I think Dominic Hoey is one of the most important Gen X writers NZ has.
His beautiful 1985 is set amongst the decaying dying bones of NZs Egalitarian state as Pacific Island workers are forced out of Grey Lynn. I lived in the exact area on Surrey Crescent that much of 1985 was set a decade later, so there is an intimacy to the story I loved.
Hoey is a lyrical genius, there are about a dozen sentences in 1985 that are so pure, so bare and so stripped naked to the truth that you seek them out through the tiny chapters.
His is an exploration of poverty as honest as Once were warriors without the glam violence because poverty is far more grindingly present than mere brutality.
Everyone is cold, everyone is hungry and everything stinks. There is a visceral nature to poverty that Hoey brings us that gives it an authenticity that is beyond the page.
The hopes of the poor are basic and depressing in equal measure.
There is a delightful synchronicity of the Rainbow Warrior bombing of 1985 and it returning to these shores as Domino’s book is released.
If there is one NZ book you should read this year, 1985 is it.
5 stars
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