I was in the car listening to Pip Adam’s conversation with Tīhema Baker on Better off Read, Episode 162 and he sounded so brilliant I had to make a stop to buy the book. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a hard-hitting novel and very good, though I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone (read on…)
Our narrator of One Day a Taniwha, Hepa, has a terrific literary voice. He had me exhausted, tearful, commiserative, frustrated, angry, all of those both with him and for him. Baker sure knows how to tuck you under the wing of his character and take you along for the emotional ride, all told like a mate spilling the heartfelt beans into your compassionate ear. He’s going through shit, but trusts that you’ll be there for him. He’s not ranting into the void. He’s talking to you.
To begin with I was deeply compassionate. I, too, had firstborn who turned the world upside down. Please do not give this book to new couples or there will be no next generation. Doesn’t Baker know there is an understanding that we don’t talk about these things: the sleepless nights after sleepless weeks and struggle against collapse. Brought to the brink by the intensity of love and what it demands of us that we give, willingly, as we flay ourselves. God, I felt for poor Hepa, struggling to juggle baby and relationship and work and obligations. But we’re meant to hide the struggle and just get on with it, get over it, get better at it. That is part of the problem. It can, not always, but it can be fucking crushing. I don’t know the solution.
But hang on, I thought after a while. He has a partner who’s not going out to work, and a supportive community. All this getting up five times a night to hand the baby to the breastfeeding mother – why doesn’t he sleep on another room so he can support her in the mornings and evenings? Let the aunties step in a bit more so she can get a break. Take the weekends while she’s catching up on her sleep. Sorry fellas, but it’s not you the baby wants or needs at 2am. Why be a martyr? Ha! The thing about newborns is they take away your ability to think straight. That much I know. When you’re done in, keeping going is easier than finding help.
‘Then came the painstaking journey to the cot, the lift up and over the bars to lay him down. Knew this drill back to front: feet first, don’t let his butt sag, keep one hand under his head, take his arms off his puku with the other hand, slide the first hand out from under his head, then put this hand on his chest for reassurance, but not for too long.’ Five times a night. How do you ask for help with that?
There are other things dragging Hepa down, all exacerbated by the fact that his tank has run dry. He’s working in a sad job at the council, the standard boring stuff, minutes and meetings and hours sorting things out on the screen and a bunch of colleagues you wouldn’t talk to in real life, who are all seemingly discombobulated with having a big Māori man on the team and trying to be racially sensitive, and nervous that someone might mention a karakia. Things heat up when a council project involves the local marae and the usual shit surfaces –privileges for Māori, etc. There are protests outside the office. It’s personal for Hepa, these are his wife’s people. They’re welcoming to him and if he wasn’t so stressed you’d think he’d be the sort of guy to enjoy earning his place with them, making a place for his son, Wī, helping out, chatting to the uncles. He’s disconnected from his own marae in the south and trying to learn the reo, trying not to disappoint his wife.
I like the complexity of his relationship with his wife, Āniwa. He is trying to be staunch for her and Wī, trying also to be present and involved, but still seems to fail to meet her expectations. I’m not sure she is particularly understanding of him; things are done her way. Which, at crunch point, is pretty cool.
Hepa’s irrationality tips into his dreams, going to sleep is no longer restorative and the spiral goes down. This is haunting stuff and we, the readers, are carried along with him, things get odd and really odd and then the taniwha appears. At first he can leave the taniwha in his dreams, but Hepa is a lucid dreamer and the taniwha, who comes in all forms and isn’t recognised until he lifts his paua-shell eyes, is hard to contain. In a confrontation at work, stalking a protester, in bed with his wife, is he awake or will the taniwha’s eyes drag him down?
We slip, with Hepa, into an understandable madness, trying to rationalise this creature who is flipping reality around horribly. Life goes up in flames and falls apart to an unexpectedly terrifying conclusion.
As I said before, this is brilliant, but not a read for a new couple thinking about starting a family. There is a section on Mental health for tāne Māori at the end.
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