Holy NZ!

Antony Millen’s novel, Redeeming Brother Murrihy (2013) combines The Innocent Traveller with The Heart of Darkness, sending a resentful narrator on a road trip, a quest, that culminates on the Whanganui River in New Zealand. The rain forces the narrator to put his trust in others. Besides getting him very wet, the rain – the weather – is a plot device. This could be a quiz night question: What makes a novel Canadian? Answer: The weather is part of the plot. The quotation below serves to introduce Millen, who is our guest writer next week.

Here is the narrator of Redeeming Brother Murrihy, Conrad Murrihy, arriving at Jerusalem, New Zealand:

Around this bend, I see a misty, enigmatic village appear, several buildings visible on the hillside above the sparse branches of the trees garlanding the river. Some houses dot the lower sections while, above, we are greeted by the front façade and spire of a little wooden church which seems to be waiting in the dark green hills to greet any travellers coming from the south. (Redeeming Brother Murrihy, self-published 2013, p. 175.)