A Gap in Nature by Elspeth Sandys

English immigrant May is an outsider in the small New Zealand town of Claytown. She gives only the vaguest of details about her past when she meets the affable and good-looking Wallace in Auckland.  Wallace, the popular and well-liked mechanic at the local garage has lived all his life in Claytown but when he marries May, the locals find her reserved and unfriendly.

Wallace is feted by the small community both when he goes off to fight in the Second World War and when he returns five years later. But he comes back to find May indifferent to him and devoted to their young son, David. The birth of a daughter does nothing to bring them closer, and when Wallace dies while the children are still young, she breaks ties with Claytown and moves her family to Auckland.

The story continues to the next generation when David, in his early twenties, moves to London in 1962 and sets out to make a career in the burgeoning television broadcasting industry.  He is secretive about his past with new friends and sifts minimal information back to his mother in New Zealand. He meets Lance, a sociable and influential television producer, through whom he develops a relationship with Susie, a bright, young English actress. His career, relationships and life expands and then disintegrates through alcohol, divorce and isolation, finally into tragedy.

Moving forward to the third segment of this generational family story, his daughter, Chloe, some twenty years afterwards, becomes determined to find out about her father.

She has no memory of him as she was only four when he disappeared from her life and trauma seems to have shut off any memories of him.

This takes her to New Zealand, to connect with David's family, her aunt - his sister - in particular, and then back to England to connect with what remains of her grandmother May's family. It is finally when the young woman Chloe seeks to connect with that past, and the gaps that exist and acknowledging the trauma of past generations, that Chloe and her family can make connections and move into the future.

Making this story one that occurs in two far-apart places on the globe enables the isolation and estrangement that occurs and reinforces the divisive effect of trauma. Mid-century, small-town life in New Zealand, with its main street, its train station, shops and pub against the backdrop of river, hills and sky, with its rituals of afternoon tea and community events, is warmly and assuredly described. While David's struggles to fit into the English world of London, making a career and establishing a home in the London world of bedsits, pubs and weekend visits to country houses are also authentically revealed. 

The author carefully and sensitively reveals the three generations; without understanding the secrets of the past, the reader can see that there is something damaged in May, the wife and mother, who irrationally focuses on her son. He in turn, does not benefit from her overwhelming devotion, and though he escapes, he carries trauma through to his new life. Chloe then grows up away from these generational threads and is able to turn a fresh face to the past.

Music, in the talents of David's sister, helps to find the warmth, love, and connection for the family left behind and so plays a pleasing role in this healing process, a green shoot for new growth and relationships.

Deftly told, absorbing and thought–provoking portrayal of a family through the generations and the legacy of love and pain that is passed down.

Reviewer: Clare Lyon

Quentin Wilson Publishing