
Jenny Powell
Weathered Bones, by Michele Powles (Penguin Books, 2009), 299 pp., $25.99
Weathered Bones, by Michele Powles (Penguin Books, 2009), 299 pp., $25.99
This is one of the few books I have had dreams about. The sea in it ended up permeating my nights: images of a blue-black seething ocean — repetitious, insistent images that are as compelling to the reader as they are to its characters — dominate Michele Powles’ first novel.
Weathered Bones weaves together the lives of three women, initially unacquainted but about to become closer than they ever could have imagined. Eliza McGregor arrives in Wellington in 1840. Despite her initial new-immigrant expectations, life soon plummets from joy to the depression of a lonely grind at Pencarrow lighthouse. Her husband drinks his earnings, and her young children exhaust her spirit. The husband’s eventual drowning leads to Eliza herself becoming the keeper of the light.
This is a fascinating aspect of the book, historically speaking, as ‘Eliza’ was inspired by the true-life story of Mary Jane Bennett, appointed New Zealand’s first keeper of a permanent lighthouse at Pencarrow in 1858. Powles allows us the opportunity to ponder the difficult life of Mary Jane, who was surely one of New Zealand’s early feminists.
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