Greta & Valdin

This book was undoubtedly the best piece of New Zealand literature I have ever read. Fresh, funny, and compelling, achingly relatable whilst also being brilliantly, vividly unique, it follows the lives of two siblings; Greta and Valdin, as they work to navigate the “intricate paths of modern romance” and “weather the small storms of their eccentric Māori-Russian-Catalonian family.”

First off, I must admit that I love the cover – pink and green look great together and I’ve always said so, but there’s something about this book in particular that means it just fits. The inside front cover is patterned with rave reviews, and the edition I read was the seventh that has been printed by Te Herenga Waka University Press since it was first published in 2021 (!). It’s dedicated “to the unknown man” which immediately piqued my interest, and as I read, I found myself more and more fascinated by Greta, Valdin, their family and their lives.

What makes this novel so incredible is the way in which it is written. It hardly feels like a book at all, rather a magnetic new medium that allows the reader to briefly inhabit the minds of the two central characters, who alternate POVs between each chapter. Reilly writes in a meandering, stream-of-consciousness style, which, although at first slightly jarring, rapidly becomes immersive. The sentence lengths are often erratic; alternating between philosophically long and snappily short. I felt like I was living someone else’s life, in which I could still recognise aspects of myself; not only in their thoughts, but also in the environments which they inhabited.

The narration feels very unreliable, particularly at the beginning; there are bits and pieces seemingly intentionally left missing from the characters' trains of thoughts, which are only emphasised by the meandering references they do make. Early on, Greta thinks:

“I wonder if my lipstick still looks good. My mum's grandmother wore lipstick every day of her life, and one day stopped her car on a one lane bridge because a man was following her car too closely. I could be confrontational too, if I had the addresses of the people I wanted to confront.”

The reader is left wondering who she wants to confront, why she doesn’t have their addresses, and what on earth this has to do with lipstick. Our brains often jump between thoughts, but it’s so very interesting to witness the same phenomena within someone else.

I also love how there are so many thoughts presented, so many complex issues, that the characters touch on and then dart away from again because they’re simply too difficult to confront on their own and certainly not together: racial identity; whakapapa; sexuality; family; love. And even more compelling, Reilly doesn’t present these problems in black and white. Greta and Valdin, in their mid and late twenties respectively, are still figuring out how they feel about all these things, and we get the distinct sense that, because they haven’t worked everything out, we don’t have to either.

This is very much a book that encourages you to think and to reflect, without telling you exactly what you should be thinking or what reflections you should be making.

It is very rooted in New Zealand, particularly Tāmaki Makaurau, but, unlike some of the other books I’ve read by New Zealand authors, it doesn’t feel trite, tropey or dated – rather it retains a core familiarity, while still striking out into new territory. Reilly talks about the Event Cinemas on Queen Street and DOC hiking trails and how Valdin thinks the pathways in his brain are like the dodgiest slides at Waiwera thermal resort after it was shut down.

‘Greta & Valdin’ also makes passing reference to a range of other elements; a short story by Mansfield that briefly inspired Greta to take up tennis in her teens, but also ‘Magic: The Gathering’, how Greta’s friend doesn’t like Rupi Kaur and how, when Valdin looks at his hair in the mirror, he realises he’s doing the same thing as the protagonist on the first page in ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. You’d worry that some of these references would date it, but if they do it’s a necessary dating, cementing ‘Greta & Valdin’ very firmly in the here and now.

Both main characters are queer and Māori-Russian, and while this obviously plays a role in the story, it doesn’t feel like the most important focus. Reilly doesn’t make the ethnic identity and sexual orientation of her characters a big deal. They’re just people, and it’s their humanness that makes them so interesting. What I mean by this is that it’s not a book which is trying to be “diverse” so it can be hyped up for being so good at “inclusion.” Rather, it’s a book about two siblings trying to find their way in life, with being queer and being Māori just happening to be a part of their identity. What Reilly seems to be saying is that there is no “right” way to be queer, no “right” way to be Māori, no “right” way to even exist as a human being: all of which I love.

I also love this paragraph (and it links back to what I said before about the mentioning things, but not going deeper at the time, because these issues are too deep to unpack in a few sentences, or even in only one book.)

“Casper was annoyed with me when I was learning Spanish because he thought that I should go to night school and learn te reo. I don’t think he understood that wanting to know what my boyfriend was saying on the phone was much more of a motivator for me than feeling disconnected from my own culture. Or at least an easier issue to confront. The cows would understand, if I told them. They’d nod their heads and say we get it V, it’s not even on Duolingo. You take your time with your colonial trauma. It’s fine. It’s all fine.”

However, it’s important to note that the book does have some mature themes, and I’d only recommend it if you’re willing to try something a bit different and are older than sixteen or seventeen. There’s no explicit sexual content, but there are quite a few references to stuff of that nature.

More than anything, ‘Greta & Valdin’ made me feel like my country was important. To see such modern, but also undeniably kiwi characters on the page was refreshing and inspirational; it reflected a world I knew and had experienced, while still being very unique to the characters and their (at times) unusual situations. As Valdin says, “Why is every circumstance I get myself into extenuating?”

- Indigo is 16 and lives in Whāngarei.