Book Review: Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly

 Greta and Valdin, two queer siblings born into a multi-racial family in New Zealand, struggle to negotiate their tumultuous personal lives and careers. When his boyfriend Xabi abandons him and moves to another country, a heartbroken Valdin resigns his job as a physicist and takes up doing comedy shows. Greta is no longer sure of her choice of course in university, as there are no career prospects in comparative literature studies. The girl whom she loves is using her as a stepping stool, and her brother, with whom she shares a residence, supports her. Surrounded by equally eccentric relatives who have their own preserved secrets with them, they struggle to find a ray of hope in their grim horizons. 

Greta & Valdin is the debut novel of Rebecca K. Reilly, an award-winning writer from New Zealand. Coincidentally, my previous read was also set in New Zealand and had characters of Māori origin, out of which one was gay. It also talked about the discriminatory practices against Māori in New Zealand. While most of the characters in this one are half Māori or settlers from other countries like Russia or Spain, the novel paints a vivid picture of the perils of living under oppression. I received a review copy of the book from Random House UK, its publisher, through Netgalley in exchange for honest feedback. 

The majority of the novel is told from the alternating perspectives of its two main characters, Greta and Valdin, with a few other main characters joining them towards the end. All these narratives use a deeply personal tone that tries to build intimacy with the characters. It is through the detailed descriptions of the dreary daily routine and interactions of our protagonists with the other members of their family that the story proceeds. But it doesn't mean that the novel is a dry slog. 

The author uses humour to keep it interesting, even at times when we feel the plot gets static. By using humour, I didn't mean to say that you would laugh out loud while reading. This is the kind of laughter that you get while you remember an embarrassing incident that you went through in the past. While the situation gets embarrassing for the character, we, the readers who are sitting safely and far away from it, know that it doesn't matter in the long run. We smile because these obstacles that people are feeling unsurmountable are minor hiccups on their journey, and they will smile as we do now, sometime in the future, with the privilege of hindsight. 

It is also important to note that even when the unstructured plot flows without a fixed anchor, the novel manages to keep the reader's interest alive throughout its length. I won't claim that this interest level is uniform or maintains an ascending pattern. There are many places where it goes down for a few pages, only to bounce back. Some of the characters, who are close relatives of the protagonists, keep some hidden secrets from each other, which are revealed on the course. Even these revelations—many of them unexpected and some of them even life-altering—don't create any ripples in the plot. The writer manages not to focus on their dramatic effect and keeps the entire structure grounded and realistic. This, I believe, is a brave choice. 

I have written in a review of another book that the writer has a checklist of different social justice causes that she has to include in her story, and she ticks the last one off by the time it climaxes. This seems to be the case in this novel too, but the good news is that Reilly has skillfully integrated these causes into her novel, and none of them sticks out. She has also very convincingly captured the struggle between different generations to understand and tolerate each other. These are matters that we deal with regularly in our daily lives, and it feels satisfying to see them captured skillfully in a novel. 

My major complaint about the novel is that all the characters are portrayed as eccentrics. The protagonists—their parents, friends, colleagues, lovers, and relatives—all of them exhibit some kind of weirdness in their behavior. While it is true that we encounter very similar people at least once in our lifetime, Reilly has ensured that each of her characters is a specimen in itself. The constant description of chaos that ensues when more than two people meet in this novel undermines its personal and realistic style to a large extent. 

If you are very particular about the plot and structure of the novels that you read, it is better to avoid Greta & Valdin. Here, we get a bunch of characters who are at a low phase of their lives, struggling to find meaning amongst the chaos of daily existence and trying to understand how they came to be. We find them striving to get a foothold in their lives, control their careers, find love, support their loved ones, and exist.