Rachel Smith
Nell by Penelope Todd (Cloud Ink Press, 2024), 345pp, $34.95
Writing the past brings its own set of challenges; there are many ways the truth can be remembered. This is particularly so when the author’s own family is involved. In this telling of her grandmother’s story, Nell, Penelope Todd wisely chooses to follow the road of fiction; as Todd notes, ‘This novel of her life grew from impressions, anecdotes and memories.’
Written from Nell’s point of view, we are fully in her world from the beginning—a Pākehā world—filled with the richness of past experiences and the obligations of Pākehā women at this time. Set over the early and late 1900s, it is a period of great change: two World Wars, an influenza pandemic, industrialisation and technology that changed traditional women’s roles.
Truth weaves its way through the story, where anecdote, fact and fiction mix seamlessly. The name Nell is the same, likewise the locations; there are her younger years in the Mackenzie High Country and later years in the Maniototo. Other character names, such as Nell’s children, are fictionalised even when they are based on real people and events.
More known for her young adult fiction, Nell is Todd’s second adult novel, following Island, also a historical novel. Island received mixed reviews and criticisms, but it seems to me that Todd has successfully addressed these issues in Nell. There is a surety and confidence in the writing, the tone consistent and authentic, with characters well-formed by tight prose and by Todd’s close observations:
Nell drives into the shed and switches off the engine. The iron roof ticks above her. Birds are skittering in the eaves. She stares ahead at the harvester with its gleaming teeth, at the rows of dusty harnesses unused for five years or more, at her own hands on the steering wheel, fingertips peeling from the constant application of lysol. She can hear the tractor up on the terrace and, closer at hand, one of the dogs is barking acknowledgement of her arrival.
Back where she started.
The telling of Nell is chronological, with chapters headed by years from Nell’s birth in 1897 to the end of her life in 1970. Each chapter gives a close and intimate look at Nell’s life; some are lengthy, others concise, a moment in her days or months, ensuring the pace is not bogged down by the need to share important facts. The novel opens with nine very short pieces—poetry, prose poetry, flash—that cover Nell’s first nine years, each chapter growing denser as Nell’s world expands from mama to house to garden to farm:
Of her own birth:
sound erupts
light rushes in: blobs splashes blazes & gulps of light
newborn, she knows milk swoon
Through to her father’s words—‘You’ll find that certain things are expected of a young lady’.
A young Nell is stubborn and independent, as able as her older brother to ride a horse and muster, and ‘she can manage a whole meal for twelve all by herself’. At 13, Nell is off to boarding school, early on recognising her own needs: ‘She means to keep alive the small flame of excitement burning in her chest, which has something to do with freedom.’
Three years later and Nell is taken out of school against her will: ‘She’s been bought, but she smells freedom, too. There is to be a car.’ It is the first of many times that Nell finds her own needs put second, as a daughter, mother and wife; the crushing weight of expectation where ‘Life is a raw grey morning spent trapped like an insect in the setting amber of family convention.’
As a young woman Nell continues to investigate new ways of thinking and understanding outside of life on the farm:
She has so many fine thoughts and intentions—to understand, to do good, to improve matters—and most of them seem to evaporate somewhere out in the hills or slip down the kitchen drain with the dishwater.’
She joins the Theosophical Society, where she meets Peggy, who will become a friend for life.
Nell is 25 years old when she meets Herb, recognising that they are both ‘a bit jaded by life, blowsy already and frayed at the edges’. Herb has recently returned from the war, and Nell has returned from her work during the influenza pandemic. There is an instant connection, but it is no passionate love affair. Says Nell, ‘Might it not be sufficient to walk on with Herb, one foot in front of the other, learning from him (and he from her), working hard and practising kindness when she can?’
They marry and move into Herb’s single-room cob house in Central Otago and later purchase a sheep farm, 70,000 acres in the Maniototo, with Nell’s inheritance. Here, they build a new house, settle in, and four years later, there are three young children and as many miscarriages. Nell’s world is swept into one of domesticity: children born and growing, leaving for boarding school and returning, and the practicalities of daily life on the farm. Amongst this Nell is at once two people: the efficient homemaker and woman of the high country, and another with a need for newness and learning.
The landscape of New Zealand is a significant feature of Nell’s life; the mountains and plains outside her home, and her garden, are a constant place of retreat and pleasure. Nell escapes here whenever she can, alone and with her children, the river a special place of connection.
Crouched at the flames with the smells of crushed willow, river mud and wood-smoke, she knows a primitive contentment. She is whole, squatting here; bottom brushing the earth, arms around knees and hair flicked by dangling leaves. Mica specks on her hands. A benison. She loves her hands and all they can do.
The momentum that threads through the novel is more character than plot-driven; it is the humanity of the characters, their strengths and frailties that pull the story along. This is most detailed in Nell and Herb’s relationship, a marriage that is neither easy nor fulfilling. Nell struggles with Herb’s continued failure to listen to her point of view and yet she recognises his qualities: ‘Thank God Herb is a kind man. His intention is to be kind.’ And for Nell, early on in their marriage: ‘Events have overtaken her. Marriage, Herb, the whare, the frost, and a baby. This frightful woman, the arrogant doctor. She senses in herself a deep core of numbness that has allowed this to happen, that lets her go on functioning, nonetheless.’ This numbness thaws over the years, and ‘Nell finds there is anger to be reckoned with. Her own.’ It is an anger that appears from nowhere:
A hissing red tide rushed up inside of Nell. Her hand dived into the drawer for the knife and hurled it. Not at Herb, but only slightly to one side. The blade pierced the pinex wall, then released.
The later part of Nell’s life is marked by grief, ‘the wound that never heals’. She comes to realise that:
hard circumstances have shown that her part, as far as she can discern it, is to walk alongside whomever life brings to her door. To walk, and also to stand. To stand firm, to stand when others shy away, or lord it over her; to bend, to sway, but not to fall, or if she falls, to rise again without self-recrimination, enabling others to do the same.
With time there is also a growing understanding of her marriage:
And they have done their work upon one another. Chiselled, abraded, chipped and smoothed. Angered and soothed, antagonised and calmed. Known, awoken, integrated and interlocked. It could hardly be otherwise.
The world, as Nell experiences it, is a colonial history, a story of colonisation. This is acknowledged in one section, where Nell, as a new mother, escapes for a walk into the hills on their farm. Her ability to see between worlds, her premonitions, has already been established, and here again, she hears voices of the past: ‘These hills she and Herb have claimed with such ease, and worse, heedlessness; whose feet have known them more intimately than theirs ever will, and where have they gone?’ It is an interesting observation by Nell and a theme that is not returned to again—perhaps less the character’s view than that of the author’s. Would Nell really have considered this when so fully immersed in a colonial world? Regardless, it does provide some depth to the history of Aotearoa New Zealand.
The success of this novel is in the telling of the small moments that make a world, creating a layered and satisfying story of an everyday, full and rewarding life—of Nell’s life.
RACHEL SMITH lives and writes in Ōtautahi. She has been published in journals and anthologies including Landfall, Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. She is screenwriter for the feature film, Stranded Pearl, due for release in 2024, and is an editor at Flash Frontier.
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