Past Perfect is a story of love and loss, prejudice and resolution, as well as the search for selfhood.
Prompted by a brush with mortality, her children approaching adulthood and the relationship with her husband being tested, Sue Spencer embarks on a search for meaning in her life–for a better sense of who she might be.
Her quest takes her to to Akaroa, to France and back, tracing her genealogy, but her discoveries are unexpected and place further pressure on strained family relationships.
Set in modern day Christchurch and France, with a backdrop of the 1840 French settlement of Akaroa, the novel is enriched by the diversity and complexity that make up our past.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
The life journeys of two women weave the fabric of this part-historical, part-present-day New Zealand novel.
The weft is the Frenchwoman Brigitte Dujardin, who arrived in Akaroa in 1840. The warp is her descendant – contemporary Sue Spencer, who is tracking her genealogy.
Zelas judiciously employs the parallel storyline technique to good effect. She achieves complementary roles for each, and harmoniously merges the historical echoes into the 21st century.
The two women’s lifestyles are drawn as a study of contrasts, yet they are bonded by more than a bloodline. Both confront relationship difficulties, mortality and racial, specifically anti-Maori, prejudice.
Dujardin flouts the social and moral conventions of her time, and takes a bold, almost confrontational stand on several issues. Spencer discovers kinship and finds her spine in the face of family opposition. While Dujardin’s chosen path was the stonier, Spencer’s track is strewn with more insidious obstacles.
Their experiences resonate against a background of historical and contemporary Akaroa, and the plot moves to France and back to New Zealand. This exploration of how two women mature and find inner independence is sensitive and trenchant.
Threads of hypocrisy and racism provide lively trigger points. In particular, Zelas takes a healthy swipe at the double standards and posturing of a white, academic, middle-class Kiwi male. Her aim is unerring.
She has produced a novel that sits comfortably in its New Zealand skin. The storyline maintains a steady pace while ranging over some thought-provoking aspects of our heritage and current social climate. Key characters are fleshed out into realistic personalities, and there is an acute eye and ear for nuance.
With poetry and short stories already in her literary portfolio, Zelas’ foray into the novel genre ha[s] achieved depth.
– Bronwyn Dorreen, Waikato Times (republished in Historical Novel Society (Sydney Chapter))
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Brigitte’s life is revealed through the letters she writes home to her mother. I immediately became attached to this pioneering woman and had to resist the temptation to skip from letter to letter in order to follow her story.
However, the main character is Sue Spencer, an academic’s wife living in modern-day Christchurch. … The husband was arrogant, the son was an inconsiderate delinquent and Sue herself seemed to be a “doormat”. Fortunately, Sue’s character develops throughout the book and she turns out to be rather interesting. She becomes stronger and more self-assured, more like Brigitte in fact.
I enjoyed Past Perfect because of its history and mystery. Brigitte’s letters bring nineteenth century Akaroa alive in vivid detail. And because of the way the letters cleverly intersperse Sue’s story, we eventually discover the connection between Brigitte and Sue.
Even though this is a work of fiction, it is so well-researched and well-written that one could easily believe it all happened.
– Rocky Hudson, Amazon reader
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
The reading describes the main character Sue’s reaction upon seeing her great great great grandmother’s cottage, whole and perfect in the township of Akaroa. She imagines the cottage as it was in Brigitte’s day and the present landscape falls away in Sue’s mind. It is a lovely and evocative summary of the entire story.
The protagonist Sue is a wife and mother and seemingly defined by those roles until her marriage gets a little rocky and for diversion she decides to investigate the unknown link with her past and trace her French Ancestors who she quickly finds were early settlers in Akaroa, near Christchurch.
Sue’s story runs parallel to Brigitte’s story of triumph, heartbreak and adversity as a pioneering wife and mother more than a hundred years earlier, told through letters to her mother. As Sue investigates the connections we see her grow and develop and we also see a portrait of a marriage, similar to many other couples who find they’ve grown apart once the children no longer need them. I’m pleased Karen didn’t take the easy way out with this and the book is much stronger for it.
I found this a very satisfying book. I love Akaroa myself and the descriptions of the landscape are lyrical and “spot on.” The interweaving of the two stories, and the ultimately satisfying (if not quite happy) endings for both women was just what I was hoping for.
I highly recommend this book.
– Jill McCaw, New Zealand Society of Authors, Canterbury branch