MAURICE GEE Looking back at his books for young people
On Re-reading Maurice Gee, By Trevor Agnew (June 2008)
Originally written for Magpies magazine, July 2008.
Maurice Gee died on 12 June 2025. This article, written in June 2008, the month of his 'retirement' from writing discusses his twelve magnificent novels for young people. Gee later published The Limping Man (2010) and The Severed Land (2017) thus completing the Salt saga. This also gives Maurice Gee a ‘Fabulous Fourteen' novels for young people.
MAURICE GEE
Looking back at his books for young people
Only three decades ago Maurice Gee was walking to work as a
librarian at Epsom
Teachers College, on a
grey, misty morning. Suddenly he saw one of Auckland’s many extinct volcanic cones above
him. He described the career-changing moment in his 2002 Margaret Mahy Lecture:
‘I saw Mount Eden
sink down and hide itself behind the houses. Then, at the end of the street, it
suddenly sprang up and loomed over me, and I thought, I wonder what is hiding
under there. So I had my idea.’
- Maurice Gee, Creeks and Kitchens,
page 14.
Gee’s idea led to Under
the Mountain, a skilful mix of alien terror and suburban reality which has
so far sold 70,000 copies, been made into a TV series (now out on DVD) and is
also being filmed. It has become an iconic classic and the author has become
one of the Grand Old Men of New Zealand young people’s literature.
Yet, Under the Mountain’s original reception was not wholly
welcoming. Gee may have had his first hint of the occasional furores that were
to accompany his career in children’s literature, when he read M.G.’s 147 word
review in School Library Review, published by the National Library’s School
Library Service:
‘An unsatisfactory, self-conscious fantasy. Although Auckland’s volcanic chain of mountains is
given a plausible, fantastic dimension, and is the catalyst in the story, it is
an obvious device, like some of the other narrative conventions used. They are
not woven subtly into the fabric of the story but are laid bare in the initial
chapters. From there, the central conflict is developed ponderously, even
lugubriously. The Wilberforces, alias ‘People of the mud, who conquer and
multiply’, are set against Mr Jones, the surviving member of ‘The people who
understand’. Their complacency in the past had allowed the Wilberforces to gain
ground and it becomes the Matheson twins’ task to stave them off and so save
the world. The author revels in darkness and slime at the climax and a
claustrophobic, tense atmosphere is created, but really, the story lacks
cohesiveness. It is superficial and of transitory interest.’
- School Library Review, Vol 1,
No 2, Winter 1980, page 17.
Apart from the satisfaction of having Under the Mountain
later win the Children’s Book of the Year Award, Gee’s only consolation from
this harsh judgement would have been that M.G. (the critic who shared his
initials) had at least spotted the ‘division
into halves’ motif that Gee was to make his own in his other novels, as
well as his careful use of settings with which would be familiar to many of his
New Zealand readers.
With Gee’s retirement from writing last year, it seemed a
good time to re-read all of his books for young people. Of course, since then
Gee has kept on writing, so it was always going to be a case of scurrying after
the master, rather than a tranquil retrospect.
Gee has always objected to the ‘novelists’ disease’ of theorising and generalising, so it is
refreshing that the first impression of each of his novels is always the
immediate impact and power of his storytelling. The opening pages grip at once
and the reader is carried into the story as though seized by Jimmy
Jaspers.
Gee has always argued that his children’s novels are tales
of chase and escape, ‘what happens next?’
stories. This is the bait dangling on the first page, often in the first
sentence:
‘One afternoon on a
farm outside a small town in the King Country two children wandered into the
bush and were lost.’
“The Jessop
fire-raiser had been quiet for almost three months.”
“’Shall we go then?’
Susan asked”
“What do you answer
when people ask ‘Who was the most important person you’ve ever known?’”
‘Ailsa set out at
mid-morning.’
“The Whips, as silent
as hunting cats, surrounded Blood Burrow in the hour before sun-up and began
their sweep as the morning dogs began to howl.’
Another striking feature of Gee’s writing is the vividness
of his descriptions. His landscapes conjure up the brooding Rangitoto or the
suburban bleakness of the Hutt
Valley. In the opening
pages of The Half Men of O, the
descriptions of the Ferris farm near Collingwood are vivid. ‘The water chattered by. A fantail dived
about him, chirping in a friendly way. The drumming of cicadas filled the air. ’
This is a world any New
Zealand child can recognise.
It is also a striking contrast to Susan’s first impression
of O as ‘a huge grey cloudless sky, grey
land, grey hills rolling endlessly down until they were lost in a haze, ashy
stunted trees, twisted unnaturally, grass the colour of tin.’
Later, as colour is returned to her, Susan is exultant, ‘The trees were like green and golden cities.
Bright birds fluttered in their upper levels.’ They might be on another
planet but the language used at this moment of epiphany is revealing; Susan
sees ‘berries bright as lipstick’
while Nick, a prosaic Kiwi lad, simply says, ‘Better than colour TV.’
Gee’s mastery of words is also shown in the convincing names
used in the O trilogy, like Bloodcat, Paingiver, Darkland, Deathguard and the
Lord Dark Soul. The names are splendid too. Otis Claw: ‘The name had a dreadful sound. It scraped across their minds like a
rusty knife.’ When Odo Cling recites his title as, “I am a Great One. I am Executive Officer. I am Doer of Deeds for the
One Who Rules, Otis Claw, Darksoul, Ruler of O, where pain is truth,” he
has also pretty much summarised the trilogy.
Names are something Gee gives a lot of thought to. He
recently revealed [NZ Listener 24 May 2008, pp 39-41] that the symbiotic
Wilberforces, the creatures in Under the Mountain, who seek to convert Earth
into a ball of mud, have a name which combines ‘will’ and ‘force’. In The World
Around the Corner the beings who come from a world of factories and smoke are
the Grimbles, evocative of ‘grim’ and ‘grumble’. It is no surprise that, at 16,
Gee read Oliver Twist and became a life-long Dickens reader, rather like Ossie
in Orchard Street.
In his historical novels, many features of Gee’s own
childhood and family background are told and retold, adapted and developed, in
the same way that happens at family gatherings. The emotional power is
heightened when, for example, Colin Potter’s father in The Fat Man has to sell his silver boxing trophies, an echo of
Gee’s own father’s grim experiences in the Depression of the 1930s. Gee has
often spoken of finding his mother late at night ‘sitting in a chair with her feet in the oven to get the last warmth
from the stove, writing a poem or a story in an exercise book.’
Ossie’s mother in Orchard Street
and Rex’s mother in The Champion
both honour this maternal literary heritage. “As Mum’s poem said, Kettle Creek had its feet in the mud and its head
in the hills.” [– The Champion, p.18.] The kitchen is the still centre at
the heart of several of Gee’s novels.
The Fat Man is Gee’s masterwork, a brilliant and sometimes
subtle study of a young boy’s realisation of the injustices of the adult world
which, like The Fire-Raiser and The Champion, reworks aspects of Gee’s own
family history. It combines vivid storytelling and strong characters with an
acute understanding of human nature.
On two occasions Gee has felt moved to continue and develop
his young people’s novels into adult novels. The Fire-Raiser (1986) led to
Prowlers where Gee satisfied his curiosity about what became of the Jessop
children. (The title is appropriate because once again Gee has characters
prowling in the night and watching others).
Hostel Girl, a vivid account
of an obsessive stalker, set in the Hutt
Valley during the
juvenile delinquency panic of the 1950s, led to Ellie and the Shadow Man, in
which Ellie grows up and spends some interesting years married to an irritating
novelist who is recognisably and wittily based on Gee himself. Thus Gee becomes
a literary Tane, making his own creation into his lover. (Gee’s description of
the novelist’s almost physical pain at having a train of thought interrupted is
one that every writer recognises.)
Agnes Nieuwenhuizen, the Australian writer, was impressed
hearing Gee talk about once walking by Henderson Creek with his mother and
brothers, and encountering ‘a naked man
(what we would call a swagman) washing in the creek…What Gee recalls is his
eyes locking with the man’s intense black stare. That was enough to get
started.’ - Magpies, March 1997, NZ Supplement,
page 5.
Almost every Gee novel has a creek flowing through it - ‘the stream one follows, with a new world
opening up at every turning’ as Gee puts it – but none has the disturbing
impact of its first appearance in The Half Men of O. Nick goes up Lodestone
Creek and encounters Jimmy Jaspers, the rambunctious, ugly old rascal, who
dominates the O trilogy, prospecting for gold in the creekbed. “The old man came at him, churning up water
with his boots. ‘You been spying’ on me?’ He put out a hand as large as a
dinner plate, tough and brown as boot-leather, and held Nick by his jaw.”
This hostile encounter with the old man who exudes ‘the menace one felt in a wild boar.’ is
a precursor of the sinister encounter in the stream between Colin Potter and
Herbert Muskie in The Fat Man.
Jimm Jaspers is one of Gee’s most memorable characters, vile and
untrustworthy, violent and foul-mouthed but gradually shamed into helping Nick
and Susan and finally redeeming himself. He is also an intriguing symbol of old New Zealand, a gold miner, a battler, an axeman, a butcher and a blacksmith,
able to turn his hand to anything, even the naming of features in other
people’s worlds. He even becomes the Kiwi Horatio at the bridge.
Gee cheerfully admits that he killed Jimmy off in the first
draft but was persuaded by his daughters to keep him alive. “They screamed in unison, ‘No, no. You can’t kill Jimmy.’”
Justifying his reprieve, Jimmy went on to become a key figure in the O trilogy.
Gee may also have been influenced in this by his second thoughts over the death
of Ricky in Under the Mountain, which had worried many readers. Some wrote to
him. ‘My wife told me to change it but I
wouldn’t listen,’ said Gee in his 2002 Margaret Mahy Medal speech. ‘Why does Ricky have to die? There was no
answer except that the author decided that it was lesson time…If I were writing Under the Mountain today,
I’d save Ricky.’
The Fat Man, an alarming account of the sins of the fathers
returning to haunt their children, proved more controversial. Some critics were
determined to be offended by Colin’s sinister encounter with Muskie in the
stream, complaining about Gee’s similes: water flowing ‘like a horse peeing’ and Muskie’s hair ‘plastered to his chest like slime.’ Gee was even accused of writing
‘the sort of book that robbed children of
their childhood.’ (This spat was ended for ever when a gleeful Joy Cowley
introduced a peeing Clydesdale flooding a kitchen in her Shadrach
trilogy.)
Fewer critics noticed The Fat Man’s sophisticated narrative
technique or the brilliant conclusion where Gee is so confident of his young
readers’ understanding of Colin’s motivation that he lets them become part of
the storytelling process. ‘Verna is the
only one who knows why Colin ran with the fat man in the end, and cut the rope.’
Verna, and the readers.
It is intriguing that Gee’s fantasies have their base firmly
set in real places with real names like Auckland
and Collingwood. The historical novels use false names like Loomis and Kettle
Creek but these simply give Gee the freedom to bring the past to life and mould
his plot without becoming bogged down in minute detail. Ironically the only
serious criticism of the accuracy of his historic novels proved to be an own
goal, a boomerang.
In The Fire-Raiser (1986) which is set in 1915, Mrs Bolton
has the Jessop school pupils present a patriotic pageant, with the children
representing the warring nations. “O
Britannia, Britannia. Pity our distress. The imperious Kaiser marches his
German horde across our plains to carry death.”
Some scholars used this pageant’s depiction of plucky New Zealand
(‘Furthest flung of your Empire we may
be, but our character and customs are your own. We are the Britain of the South.’) to draw
deep conclusions about Gee’s colonial attitudes. Then they were reminded that
Gee hadn’t invented the pageant; he found the script in the library of Nelson Central
School while he was
writing its history. The racial and national prejudices displayed were
genuinely those of the period.
Gee’s own contribution was the awful Mrs Bolton who says,
when casting, ‘ New Zealand. We need a big strong boy with shoulders back
and nice clean teeth. Not you, Wipaki, someone white.’
In the novel the pageant helps inspire some of the townsfolk
to persecute a gentle German music teacher by burning her German piano. This is
one reaction to the raw feelings aroused by the losses of the war. A balancing
voice is provided by the talented school teacher ‘Clippy’ Hedges; of Irish stock, he is
another of the many outsiders who
populate Gee’s novels. More raffish examples include the book-makers and black
market traders who pop up in The Champion and Orchard Street, fully involved in the
community but slightly set apart.
The Champion, an account of the wartime excitement created
by visiting US servicemen, and Orchard
Street, set against the 1951 Wharf Lockout, are
both are set in Loomis, a close relation of Henderson, where Gee grew up. ‘Creek
and kitchen are the poles that I moved between for most of my childhood.’
It is the creek which dominates Rex’s world in The Champion while Ossie leaves
the refuge of his mother’s kitchen to prowl the backyards of Orchard Street. ‘I scuttled through the light and into the
dark and slid along hearing doors open and dogs bark and bits of conversation
from lighted rooms.’
In his novels Gee shows his flair for making even the
smallest character memorable. Who can forget Orchard Street’s Constable Porteous, who
kindly advises Ossie’s mother to bury anything incriminating before he contacts
his sergeant, or Mr Redknapp, the old amateur astronomer, or Mr Worley who
passes on his beloved set of Dickens to Ossie?
Gee’s sharp eye for detail and his ability to choose just
the right word is always evident. In The Fire-Raiser the livery stable has a
loft where ‘a fringe of hay hung down
like a beard below a mouth.’ We are seeing it through the eyes of an
arsonist who lights a match and ‘thrust
it like a gift into the hay.’
Gee’s powers of description of scenes and moods is
unparalleled. The re-issuing this year of an almost forgotten Gee gem, The World Around the Corner, has
enabled a new generation to join Caroline in looking through the wondrous
spectacles. “Everything was brighter.
Everything had a sharp clean edge…She had found herself a pair of magic
glasses. They showed more than the eye could ever see.”
Gee’s descriptive writing can transform the most mundane
scene. ‘The washing machines were as
white as snow, the kapok in the burst mattresses looked like whipped cream, the
flowers patterned on the cloth of the sofa…suddenly looked as if they were in a
garden. The hoses coiled in the corner were bright orange worms; the wardrobes
tall buildings in the sun; the mirrors fairy pools.’ When she meets the
scheming Mr Grimble, Caroline is not surprised to see that his eyes ‘glow like burning coals. They were the
colour of blood.’
Writing in the Oxford History of NZ Literature, Betty
Gilderdale says that fantasy is a genre which ‘connects deeply at the children’s level with often unarticulated
wishes, hopes fears and needs.’ This certainly describes Gee’s novels. In
the O trilogy both sides gain the power to destroy each other, in an echo
of the Cold War, while in The World
Around the Corner the Grimbles’ creation of walled cities of ‘smoke and poison and darkness’ also
sound s familiar. ‘They have cut down all
the trees, levelled the hills, dammed up all the rivers.’
In The Priests of
Ferris, Susan returns to O to find that a brutal religion has been set up
in her name, with propaganda and social pressure enforcing the vicious rule of
the priests. This came as no surprise to those aware of Gee’s family history.
Many of his relatives have played an important part in the nation’s spiritual
and philosophical debates, something he also explored in his Plumb trilogy.
Salt, Gee’s grim
but brilliant fable of a future dystopia, can be seen as a caustic response to
the trickle-down economy. The Company’s slave system reflects the
colonial exploitation of the Congo
and the Amazon, but it can also be read as an exciting adventure. In fact, all
of Gee’s novels are multi-levelled, offering both an exciting story and what
Gee describes as ‘something to chew on’.
[Gee Radio NZ National, May, 2008]
Agnes Nieuwenhuizen was enthralled by Gee’s casual aside
that, ‘I don’t think Tolkien has a proper
sense of evil.’ It was Charles Dickens that Gee credits with widening his
view of human nature on both the dark and light sides. ‘He put me in a moral universe. He taught me about good and evil. He
broadened my sympathies and enlarged my understanding.’ Jimmy Jaspers and
Hubert Muskie may be capable of villainy but they are also capable of
redemption.
Although Gee’s writing often produces a conflict between
good and evil it also, as Bill Nagelkerk has pointed out, ‘contains a measure of moral ambiguity and
uncertainty.’ - Magpies 12:4, Sep 1997, NZ Supplement, p.8. Nagelkerke points to the
different attitudes of the twins, Rachel and Theo, in Under the Mountain. When
faced with the deaths of the menacing slug-like Wilberforces, practical Theo
wonders how it is to be done. ‘Where were
the rules?’ Rachel sees more complex ethical issues. ‘The Wilberforces were the last of their kind. It was a crime.’
In the same way, when Xantee faces the implacably hostile
gool-mother in the dramatic conclusion of Gool,
the emotion she feels is an unexpected and powerful one - pity. ‘She knew then that pity had been a weapon.
Where Duro’s knife had failed, and flame and poison and spears would fail, pity
had pierced the gool and made it shriek. She had killed this creature…Killed it
without meaning to, by striking pity into it like a knife.’
Since Gee retired to his beloved Nelson, he has published
two more young novels, written one adult novel and collected the NZ Post Best
Book Award for Salt. Some retirement. Perhaps storytellers never retire. At the end of The World
Around the Corner, when Caroline has made it possible for Moon-girl to defeat
the dragon, the Grimbles have been vanquished and all is well in both worlds,
she takes her friend Emily into their secret hiding-place in the loft of the
auction rooms.
“‘Listen,’ Caroline said.
She had a wonderful story for her friend.”
Telling the story makes it true.
Maurice Gee is still telling wonderful stories.
- Trevor Agnew (2008)
THE MAGNIFICENT TWELVE
Under the Mountain (1979)
The World Around the Corner (1980)
The Half Men of O (1982)
The Priests of Ferris (1984)
Motherstone (1985)
The Fire-Raiser (1986)
The Champion (1989)
The Fat Man (1994)
Orchard Street (1998)
Hostel Girl (1999)
Salt (2007)
Gool (2008)
Note: This article was written in 2008. Maurice Gee later published The Limping Man (2010) and The Severed Land (2017) thus completing the Salt saga. It also gives Maurice Gee a ‘Fabulous Fourteen'.
See below for the reviews of the last two novels.
AWARDS:
1983: NZGP Award: Children’s Book of the Year: The Halfmen of O.
1986: Esther Glen Award: Motherstone.
1993: Gee refuses a knighthood.
1995: Esther Glen Award: The
Fat Man.
1995: AIM Children’s Book Awards: Supreme Award: The Fat Man.
2002: Margaret Mahy Lecture Award
2004 Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Merit
2004: Gaelyn Gordon Award for Much-loved Book: Under the Mountain
2008: NZ Post Book Awards: Salt
SOURCES:
Maurice Gee, “Creeks and Kitchens.” [Margaret Mahy Lecture,
2002] The Inside Story: Storylines Children’s Literature Foundation of New Zealand
Year Book, 2002. Auckland:
Storylines, 2002 pages 9-25.
Bill Nagelkerke,
“Welcome Re-issues.” Magpies NZ Supplement 12:4 (Sep
1997): 8.
Agnes Nieuwenhuizen,
“Know the Author: Maurice Gee: Creek, kitchen and the art of language.” Magpies
NZ Supplement 12:1 (Mar 1997): pages 4-6.
INTERNET SITES:
Christchurch City Libraries site:
http://library.christchurch.org.nz/Kids/ChildrensAuthors/MauriceGee.asp
New Zealand Book Council site:
http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/geem.html
University
of Auckland Library
information file: Maurice Gee:
http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/subjects/nzp/nzlit2/gee.htm
FURTHER READING:
Tom Fitzgibbon & Barbara Spiers, Beneath Southern Skies: New Zealand
Children’s Book Authors & Illustrators. Auckland: Ashton Scholastic, 1993. pages
67-9.
Maurice Gee, “Creeks
and Kitchens.” The Inside Story: Storylines Children’s Literature Foundation
of New Zealand
Year Book, 2002. Auckland:
Storylines, 2002 pages 9-25.
David Hill, Introducing Maurice Gee. Auckland: Longman Paul, 1981.
Larsen, David, “So
much for Retirement.” NZ Listener, 24 May 2008, pages 38-41.
Bill Manhire, Maurice
Gee. Auckland: Oxford University
Press, 1986.
Bill Nagelkerke,
“Welcome Re-issues.” Magpies NZ Supplement 12:4 (Sep
1997): 8.
Agnes Nieuwenhuizen,
“Know the Author: Maurice Gee: Creek, kitchen and the art of language.” Magpies
NZ Supplement 12:1 (Mar 1997): pages 4-6.
The Oxford Companion to New Zealand
Literature. ed. Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie. Auckland:
Oxford University Press, 1998. pages 197-9.
**************************************************************************************
The Limping Man & The Severed Land
The Limping Man, Maurice Gee
Penguin NZ, Auckland, NZ, 2010
Series: Salt 3
Maurice Gee’s dystopian Salt saga
is not for the faint-hearted.
In The Limping Man, the third novel in the
series, following Salt (2007)
and Gool (2008),
another despot has established his iron
control over the ruined remnants of the city of Belong. The eponymous Limping
Man has established mental control over his subjects, so that he can have those
who threaten him exterminated. Leaving her dead mother behind, young Hana flees
to the wilderness. There she learns two things: she has strong mental powers
and the legendary figures of Hari and Pearl are real people.
Along with twins Blossom and Hubert (children of Hari and Pearl), Hana seeks
the secret of how the Limping Man rose to power. His armies are poised to
slaughter all free humans, as well as the mysterious Dwellers, unless they can
locate a secret in the swamps. The result is an exciting conflict with a
nail-bitingly tense final battle of wills.
As changes take place in the mental powers of the characters in this series of
novels, it is noticeable that the people are gaining a closer relationship with
the creatures. Eels play their part, Hana has a mental link with a hawk, and
the limping ruler’s only friend is a toad. In the wilderness, insects have
evolved their behaviour in an unexpected way which is directly linked to the
surprising conclusion of The Limping Man.
Nor is the series complete. A sequel is hinted at.
Trevor Agnew
2010
The Severed Land, Maurice Gee
Puffin/Penguin, Auckland, NZ, 2017
Series: Salt 4
’From high in the branches Fliss watched slaves dig
trenches where the wheels of the cannon would rest.’
The Severed Land is set in a dystopian world, a later age of the
grim society we encountered in Maurice Gee’s Salt, Gool and The
Limping Man. The mysterious ‘People’ of that trilogy also extend their
influence into this novel.
Young Fliss had first arrived in the north as a starving refugee, and found it
protected by an invisible, seemingly impenetrable barrier, which allowed her to
pass through safely. Fliss now tends the frail Old One, ’the last of
the People,’ whose strong mental powers provide guidance and are also
linked to the barrier.
To the south of the barrier is the grim slave state of Rule, where powerful
families strive to hold the Stewardship. Their wealth is based on slavery.
Children work in the factories and cotton mills, women tap gum in the
plantations and men die in the mines.
The armies of the south regularly attack the wall but always in vain. No matter
how large the cannon, its explosive charge is simply reflected back. In the
confusion following the latest disastrous failure, a drummer boy tries to
escape the slave army and is trapped against the wall. Fliss motivated by anger
against the murderous officer rather than pity for his victim, uses her ability
to reach through the invisible barrier and drags the boy through.
’Fliss looked down at him and did not like him… Fliss felt like pushing him
back.’
While they wait for the boy to recover from his ordeal, the Old One delivers an
enigmatic message to Fliss, ’He will do.’
And so begins the odd relationship between the imperious Kirt Despiner, a
disgraced aristocrat, and Fliss, the ex-slave, whom Kirt regards as less than
human. The pair are sent off on a mission by the Old One to rescue Kirt’s twin
sister, Lorna, from imprisonment in the southern city of Galp. (Lorna, despised
as a blind, limping hunchback, has strong mental powers and ‘talks’ with the
old one.)
Their hundred-league journey is full of danger and forces
Kirt and Fliss to recognise each other’s strengths and talents.
Can they survive in the dangerous back-streets of Galp? Can Kirt conceal his
identity? Can Fliss protect him? And how are they to rescue Lorna?
Lorna’s powers are surprising and Fliss is resourceful. But Kirt is too
emotionally involved to act circumspectly and he is soon a prisoner with Lorna,
waiting for the gallows.
Fliss soon finds she is involved in an enterprise that may change the world.
Maurice Gee is skilful with his narrative, and the
characters are sharply drawn and complex. The situations they find themselves
in are sometimes bleak and violent. As always in Gee’s novels, there is a
strong moral undertone and young readers may find themselves considering
parallels with our own world.
There is even the chopping-down of a flagpole to think
about.
Trevor Agnew
1 Dec 2016