Today being Waitangi Day, it seems very fitting to be posting on a book by Patricia Grace.

I have talked about her writing here before, including in several other Waitangi Day posts over the years — unsurprisingly given she is one of New Zealand’s most well-known authors.

The book I’m focusing on today is Dogside Story, but I have been an enthusiast for Patricia Grace’s writing since reading her first novel, Mutuwhenua: the Moon Sleeps. I loved both the story and storytelling, but one of the reasons it had a profound effect was my feeling that it was one of the first novels I had read that really spoke to me of a New Zealand I recognized.

Since then, I’ve read other novels by Patrica Grace, notably Potiki and Tu, but not Dogside Story, so I was pleased to have the opportunity when a friend recommended it to me.

Whanau (family and extended family) and community, specifically Maori communities, are the core of every Patricia Grace novel I’ve read, and this is the case with Dogside Story as well. The story centres on the parentage and custody of Kid (Kiri), a process that ends exposing family secrets, threatens to divide the whanau, and eventually involves the entire community.

It’s also a story of a small community struggling to survive, and of the new millennium—but it’s heart is the people, not just the central characters, but all the people that comprise the Dogside whanau. By the way, if you’re wondering “why Dogside?”, readers quickly learn there are two connected whanau, one nicknamed “Godside”, the other “Dogside” — but this book is a Dogside story. 😀

The main point-of-view character is Rua, Kid’s father. Yet in many ways, I felt that real main character was the whanau itself, and the interwoven lives of all those affected by Kiri’s lineage and the custody dispute.

Dogside Story offers insight into the intricacies, strengths, and weaknesses of whanau and small Maori communities, although I suspect these can only be truly understood from the inside. Yet it’s also a very human story of love and grief, cruelty and generosity, division and healing, which connects to us all.

I enjoyed Dogside Story and can understand why it’s a favourite in my friend’s library (if not the favourite) but I suspect Mutuwhenua will always hold first place in my heart—and it’s very hard to go past Tu. 😀

Whenever I post on a book I’ve enjoyed reading, I try and link it to works of like type, to offer  potential readers further insight into the kind of story being told. I found this challenging with Dogside Story, because the work is so uniquely Patricia Grace and a story with deep roots in Aotearoa (New Zealand.) The only immediately obvious companions are Witi Ihmaera novels such as Whanau, Tangi, and Bulibasha.

However, after much consideration, I believe those who’ve enjoyed books such as Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, with its focus on an impoverished, closeknit, but also fractious Italian community, or Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, which turns a similar lens on contemporary rural Appalachian communites, may also enjoy Dogside Story.

I read my friend’s copy, which is the mass market paperback edition, 301 pages, published by Penguin Books NZ in 2001.