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StraightStraight is the second novel in Michael O’Leary’s trilogy. It concerns the early years of two of the first novel Unlevel Crossings’ protagonists, Hinengaro Te Riro i He and Paul Te Ariki Calvert. Straight is set in early 1980’s Auckland and begins with Paul Calvert’s return to that city after several years in the mysterious place called ‘Dreamland’. Fighting off several flash-backs he discovers that reality can often be stranger than dreams. Along the way he discovers things about his past that he had no conception of and his whole life is brought into existential question. Was his own birth due to an SS experiment during World War Two to create an ‘Aryan Mäori’, were his presumed parents gun-runners for the IRA, and who are the people following him around the city in a black Mercedes Benz? Add to this a surreal mix of local characters from the still down-at-heel Ponsonby drug scene and the upper-class opulence of Remuera and you have a novel alive with energy and surprise. In the background is the developing love story of Paul and Hine. Also the city of Auckland becomes a character itself, much in the way Graham Greene used his locations to define and enhance many of his novels.
Niel Wright's introduction at the launch.
TICKET TO RIDE WITH MICHAEL O’LEARY
The political pundits are saying 2002 was the high water mark of Helen Clark’s success as prime minister. For my literary associates 2002 was also a high water mark. It was the year when Michael O’Leary’s novel UNLEVEL CROSSINGS was published by Huia. I launched that book UNLEVEL CROSSINGS here at Paekakariki on Bloomsday. In my remarks I ended by saying “If you need further help to understand what Michael O’Leary is on about in this book UNLEVEL CROSSINGS, read his other books, because all his writings hang together.”
From 1996 as a publisher my aim was to get Michael O’Leary’s writings into print or back in print, and this we did, but it still meant that writings that hang together in reality still had to be looked for in a dozen different publications. So the next step had to get them altogether under a single heading as a trilogy of novels. This is a truth that Michael O’Leary thoroughly understands himself. He sees UNLEVEL CROSSINGS as the start of a trilogy, the second book of which STRAIGHT we are launching as such here today five years later. In STRAIGHT as we have it today after 10 years of talking about what was required Michael O’Leary has brought a novel that always had links with UNLEVEL CROSSINGS into tighter integration with it as the second book in the trilogy.
STRAIGHT is Ponsonby Gothic set in the 1980’s. The hero Calvert lives in the anxious present but like most of us spends much of his time in thoughts of the past, which is perceived as the dream time. Within this structure the novel is well written and straightforward enough. Michael O’Leary is an economical writer. A straightforward book which makes its point in few words is just the ticket to ride on Michael O’Leary’s dreamlander express.
Also of interest, Michael O’Leary is right now putting the finishing touches to the third part of the trilogy MAGIC ALEX’S REVENGE, so we are now in sight of having all Michael O’Leary’s prose narrative and much of his verse narrative brought together as a unity in a trilogy of novels.
It gives me great pleasure to launch STRAIGHT here today, because of the three books in the trilogy this is the one that readers will find most ready to get into with appreciation. In it Michael O’Leary’s talents are openly on display. With this assurance you are well placed as a reader or critic or reviewer to turn back to UNLEVEL CROSSINGS and find there also the merits that may be less obvious if you come to it by any other route. But the trilogy needs STRAIGHT as its middle novel, because when you get to the last book MAGIC ALEX’S REVENGE, there much of Michael O’Leary’s finest and most appreciated writing is on show, but you need to approach that book in the confidence that a master is at work at the height of his powers.
So read this book STRAIGHT, buy it, borrow it or steal it, but read it and thereafter it will be your vade mecum to the rest of the trilogy, you magic talisman to get you safely into the most arcane reaches of dreamland, from which in the opening words of STRAIGHT “Paul Calvert awakes about an hour out of Auckland on a train journey back from dreamland.”
From talk with Michael O’Leary I gather that the trilogy as a whole will be entitled DREAMLANDER EXPRESS.
TITLE
Straight
AUTHOR Michael O'Leary
PUBLISHED 2007
CATEGORY Novel
FORMAT Paperback
EXTENT A5, 150
pages
ISBN
1-86942-037-3 978-1-86942-037-6
PRICE
NZ $25
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