Pomare, November 1966. Lex Keene is seven. There is an election. School is beginning to wind down. Thomas Sand, a friend of Lex’s sister Jo, has been sick for some time and is worsening. Lex and Jo’s parents are abot to build a house in Wadestown. Hester Keene is thinking on life in the Hut Valley; Frank is thinking on why he isn’t writing novels, and is trying to immunise his daughters against sentimentality. Down by the Hutt River some teenaged boys have built a fort and excavated tunnels through the sandy river soil …
Praise for Pomare
‘The events are as random as life itself, yet by some discipline of gift of memory it’s all magically focused. Pomare, like its predecessor Paremata has the stamp of the real and the shape of art.’ C K Stead
Author’s Note
I wrote Paremata before Pomare, but Lex is ten in Paremata. All three autobiographical novellas – Pomare, Paremata and Tawa – are collected in The High Jump: A New Zealand Childhood, where they follow the story’s correct chronology.
Here is an essay about the novellas, based on a talk I gave at the Wellington City Art Gallery in 2001
The High Jump: Privacy, Veracity and Autobiographical Fiction
