Michael is a puffball of conceit, one of those oblivious men who specialize in making others aware of their own intelligence and emotional requirements. Thus a puzzled sense of indignation wafts through Michael’s story, as he perambulates around Hamilton, Auckland, Wellington, Rotorua and the farms and towns of the North Island, extending his favours to mothers and daughters, utterly unconcerned with his country’s complacent, puritanical values. Circumstance constantly foils him as he snuffles around for a corner of New Zealand life where a more diverse sexuality and a more willing attitude to copulation can be discovered. Much of the pleasure of the novel comes from the comic grace of its narrative. Michael, raised by his Edwardian grandparents, has mastered a sedate New Zealand version of their formal prose which fluently decorates his descriptions of the ‘raging pit of disappointment’ fate always seems to place in his path. Seeming artless, this novel is artful, a radical work using the life and times of an intelligent rake to stick pins into conventional pomposities, in New Zealand in particular, and in the world in general.
