Novel
The Lovelock Version
Maurice Shadbolt · 1980
Synopsis
Three Lovelock brothers, Herman the utopian, Richard the accommodating capitalist and James the idealistic farmer, arrive in the South Island in the 1860s to look for gold. Herman, on the strength of an angelic message, leads his family north; shipwrecked near the Porangi river, they are taken in by the Maori, then exploit coal and timber, attempt a foundry and build Lovelock Junction. Maori wars, labour unrest and the Great War catch up with them, down to the sons sent to Gallipoli.
Context
The first historical novel by its author, who was emerging from a creative impasse, it marks his turn towards the nineteenth century. Hodder and Stoughton published it in Auckland and London in 1980, St Martin's Press in New York the following year. A prefatory note suggests that the Lovelocks speak from beyond the grave, and the text confronts a parodic scholarly work on their town. The Gallipoli episode gave rise to a play of 1982, brought to the screen in 1991. Critics have noted the reduced place given to women.
Who it is for
A big novel, never translated into French. Asides and false scholarly quotations often interrupt the narrative.
Prizes and reception
Fiction prize at the New Zealand Book Awards in 1981; critics see in it a delightful mixture of metafiction and realism.
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