wake and immediately be with (the characters), fretting about what they'd just done or were about to do, or about what I was going to have to inflict upon them.

"So, nothing for it but to stagger to the desk, boot up the laptop and wish them a horribly early good morning."

Mrs Dear has written three children's books, two volumes of local history and for 15 years her poetry has been published in The Southland Times.

As befits a poet, she was particularly alert to the cadences of the storytelling.

"I would spend at least half an hour every time I sat down to it, re-reading what I'd written and adjusting words for their rhythm and sound."

Then, progressing the tale, she found on some memorable occasions that the characters seemed to take over their own story "to the extent that I felt I was reading a novel as much as writing one".

"That's just bliss. Most of the time it is hard work – there would hardly be a paragraph that doesn't have quite a lot of research to make sure some detail is right."

Such disciplines have their own rewards. The details of life in the 1920s, 30s and 40s were not just meticulously, but fondly drawn into the story.

"I love the ephemera of that era."

- © Fairfax NZ News