This book should come with a warning label: Do not read this if you are a parent to small children. Or: Do not read if you can't sympathize with people committing heinous crimes, yet without being heinous people.

It's a tough read. Joe, Simon and Kerewin. It's no spoiler to say this is a story about child abuse, but be warned, because it's taken much further than you'd think it would be, all with the expectation that you somehow continue to sympathize with the abusive character, Joe. Obviously, these three are also metaphors for those three parts of New Zealand society, Maori, European and mixed, but not being from the country myself it's hard to say how it should be interpreted. Far as I can see, we have a conflict between Maori and European - with Maori being the aggressor as it would be very hard to empathize with the European perspective otherwise - with a failure from mixed people to reconcile the two? I do not have the context to say how accurate this reading is.

On a more accessible level, this is a story about abuse, and how it affects everyone involved. Abused, abuser, bystander. Joe's abuse varies between more or less to be expected, considering the time period and absolutely unconscionable. Yet, it's hard not to somewhat understand where he is coming from. He is still reeling from the death of his wife and unborn child, and Simon, cast ashore after a shipwreck is deeply traumatized and legitimately difficult to raise. Living very rurally, the medical and therapeutic support he needs might as well be on the moon. Kerewin sees the abuse, and doesn't know how to respond. We don't either. What to do, how and would it be any use? From the moment we meet him, it's perfectly clear that Simon's unlikely to fare any better in a foster family. A large part of the story feels like a Mexican stand-off in this way. None will budge. Until, finally, the tension breaks, disastrously. And we still have about 150 pages left.

Another theme would be queerness. Kerewin is asexual and aromantic, before those terms were even in common parlance. Joe is heavily implied to be bisexual and Simon's gender-nonconformity (especially his long blond locks) is often remarked upon. A lesser author would have written this book about a lovely little queer found family. A better author wouldn't have done exactly that in the last chapter. Incorporating Maori beliefs and mythology as supernatural elements, all the characters deep-seated issues are essentially... just... fixed... in the last chapter. It rings incredible hollow. It makes me want to tear out those last few pages so we have to sit with the devastation of abuse and the desolation of a small family torn apart again.