Gill South
The Year I Turned Thirty by Nikki Addison (Kōtare Press, 2024), 280pp, $38
In her novel The Year I Turned Thirty author Nikki Addison plucks three Auckland young women out of their very nice if predictable lives and sends them on the road trip of a lifetime across the United States, at a key turning point for them all.
The impetus for the trip is that bookshop manager Bailey has been dumped out of the blue by her boyfriend of ten years and is having a personal life crisis about what happens next as she hurtles towards the age of thirty. Harper, a talented graphic designer happiest when surfing, has had her confidence knocked by redundancy during Covid and is piecing together a freelance career, living in a grotty inner-Auckland student flat and feeling like life is passing her by.
Rach, already thirty, is the last to decide to join the trip. This Instagram chef and food blogger likes to be in control and doesn’t like the sound of all the camping Bailey has planned. But a road trip on a budget is the only way Bailey and Harper can do this, so the Ponsonbyite decides she’s willing to suck it up so she can spend time with her closest pals, from whom she feels increasingly distanced since she married in her mid-twenties.
Three months of road travel around the US by left-leaning young women from New Zealand might not be such a great idea these days, but in this novel—set in the President Biden era—the three friends are delighted by the friendliness they encounter everywhere they go.
Bailey plans their itinerary, and after flying into Los Angeles, the trio head to New Orleans, Louisiana, and then west from there in their car of choice—a rough-around-the-edges Ford station wagon, which they name Harrison. They travel through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California and Oregon, finishing in New York City.
The author, who herself did a big road trip through the US prior to writing the novel, names a lot of real eateries, hotels, campgrounds and hikes that these fictional characters visit—so this saga could almost be used as a travel guide for others wanting to follow in Bailey, Harper and Rach’s footsteps. As Harper puts it: ‘This is legitimately the ultimate budget-friendly US road trip for millennials.’
The journeying incorporates various dramatic episodes, including sightings of wildlife from alligators to a bear, and the women are always on the lookout for snakes. A core part of their travel takes in some of the country’s beautiful national parks. They buy a National Park pass that allows them entry to all the country’s parks. The trio marvel at showstoppers including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemite.
With Rach a foodie, and Harper happy to eat anywhere anytime, food descriptions are a big part of the friends’ experiences. And it wouldn’t be a road trip without a playlist—the group regularly find the right song to suit a place they’re visiting.
Addison rotates the viewpoint among the three women throughout the novel, and both in their conversations, their bantz and LOLs, and in their more anxious inner monologues, the reader learns what big questions are preoccupying these young Kiwi women.
Long-distance journeys, with all those hours on the road, are a perfect time for the trio to muse on the imperfect lives they’ve left behind and what they’re going to change. They are each at a crossroads and their significant birthdays are a prime motivation to assess both past and future.
For Bailey, who wears her heart on her sleeve, it’s about recovering from the panic of having her life plan scuppered by her relationship breakup and finding a new career direction—she feels like she is treading water in her bookshop job. Her travels across the US, learning more about Native Americans’ part in US history, also remind her of her Māori heritage and prod her conscience; she realises that she’d like to learn more about this side of her family.
For Harper—this Margot Robbie lookalike—there’s a secret she hasn’t shared: she is bisexual and she sees the trip as a time to process this and tell her best friends. An adventurous soul, she wants more and this highway adventure lights a fire in her—she’s keen to plunge into further adventures.
As for Rach, during this three-month working vacation, she has nowhere to hide from the fact that her seemingly perfect life is far from perfect. Though her food career is growing in leaps and bounds, her marriage to the reliable but rather dull Doug has become harder to maintain, and she needs to be brave and look at what life could be like as a single woman. She also needs to work on her imposter syndrome, which dogs her despite being a successful businesswoman.
The friends support each other in their tangled thoughts, rubbishing any sign of low confidence and urging one another to take risks. Then there’s a key event that changes their perspective. In the opening pages, Addison has already flagged an incident that occurs deep into the road trip.
Harrison, the car, breaks down in Death Valley National Park, Nevada, in the late afternoon heat—48 degrees. This harrowing occurrence thoroughly tests the strength of character of the three young women, who try to cope using different strategies. The normally sunny and resilient Bailey goes into a foetal position, convinced they’re not going to survive, while Harper does her utmost to figure out what’s wrong with the car engine, and Rach strides off looking for cell phone connection, determined to sort things out.
Rach, exasperated, comically tells Bailey: ‘Oh honey, pull yourself together. There is no way in hell I’m dying in a desert wearing Lululemon hot pants and a visor.’ The car breakdown is described in intricate detail, helped by the fact that it actually happened to Addison. She sets the scene: ‘The sun was low, the air stifling. Heat waves shimmered over the endless plains of brown and gold rock surrounding them. A lone lizard scuttled across the parched ground.’ Then they become aware of the forbidding silence of the desert.
[Bailey] had never experienced silence quite like the desert. There was literally no sound, except their own breathing and rustling. No wildlife, no distant traffic, no wind moving through grass or trees. It was eerie but peaceful at the same time.
Harper finds it all visually stunning:
It gave her the same feeling she got when she was in the surf, facing away from the shore and looking out at the endless sets of waves. A feeling of being in awe of nature and its vastness. A respect for the planet.
The experience focuses their minds, and by the time they get out of this tight situation—rescued by a friendly, if right-wing, tow truck driver—some of their life decisions have been given new clarity.
Addison explores a number of themes in this novel. She looks at the pressure on educated middle-class young women to have all their boxes ticked by the age of thirty, and how they should react if not everything is going according to plan. Society’s expectations seem to demand that they make their thirties the defining decade. ‘Everyone says your twenties are supposed to be the best years of your life. Where did they go?’ asks Bailey, who has a mini panic attack every now and then during the trip about what she’s going to change in her life when she returns home.
But the slightly older and wiser Rach, for one, has had no qualms about hitting thirty.
We’re finally in a position where student debt isn’t a concern. We know what we want from a career—even if we aren’t there yet—and from relationships. We’ve actually figured out what we like, what we don’t like, who our real friends are. There’s no trying to impress anyone else or fit in.
The straightforward Harper also has no fears about reaching thirty and the decade ahead: ‘I want to enjoy my thirties, not be bloody afraid of what’s to come or worried about what I’ve missed,’ she tells the others. The novelist is saying: what’s so bad with being single in your thirties?
After lengthy reflection, Rach understands she doesn’t need Doug either financially or personally. As she edges closer to a decision, she realises:
the things that made her happy were not in any way connected to Doug. She could still bake and go to hot yoga and read lifestyle magazines and visit the Saturday market and watch reruns of The OC and take lengthy walks through the Auckland Domain. Hell, she already did do all those things without him.
We find out in the final chapter what paths the three enterprising women choose when they finally return home to New Zealand.
I found this an enjoyable debut by Nikki Addison. She does well at portraying how the chemistry of a trio of girlfriends can work—Bailey often the peacemaker, Rach, quick to take offence (especially when it comes to Harper) but the mother hen of the group, and Harper, relatively even-tempered except if deprived of food, and sometimes getting her words wrong when it comes to Rach. It will be interesting to see what Addison does next, perhaps with less familiar territory.
GILL SOUTH is a reviewer and reader who regularly contributes contemporary fiction book reviews to the New Zealand Listener. She is currently working as a small business content creator at Stuff. Based in Wellington, she has lived in Melbourne, London, Pennsylvania and California.
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