Kōhine by Colleen Maria Lenihan. Huia Publishers
Kōhine by Colleen Maria Lenihan. Huia Publishers (2022). RRP: $25.00. Pb. 232 pp. ISBN: 9781775506973. Reviewed by N M Smith.
Kōhine by Colleen Maria Lenihan opens with a well known Māori proverb: I will never be lost (because) I am a seed sown from Rangiātea. Like the book itself, it is beautiful, small and packed tight with meaning. I encourage readers who aren’t familiar with the proverb and its references, to make amends. For now, suffice to say that it alludes to origins, knowledge, and the inheritance of identity, as well as, of course, to the deep, wide ocean upon and within which Kōhine explores these ideas, on the same stage as the migrating canoes did. Like a seed whose propagation requires a waterborne journey to fill it and swell it to crack it out of its case, the reading of this story will be a more fruitful experience for those who do create that receptive space within themselves, if it isn’t there already.
The story Lenihan tells and the ideas she explores figure mostly around Maia, a Māori woman who travels to Japan with her daughter, to live, before returning home to Aotearoa. Though Maia’s story is told in fine and intimate detail, there is a deliberate erasure of the lines the reader might expect to be drawn – on a map, in time, and even in between characters. This is fascinating and marvelous in a story that is so clearly about location and identity.
The themes above may sound dry – but I assure you the story is anything but. Think about that ocean: that’s about how dry this novel is. Think too about that notion of ‘inherited identity,’ and how that identity is passed down: through family; through relationship; through sex. Where Maia comes from, where she lives, where she works, what she does – much of this is shaped by sex. Like the ocean which is vast and necessary and sometimes scarily powerful, sexual desire is shown to have a tidal pull on the characters in Lenihan’s fictional world.
‘They wake to watery, sullen skies. Smoke a spliff and fuck some more. He moves above her, head back and eyes closed. Hushed, languid hours.’ (p. 184)
It makes sense then that we are encouraged as readers to meditate on the significance of the body – how we read each other’s individual form and skin. As a professional hostess, Maia’s body and face are tools of her trade – she is beautiful, therefore she is valuable. Her daughter has inherited her features, which means that growing up in Japan, she passes as part-Japanese. She is an emerging adolescent, and the way other characters respond to her changing body, shapes their characters for us. Just as our lives are shaped by the bodies we find ourselves in, and how they are read in the time and space within which we dwell. But Lenihan’s characters do not stay neatly within their skins. The author shows us how we see each other’s form, as symbolically containing or representing an identity, and providing a physical presence through which we can enact our love and relationships. But so very temporarily.
‘A camera follows the Actress as she winds her way through the haze-filled club on to the packed dance floor. Wearing tight gold pants and a string bikini top, her lithe body makes sexy, sinuous movements, but she is wobbly on her spindly heels.’ (p. 132)
From beginning to end, the story shifts and pauses. Setting her novel between Japan and Aotearoa, Lenihan explores the relationship between the two cultures – Māori and Japanese – especially through language, ritual, the natural world, and a reverence for meaningfulness latent in objects. Lenihan will give us a rush of events, a poignant vignette, and then linger with affectionate attention on some tangible everyday treasures. Signs from everyday lives, of what we’ve kept, held onto, and valued. Of those who have valued and loved us. To navigate the high seas, birds, clouds, currents and tides are read as signs to be heeded. Every one of these elements is a sign, too, in the unfolding stories that Lenihan’s novel contains. Alongside these, and taking on a similar significance; are treasures, mementos, costumes, and favourite things. The delicate, intense, careful, loving description of these many charm-like objects throughout the story, is part of the magic that makes the reading sweet, and indeed bearable, when the pain Lenihan also describes is so similarly evocative.
At the heart of this story is a tragedy, and when the wairua of one of the characters must make their way home it is the birds that guide them on this last migration. The grief that is left in their wake, for those still alive, changes them forever. Lenihan’s spectacularly inventive technique creates for the reader a parallel sense of dislocation and confusion. This controlled and completely masterful writing is, again, timed to be at its most compelling when the story becomes most excruciating. Concepts of individualistic identity, of the location of self, are all beautifully and elegantly opened up. Death, desire, separation, growing older, moving on, moving away: they are all departure points, not just for the disembodied spirit or the traveler, but also for the ones who are left behind.
‘Yuki slings her school bag over her shoulder, bows and says goodbye. As she walks out the door, you take in her long Bambi legs, the swing of her hips … this is a young girl about to blossom. You feel pangs of moe. Not in a lecherous way. More a protective wonder.’ (p. 2)