BOOKS

BEATS OF THE PA‘U

by Maria Samuela

Te Herenga Waka University Press — $30

The opening story in this debut collection, “The Promotion”, is an ambitious one. In just a few pages, its parallel narratives describe the adjustments to New Zealand life made a generation apart by Taki and his estranged son Kura, who was left behind in the Cook Islands when his father moved here and began a new family.

Religion is the foundation of life for Taki, whose second family bear biblical names: Abraham, Moses and Joseph. He is disappointed to learn Kura is not a church-goer, though that will soon change.

Heading to church in Abe’s slacks and shirt, Moses’s shoes and Joseph’s vest, Kura checks “his reflection in the framed Jesus print”. The hymn book he is given there is the first book he has owned.

With these and other telling details, Samuela makes clear just how much the world into which the new generation of immigrants arrive has changed, and not for the better. For Kura, this is a land of “watered down milk and honey”.

Elsewhere in the book, just when you least expect it, there is a story about bullfights, and