Novel
The Godwits Fly
Robin Hyde · 1938
Synopsis
In a working-class suburb of Wellington, from 1910 to 1928, Eliza Hannay grows up in a family on the edge of poverty, amid her parents' quarrels and her father's ardent socialism. We follow her at school, in her beginnings as a journalist and poet, and in her love for Timothy Cardew. The title evokes the bar-tailed godwit, a bird that flies north every year without ever reaching England, an image of young New Zealanders who believe they must leave.
Context
A strongly autobiographical novel, finished at Whangaroa early in 1937 and published in the United Kingdom in November 1938, it takes up the author's youth; Timothy Cardew is the portrait of Harry Sweetman, whom she had loved. Received with less acclaim than she had hoped, it was then out of print for a long time, before being reissued by Auckland University Press, with an introduction by Patrick Sandbrook, and then by Persephone Books in London. It is now regarded as a New Zealand classic and has not been translated into French.
Who it is for
For a lyrical coming-of-age novel that tells what it meant to grow up female and poor in early twentieth-century New Zealand.
Prizes and reception
Reissued decades after its publication, it is praised for its lyrical prose and the richness of its characters.