Kay McKenzie Cooke
Sea Change by Jenny Pattrick (David Bateman, 2025), 272pp, $38
Just how would a small coastal community cope with the sudden devastation of not only an earthquake, but one with a tsunami snapping at its heels? In her novel Sea Change Jenny Pattrick takes a balanced and realistic approach in order to describe such an event and its after-effects on the residents of a small coastal town in Aotearoa. This scenario of a group of under-estimated, ordinary people toughing it out and taking a stand against the ignorance of bureaucracy is undoubtedly a work of fiction. However, the fact that it is not a story set in any future, either far or near, but one placed firmly in a totally believable present, is more than a little unnerving.
Pattrick has succeeded in producing a novel that illustrates, with conviction, an organic follow-up to a cataclysmic crisis. The recovery presented is one forged by human resourcefulness, along with a pragmatism that avoids sentiment. The main focus is on those who have remained to fight back after dodging a mandated withdrawal. They call themselves ‘remainers’ and are a diverse bunch prepared to find common ground for the common good. In the process, this wide cross-section of people come to enjoy the unexpected added benefits of friendship and solidarity. They find out that if hardship does have an upside, it could very well turn out to be deeper self-awareness, personal growth and a growing sense of community: ‘Lorna wants to shout out. Be careful! Don’t go far! But holds herself in check. They are family now, she realises: a good feeling, but which also comes with unfamiliar worries.’
Found family can be achieved by a unified awareness, but to make any defiance work, each one will need to establish—or in the case of Lorna re-establish—their own sense of identity. They will also need to plumb any inner strength to a degree previously untested. Pattrick’s solid character development and steady, credible movement of plot facilitates an appreciation of the challenges and hardships that face this threatened village. As we read on, her careful depiction of survival and resistance becomes more and more plausible.
A hand-drawn map in the book’s opening pages allows us familiarity with the layout of the unnamed village in question. Another map further into the book shows how the land has settled seven months after the earthquake and tsunami hit. Sarah Wilkins’s simple but effective cover design and illustration further substantiate the image of coastal threat pitched against future promise. The village’s location is described as being somewhere along the Kāpiti Coast, close to the entry to Transmission Gully. A quick look at Google Maps indicates that it could well be located somewhere between Raumati South and Paekākāriki. An extract from the journal Lorna is keeping may also be a hint: ‘The old te reo name for this area translates as “the perching place of the parrot”: I pray that our colourful band of individualists may perch here a little longer.’
The opening chapter, titled ‘Last Supper’, introduces some of the main characters as well as a glimpse of dramatic events that unfold after the next chapter’s vivid description of the tsunami as it rolled in, two months earlier.
Again, the roaring, tearing wall of seawater—not so high this time but more lethal. It strikes like a battering ram; branches, roofing iron, the returning waste bins, seaweed and even fish churning in the grubby foam.
The first pages of the novel provide an immediate and immersive introduction to the self-described scruffy clutch of characters. These people become more familiar, their personalities and actions more surprising, as the story progresses. But the writer’s hand never gets in the way of truth about community. Pattrick avoids the pitfalls of exaggeration, instead offering crisp and effective descriptions.
By the front door, two suitcases and a large box stand ready; draped over them is a warm coat, even though winter is months away. Gumboots, woolly hat and mittens wait by the chair. Below, the traitorous sea, out to the horizon, is dark and calm.
A possible exception to this restraint concerns the odious bad guy, Adrian Stokes, a rich and powerful executive with a whisky cabinet in his office suite. He is drawn as some horrible caricature. But don’t be fooled; he is all too real.
Adrian Stokes stands inside the Talbot, Monk and Baldwin executive lift as it travels up to the twelfth floor. He wears a custom-made suit, maroon tie (Stokes Group colours) and is fresh from a shave and hair trim.
In the case of this self-aggrandising bigwig, we can make allowances for any authorial inflation as actually realism. He represents the classic trope of a rich, impervious and entitled person acting and reacting true to form. Any amplification to show him up seems justified, quite frankly.
Is it because this is a work that purports to reflect a genuine Kiwi response to a natural disaster that it is difficult to locate any hints of pathos, or indeed displays of weakness? Evidence even of simple tears in any description of the great loss and sense of abandonment the characters are suffering is rare. If there are tears, they are those of frustration and anger. Of course, shows of pity would only complicate matters and hinder progress. Going without and limiting supplies to basic requirements for the general good is a given.
However, in the course of the novel eventually allowances are made for certain personality quirks—such as plumber Dot, who falls into a despondency that verges on depression, ostensibly because of being unable to procure nice, new clothes and the lack of luxuries in this village that just wants to lay low. Dot’s intermittent dejection could also be symptomatic of trauma response after the earthquake. A credible example of a post-traumatic response is also evident in the young tama Eru. At the same time, a very small, tight-knit village gradually healing is not everyone’s idea of a good time. Too quiet for some. Or in Dot’s case, as Flo explains, too boring.
Despite any potential for conflict among the survivors’ individual character traits and personalities, a pervading attitude of togetherness steadily evolves. Beforehand, some of them didn’t really know each other that well, despite being neighbours. What is paramount is an ability to ensure everyone is kept safe, and that the dignity of being able to choose their own way of life and where they call home remains intact. A unique and charming collective of people is thus created, proving that a band of renegades lucky enough to have access to the savvy that an electronic genius, an experienced nurse and two ingenious plumbers bring is a blessed mob indeed.
Flo examines Dylan’s tap. Strange the way it drips. In her early days of plumbing, she hated the job; had grizzled and made everyone’s life at home misery. But one day, while she was doing a block course at the polytech, she found herself sitting next to another girl: someone as neat and tidy as she was large and untidy. The girl had grinned. ‘Just the two of us, eh? Dot’s the name. We might need to have each other’s backs among all these beef steaks.’
And that was that. Suddenly, plumbing was interesting.
After the idea of being able to keep living in their own homes in their own town is mooted, then activated, by the hangers-on, it’s beginning to look like all the plans for remaining rather than being relocated are coming to fruition. However, outside threats to undermine all this hard work and sacrifice keep causing seemingly insurmountable problems. The novel encourages us to rally with the ordinary, good-hearted people and to applaud every quietly engineered and resourceful, but actually duplicitous, move they make to fight back against ‘the man’.
Sea Change addresses global warming and eco-activism. It uses the device of what-ifs to throw the spotlight on how fragile this world-as-we-know-it really is and how imminent, or vital, is change (the book’s title being a hint). On every level, no matter who we are or where we are, change is inevitable—whether negative or positive. The world is in flux. Sea Change echoes that reality.
Therefore, it’s a novel that could comfortably sit alongside other recent eco-fiction titles, such as Tim Jones’s Emergency Weather. Pattrick’s Sea Change also establishes that change and self-empowerment (of the worthy kind) could well be up to individuals who, forced through circumstances beyond their control, find themselves with a need to wrest calm out of calamity. This usually means fighting misguided, powerful entities who appear determined to barge ahead without consulting the ordinary citizens at ground level. In Sea Change, Pattrick identifies how it actually does take a whole village to alter things for the better.
This is no apocalyptic drama. No special effects have been required. Pattrick avoids dramatic techniques and instead employs an approach that, if at times verges on the deadpan, consistently maintains its account of an authentic quest to protect and safeguard one of the most basic of human rights: shelter. By employing an engaging cross-section of characters to represent a neighbourhood, Pattrick sums up the true meaning of that concept.
Lorna, arguably the character who experiences the most growth, references a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem to encapsulate her thoughts on the make-up of the remainers: ‘Yes. Our small community, its gear and tackle and trim. Some would see us as counter, original, and so we are: proudly so. Are we strange? Not to me, she thinks.’
Sea Change utilises the charm that a sense of community can convey to encourage investment in the welfare of the characters and the village. It becomes an easy decision to take a stand alongside these likeable small-community characters. They are recognisable and familiar. Are we able to relate? No sweat. A foreword note by Pattrick advises: ‘This is a work of fiction, not a DIY Survival Manual. However, readers may learn a thing or two.’
KAY MCKENZIE COOKE (Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu) lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin. She is of Māori descent (Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu, Waitaha), and Scottish, Irish and English, and is tāua to nine mokopuna. The author of four poetry collections and three novels, her new collection of poems will be published by The Cuba Press in 2026.
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