Partly, this book is the story of a woman running the Auckland marathon. There’s a lot of determination, a lot of pain, much questioning and self-doubt. It is a tactical race, and we get the feel early on that our runner, Mickey, knows what she is about and is in it to win it. This race runs alongside the story of how our woman came to be here, next to the ocean, running her heart out. I thought the marathon was superbly written (and run) and I was with Mickey through all the pain and the euphoria.
Mickey’s coming of age story is a sadder one. Makes me wonder if there is something with long distance running that goes back to childhood. I mean, why this need to self-punish so cruelly, when running for fun is, well, fun? Distance is a brutal and lonely sport. Our girl is a loner; she’s dyslexic and failing at school, has an absent father who really is a prick but (of course) she wants his attention desperately. She has siblings who are older and leave. She has a mother who is wonderful. More on the mother, Bonnie, later.
So Mickey is teased at school, she’s little, a bit scrawny, stumbles over her reading. She is surprised to win a running race and likes the feeling, so she saves her paper-round money and joins the local running club. She’s the runt of the pack and running in old shoes. Sometimes the bullying is a bit forced. “He leaned down, his wet lips pink and full. ‘Don’t even bother trying to win, loser,’ he said. ‘Midgets like you can’t keep up with me.’” I think kids’ cruelty is usually more subtle. Of course she beats him. She’s good because she’s determined, wanting to find something she’s good at so she will be noticed. So her dad, distracted with his new family, will finally say, ‘well done, Mickey’. He never does.
She wins everything she enters and the trainers take notice, begin pushing her, taking her to regional and national events. Tell her to put in the miles, to lose weight. Always to lose weight, although she’s nearly anorexic. They discuss her body endlessly, weigh and measure and handle her. They bully her and she takes it all. She’s addicted to the endorphins of racing. She wants to be the best. She wants to run in the Olympics. Things go wrong.
I think the hero of the story is Mickey’s mum, Bonnie. She’s solo, working long hours, not always available, but she loves her kids boundlessly. She does the right thing in letting Mickey go to live her life. When Mickey crashes, she knows her mum has open arms. “She called me every day, without exception, and sent me packages in the mail: magazines, chocolate, hand cream. When she could take time off work, she drove up to Auckland and booked a room with two single beds in a run-down motel in Te Atatu. ‘We can have a sleepover,’ she said to me on the first visit. We ate fish and chips on the floor, and she taught me how to knit.” When a girl is struggling, like Mickey was, fish and chips and knitting with mum is good medicine.
Her emotional state gets better, worse, better.
Besides the running, which is evocatively written, I thought there was not much sparkle in the prose and the dialogue is a bit wooden. Here’s Mickey’s father: “That’s a nice dream, my dear. What’s your real plan? How are you going to pay the bills? And, statistically, most girls quit sports completely by the time they finish school, so it’s a good idea to really give it some thought. Money doesn’t grow on trees, I’m sure you’ve figured that out.”
The running writing, however, is glorious. When they’re watching a race on TV, Mickey’s mother asks her how running feels, and Mickey tells her. “What words did I have that would do justice to the glory of an empty road, the long, winding, black bitumen snaking away into the densely forested hills beyond the house? How to describe the beauty of the teal-blue ocean peeking out between the curves of the land as you round each corner? What way to express the feeling of your heart thundering, your mind blown open, as you breach the top of a steep hill and soar forward along the flat? How to tell her about the way the air changed colour in the trails because the sun was guarded from the depths by a thick canopy, how the colours of the furry ponga trunks and the scrubby ochre trails tinged the air brown? How would I tell my mother that running made my mind feel as open and spacious as the wide sky above, as endless and mysterious as the universe beyond?”
They’re excellent words for describing the euphoria of running and the ending left me completely satisfied. Good book, go Josie Shapiro!
Cristina Sanders' blog 