Pastoral Care by John Prins

John Prins’ debut collection Pastoral Care is a striking addition to contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand short story and short fiction writing, blending social realism with wry humour and moments of genuine tenderness. Published by Otago University Press as part of the Landfall Tauraka series, the book offers nine stories: eight shorter works and a concluding novella that lends the collection both its title and its thematic weight.

From the opening pages, Prins demonstrates a talent for placing characters in situations that are painfully recognisable yet uniquely revealing. A failed relationship plays out in the cramped confines of a campervan, where physical closeness contrasts with emotional distance. In another story, a real estate agent’s fixation with sex is presented as a metaphor for Auckland’s obsession with property, highlighting the transactional nature of both pursuits. These are characters caught between desire and disappointment, their lives sketched with an attention to texture that can be both funny and unsettling.

Parenting and family life run through the collection like a connective thread. Prins is particularly sharp at capturing the ambivalence of care: parents who want the best for their children but are haunted by uncertainty about what that really means. In “He Loved Those Boys,” a father attempts to balance loyalty to a childhood friend with the responsibility of keeping his son safe, exposing the grey zones of trust and risk that shape parental decisions. In “A Safe Passage,” questions of fertility and safety intertwine, reminding the reader that love and protection are not always aligned.

The longer final story, “Pastoral Care,” takes the collection’s concerns to a larger canvas. Centring on Paul, a weary teacher juggling classroom duties with the daily grind of parenting, the novella is both comic and poignant. Paul struggles with disillusionment in his profession, the relentless presence of technology in students’ lives, and the competing demands of work and home. Yet the story resists bleakness. Like the swimming song that prefaces it, Paul’s story is one of persistence: small gestures of care that keep him afloat even when enthusiasm falters.

Prins’ style is marked by close observation and a willingness to dwell on the minutiae of everyday life. His paragraphs brim with detail, sometimes to the point of density, but this richness reflects the crowded emotional landscapes his characters inhabit. Dialogue is natural and often laced with humour, grounding the stories in the rhythms of New Zealand speech while also drawing out their universality.

Thematically, the collection confronts the tension between ideals and reality. Characters grapple with the weight of history, as in “The Falls,” where ancestral shame collides with economic pragmatism, or with the compromises of adulthood, where love and obligation blur into one another. Prins does not offer neat resolutions; instead he gives the complexity of living with others, raising children, and making do in a world where certainty is rare.

As a whole, Pastoral Care is incisive and compassionate. It reaffirms the vitality of the short story form in Aotearoa New Zealand and positions Prins as a writer capable of balancing irony with empathy. Readers will recognise themselves in these pages, even as the stories push them to consider the uneasy spaces between responsibility, affection, and survival.

Reviewer: Chris Reed

Otago University Press