 First edition | |
| Author | Shena Mackay |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Heinemann 1992 (UK) Moyer Bell 1993 (US) |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 341 |
Dunedin is a novel by Scottish author Shena Mackay. It is her seventh book and was published in 1992 by Heinemann. It won a 1994 Scottish Arts Council book award. [1]
The novel starts in 1909 where Presbyterian minister Jack Mackenzie and his young family arrives from Scotland to Dunedin in New Zealand to replace the Reverend Craigie, who died in trying to save his wife after she fell in a thermal pool at Tikitere. Jack Mackenzie has an obsession with botany but then forms a secret relationship with a half-caste woman Myrtille, who owns a Māori shrunken head...
The novel then switches to 1989 London where his grandchildren Olive and William who share a house in South London. Jay is also Jack's grandchild by Myrtille where he meets Olive in the Horniman Museum, but they are unaware of their relationship to each other and they make their separate ways. Olive has had a year long relationship with Terry, a writer and is trying to put him behind her and but then she snatches a baby on the tube. William has resigned as a headmaster following the death of one of female pupils when she was pushed under a Metro train in Paris where he was supervising them. Jay travelled from New Zealand to London but was then attacked and mugged, he eventually finds "Dunedin" the house inhabited by his grandfathers family where he squats surrounded by other down-and-outs. Jay notices that one of the occupants has found a shrunken head under the floorboards. Jay is then incarcerated in a terrifying prison...
At the end of the novel in 1910 Jack's dalliance with Myrttle are revealed, passing down to Jay's lineage. The shrunken head is stolen from Myrttle. London.
The shrunken head appears to have cursed the Mackenzie family since it was stolen and brought to London, though the curse is not made explicit...
Paul Bailey writing in The Independent states about the ambitious novel:
"Shena Mackay notices a London that passes most writers by...Her London is not a convenient backdrop - it is the capital itself, vividly and freshly set down in glancing detail. My sole criticism of the novel has to do with the character of Jay Pascal, a New Zealander who lives for a while as a squatter in a house named Dunedin. His mysteriousness somehow eludes Shena Mackay, who explains rather than portrays him. His eventual incarceration fits uneasily into the overall design of the book, and the author veers towards the sentimental." [2]
The Publishers Weekly also has its reservations:
"Mackay illuminates both the larger moral and social issues that plague London and also the cruelty and pathos beneath the surface of daily life. But Dunedin loses poignancy under the characters' avalanche of angst. As their problems proliferate, the narrative urgency fades and one is left wanting a sparser, deeper work so that other interesting characters like Jay, Minister Mackenzie's bastard son, might live more fully." [3]
Susannah Clapp in The London Review of Books is also equivocal. She writes:
"Plot has never been a central attraction in Mackay's Fiction: she introduces topics, strands of subject-matter and characters, and lets them unravel, sometimes intertwine, often fade away and frequently get dumped. There is as much meander as development – appropriately, for she writes about dreamers and ditherers. She is a writer of moments, of sharp touches, who has found as many fervent advocates for her short stories as for her novels...Her preoccupations and style haven't changed much in the course of a thirty-year writing career. She still makes a lot of jokes. Her protagonists are still semi-detached from society. She still takes off in fantastic flights of visual imagery...Dunedin profits from these characteristics, though it is not her best novel. It is bigger than her previous books – there are more pages, more characters, more countries, more overt themes – and its bigness exposes a tendency to inconsequentiality which can seem a triumph of coolness but can seem merely careless." [4]
Clan Ross is a Highland Scottish clan. The original chiefs of the clan were the original Earls of Ross.
Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, nicknamed the Fox, was a Scottish Jacobite and Chief of Clan Fraser of Lovat, known for his feuding and changes of allegiance. In 1715, he had been a supporter of the House of Hanover, but in 1745 he changed sides and supported the Stuart claim on the crown of Great Britain. Lovat was among the Highlanders defeated at the Battle of Culloden and convicted of high treason against the Crown, following which he was sentenced to death and subsequently executed. He became the last man in Britain to be beheaded.
Monarch of the Glen is a British drama television series produced by Ecosse Films for BBC Scotland and broadcast on BBC One for seven series between February 2000 and October 2005 with 64 episodes in total.
Clan Sutherland also known as House of Sutherland is a Highland Scottish clan whose traditional territory is the shire of Sutherland in the far north of Scotland. The chief of the clan was also the powerful Earl of Sutherland, however in the early 16th century this title passed through marriage to a younger son of the chief of Clan Gordon. The current chief is Alistair Sutherland who holds the title Earl of Sutherland.
Jean Brodie is the name of a fictional character in the Muriel Spark novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), as well as in the play and 1969 film of the same name—both by Jay Presson Allen—which were both based on the novel.
In New Zealand, the southern man is a stereotypical male from the more rural South Island, well used to the solitude and conditions of open mountain or hill country, and completely out of his depth in the city. He is usually depicted as wearing an oilskin duster, Swanndri and slouch hat, an image closely related to Kiwi stockmen. This stereotype is closely connected with a common trope in New Zealand fiction, the man alone.
Jack Scully is a fictional character from the Australian soap opera Neighbours, played by Jay Bunyan. He made his first on-screen appearance on 17 April 2001. The character was initially played by Paul Pantano in a guest role. When he returned in 2002, Bunyan had taken over the role. Jack is the first son of Joe and Lyn Scully. He departed on 8 December 2004, with a further appearance on 11 January 2005.
William Tucker was a British convict, a sealer, a trader in human heads, an Otago settler, and New Zealand’s first art dealer.
James Mckenzie, possibly born in Ross-shire, Scotland, in about 1820 was an outlaw who has become one of New Zealand's most enduring folk heroes. The correct spelling of Mckenzie is unclear and he is variously referred to as James, John or Jock. His surname has been spelt as both 'MacKenzie' and 'McKenzie' – the latter being more commonly used. He may also have had at least one alias, John Douglass.
Shena Mackay FRSL is a Scottish novelist born in Edinburgh. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1996 for The Orchard on Fire, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2003 for Heligoland.
Jack Sheppard is a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth serially published in Bentley's Miscellany from 1839 to 1840, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. It is a historical romance and a Newgate novel based on the real life of the 18th-century criminal Jack Sheppard.
The Orchard on Fire is a 1995 novel, the best known work of British author Shena Mackay. It has been identified as one of the best novels of the 1990s.
The Artist's Widow is a novel written by British author Shena Mackay and first published in 1998 by Jonathan Cape. It is mentioned twice in the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide (2003)
Fasting, Feasting is a novel by Indian writer Anita Desai, first published in 1999 in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction in 1999.
Jessie Mackay was a New Zealand poet, journalist, feminist and animal rights activist. She is often referred to as New Zealand's first local-born poet and was one of the earliest writers to have a distinctly New Zealand style.
Lauren Oliver is an American author of numerous young adult novels including Panic; the Delirium trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium, and Requiem; and Before I Fall, which became a major motion picture in 2017. Panic was also turned into a series by Amazon studios. She served as creator, writer and showrunner on the project. Her novels have been translated into more than thirty languages internationally. Oliver is a 2012 E.B. White Read-Aloud Award nominee for her middle-grade novel Liesl & Po, as well as author of the middle-grade fantasy novel The Spindlers.
The Atmospheric Railway: New and Selected Stories, is a 2008 short story collection by British author Shena Mackay comprising thirteen new stories, and twenty-three selected from earlier collections.
Kay McKenzie Cooke is a poet from New Zealand.
Dancing on the Outskirts is a short story collection by British author Shena Mackay published in 2015.