Sue Orr

This is another of the long-listed NZ Book Award novels and I would very much like to see it on the short-list.
The story opens in 1978, with 16 year old Charlie seated on a plan about to depart for Sydney, to have an abortion. Abortions were illegal in New Zealand at the time. Charlie is travelling alone as her disappointed, even shocked parents had to borrow money to send her and they couldn't afford another fare. When the plane is delayed, Charlie gets off and returns home. Her parents then send her away for her pregnancy and the baby is adopted.
The story then jumps to 2018. Charlie is a primary school teacher in Wellington. She has raised her grandson Tommy since the age of four. Tommy, now an 18 year old university student, is on the spectrum and she is very aware and sensitive to his perception of life. Their calm ordered existence is disrupted by the advent of, Jenna, Tommy's girlfriend, and by the reappearance of Jim, Tommy's father. The book continues into the Covid19 lockdown of 2020.
The author has created a memorable and credible cast of characters. She portrays a vivid picture of New Zealand during the different periods and indeed of the New Zealand environment. This would make an excellent discussion book.… (més)

The first thing I did when I finished this outstanding novel was to find out if Sue Orr had written anything else. From this profile at Read NZ, it seems she has. There are two collections of short stories, and a novel called The Party Line, which I've just ordered.

The second thing I did was to have a good long think about how to convey the riches of this novel in a review. Longlisted for the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards — and surely, surely! to be shortlisted when they make the announcement on the 2nd of March — Loop Tracks is an extraordinary work of fiction. Written in real time during both the pandemic and the recent New Zealand election and referenda, the novel is about personal and political choices: a woman's right to choose and the right to life; abortion and euthanasia; and who gets to have an opinion about those issues when a referendum gives everyone the right to vote on them. It's also a novel about love: the joys and struggles of bringing up someone on the spectrum, and how lonely, worrying and fulfilling that can be, especially during the coming-of-age period. Plus, because of its timing, Loop Tracks brings in Covid and its restrictions on personal liberty and the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories that bedevil contemporary life.

These tangles, as the pitch-perfect cover design implies, are connected, and they resolve themselves within a structure that gradually reveals back stories and how they impact on the present and the future. The novel begins in 1978 with the compelling first person account of Charlie, a sixteen-year-old girl on a flight to Australia to have a legal abortion. In that fatal year the abortion clinic in NZ has been closed down, (not to be re-opened until the following year), leaving the desperate with only two choices: a backyard abortion or a covert pregnancy far from home followed by surrender of the baby, never to be seen again.

But for Charlie, on her way to Australia under the secret auspices of a women's network, things go awry. At Auckland International Airport, the plane is delayed, long enough for her to resurrect romantic impulses about being in love with a boy whose name she doesn't know and who had just used her at a party. She gets off the plane, and goes home to her shell-shocked parents who furtively arrange for her to 'have a break from school' to 'visit a friend' in Napier.

In Part 2, Charlie is a grandmother, raising Tommy who is on the spectrum but high-functioning. He's at uni in Wellington, studying maths and about to have his first-ever date. Jenna, despite Charlie's anxieties about Tommy getting hurt by someone who doesn't understand his needs, turns out to be lovely. Her only flaw is that she is, understandably, interested in Tommy's background and identity: the dead mother, the absent father. But this is a no-go area for Charlie, who has never told anybody about anything, except for her friend Adele who keeps her grounded. Like Tommy, the reader doesn't know any of this either at this stage, but it is gradually revealed as the novel progresses. And that's because the absent father resurfaces and turns out to be an evil mistake, leaving Charlie to face the fact that she thinks it would have been better if he hadn't been born, but then she wouldn't have Tommy...

(I chose the word 'evil' deliberately. Amanda Lohrey's The Labyrinth explores the feelings of a mother whose son has done something truly evil and not repented. This is an unimaginable situation for those of us whose sons have brought nothing but pride and gratitude for the way they have turned out. )

The personal becomes political as the pandemic impacts on their freedoms, and the election brings two referenda with it.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/02/26/loop-tracks-by-sue-orr/… (més)