Victory Park – Rachel Kerr

READ FOR NZ BOOK AWARDS

Kara is a young widow, living in the Victory Park council flats with her young son Jayden. She makes a living by minding other people’s tamariki in her home but struggles to get by financially and emotionally.

Her new neighbour, Bridget, interests her. She is the wife of a disgraced Ponzi scheme fraudster and is lying low, albeit while maintaining her luxury lifestyle. In need of friends, Bridget manages to draw Kara into her complex, privileged and exploitative life. The characters are convincing and well drawn. I had a lot of empathy for Kara and could understand why she was lured into Bridget’s world, why she wanted to help Bridget be a better person and how she got trapped by her own kindness.

Kara took a few deep breaths, as if calming herself down would help Bridget, then she hustled the kids on. What kind of comfort could she offer when she had no idea what was happening? Bridget could have warned her she was in the middle of a meltdown.

The book is very Kiwi, with recognisable locations, situations and character behaviours. It raises important topics such as how women are (or are not) valued, and highlights the plights of low-paid, single working parents. It could have been easy for the story to be moralistic or the characters to be caricatures but it felt authentic and I was invested in their outcomes. – Rachel

Published 2020
Mākaro Press
243 pages