URBAN GUERRILLAS
Barbara Else is widely known for her short stories, plays
and poetry, but The Warrior Queen, a
warm, witty and stylishly written novel, is her first full-length work. Most of
the action takes place in the upmarket Auckland settings of Remuera and
Parnell, and it is in the latter suburb that Kate Wildburn, a gentle,
attractive woman of 41, lives with her husband Richard, an ambitious, rather
grumpy surgeon. They have three children, 18-year-old twins Alice and Owen, and
Jessica, who is 16. Completing the family circle is a part-Doberman called
Satan, who is one of the most engaging characters in the book.
The story opens in Sydney where Kate and Jessica have
accompanied Richard to a drug company-sponsored medical conference. He has
carefully explained that while it is to be a holiday for mother and daughter,
father will be engaged upon his serious Man’s Work, earning the money so that
his dependent women can shop till they drop. This Kate and Jessica have managed
to do quite well, with Kate, perhaps, going about it more as a duty than from
inclination.
On this particular morning she is in bed, trying to distract
herself from a painful period by studying a Russian grammar text she has packed
as a holiday task. At this point, Kate is carefully presented as a woman doing
all the right things expected of a wife and mother in fairly affluent
circumstances, which include having an interest such as learning a language to
indicate she has a mind not wholly rotted by domesticity. Any rebellious
thoughts that she may have are kept strictly to herself.
It is only when they return, Kate thankful to be back in
their pretty, well-appointed home, that the image of a model family they
present to the world is seriously dislocated. They attend a medical dinner –
yet another drug company-sponsored wingding – where Richard hopes he might
press the right buttons to gain a research or travel grant of the sort his
colleagues seem to achieve with such ease: Kate is brusquely instructed to be
especially charming to anyone present who might be helpful. Instead, she finds
herself strongly attracted to a drug-company executive and gripped by a
physical excitement of a kind unknown to her before. Richard is not so lucky as
he discovers that it is a gynaecologist who is getting the grant he was after
and, once more, he has missed out.
Worse follows when Kate takes a jacket of Richard’s to the
drycleaners and finds in the pocket a receipt from a motel on the other side of
the harbour where he has apparently spent $118 on a room. There had been no
overnight absences, so was this what he had been up to instead of spending his
usual afternoon off playing golf?
Overwhelmed with shock, Kate hurries off to confide in her
slightly bohemian sister Amelia who, though married happily enough, is not
averse to an occasional bit on the side. But all that Amelia can suggest is
that Kate’s real problem is low self-esteem and that she should see a
counsellor. More helpful is Kate’s best friend Libby, who has not only survived
divorce but is successfully breaking in a new partner and, although she does
not recommend divorce for Kate, it is she who inspires the guerrilla campaign
in which, much to her surprise, Kate becomes the warrior queen of the title.
A cunning plan to trap the unsuspecting Richard is worked up
over numerous lunches and cups of coffee while various strategies and possible
Other Woman suspects are considered. As momentum gathers, Kate’s self-esteem
rises in leaps and bounds, thanks to the heights to which her new-found
confidence carries her.
Barbara Else has a wonderfully sharp and observant eye for
detail and rarely does our fiction crackle along with such pace and humour.
Kate’s own tentative venture into adultery is beautifully described. There is,
however, an underlying seriousness of tone concerning family relationships and
responsibilities and, at the end, events are no more smoothly rounded off than
is commonly the case in real life.
The publisher’s blurb describes the book as black comedy – I
would rather say human comedy. It was with real regret that turned the last
page of The Warrior Queen. She
deserves a lengthy reign.
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