1985 by Dominic Hoey

Dominic Hoey skilfully transports us back to1985 in this ground roots novel as news breaks that the Greenpeace boat, the Rainbow Warrior, has been bombed with the death of one crew member.

1985 is told from twelve-year-old Obi’s perspective as he navigates his childhood in a dysfunctional and poverty stricken family. As well as dealing with his mother’s illness, his father has delusions of being able to make a living from his poetry with a growing aversion to getting a paying job, and his sister decides she’s going to live with a boy who is nothing more than a thug. Then there are his father’s friends, Gus, who is fresh out of prison, and Sam, who regularly spends time in a mental facility, and the neighbourhood boys who Obi learns to respect and avoid if he doesn’t want to be beaten up.

Set in the Auckland suburb of Grey Lynn, Obi and his best friend Al are constantly trying to scrounge money to buy food or play the spaces. They roam the streets, visit each other’s houses, eat whatever leftovers they can find in near-empty fridges, and hang out wherever something's happening, or where there are spacious machines. When his dad’s friend Gus comes to stay and leaves his bags at their place, Obi decides to search one of them in case there’s any money in it. What he discovers is far more exciting. It definitely looks like a treasure map. He talks his friend Al into helping him locate the riches at the spot marked with the X on the map.

With his mother’s health deteriorating, Obi wants to help save their house from a mortgagee sale and buy his friend Al a movie camera, so he practices his gaming skills in order to enter a local tournament and win the five-hundred-dollar prize. But as locating the treasure becomes more important, the boys embark on the hunt for the X all over Auckland, while making sure Gus doesn’t suspect they’ve stolen his map.

Hoey writes like a contemporary version of Barry Crump and this latest story of survival, friendship and loyalty is a raw, occasionally funny but often sad snapshot of reality during the 80s when everyone had a dream—even those who couldn’t afford to dream. A fabulous story that I couldn’t put down.

Reviewer: Carole Brungar

Penguin Random House