Fishing for Maui

I was drawn to Fishing For Maui by its New Zealand setting and author, especially the Maori ancestry of the central family. The story is told by a number of narrators across three generations so I felt I was given a good understanding of how New Zealand's changing opinions affected people across the country. The grandmother was raised in a time when having Maori family was seen by the ruling whites as something shameful therefore she raised her daughter, Valerie, to behave in as white a fashion as possible. Valerie has no connection with her ancestry and married a white man. Now being Maori is of interest though and her son, Michael, is desperate to connect with his roots. That his mother cannot help him leads to one of the big divisions within this family.

I loved the multiple first-person narratives in Fishing For Maui. Ritchie presents each character as a clear individual so I was soon able to easily know whose point of view I was reading at any one time. The women particularly are striving to find themselves and to do their best for their family, but in very different ways so it was interesting to witness awkward situations. Family meals where one person believes traditional nutrition is the most healthy way to eat, but another person is strictly vegan, take a lot of delicacy to be successful! Ritchie obviously feels strongly about causes that her characters believe in and I learnt a lot through reading Fishing In Maui. I never felt preached at however. This is an engrossing novel of family life and, for me at least, a real page-turner!