Set in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand,

tells the life stories of several female members of the family Spry, covering three generations. Striking peculiarities of this novel are not only that the narrative reconstructs the transcultural genealogy (whakapapa) of the family while highlighting, in the process, the fictionality of remembering, but that it presents an ancestral spirit as a protagonist, who acts as the main agent of historiographical revision.

The “women Spry” have two characteristics in common: they tend to amnesia (“The women in my family have a talent for forgetting”, 7), which is in one case partly due to opium abuse, in all due to traumatic experiences; and in each woman’s past there are two deaths (or murders), for which they can be held responsible to a

1073 words

Citation: Birk, Hanne. "Bloom". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 October 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=29853, accessed 25 April 2024.]

• View recommended reading for this article