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.

 

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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