Review: THE MIRES

THE DEEPER THE DEAD by Catherine Lea (Bateman Books, 2025)

Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become neighbours in a coastal town in Aotearoa New Zealand. Single parent Keri has her hands full with four-year-old tearaway Walty and teen Wairere, a strange and gifted child, who always picks up on things that aren't hers to worry about. They live next door to Janet, a white woman with an opinion about everything, and new arrival Sera, whose family are refugees from ecological devastation in Europe.

 

When Janet’s son Conor arrives home without warning, sporting a fresh buzzcut and a new tattoo, the quiet tension between the neighbours grows, but no one suspects just how extreme Conor has become. No one except Wairere, who can feel the danger in their midst, and the swamp beneath their street, watching and waiting.

Hopefully more and more of us are looking for answers to the state of the world in the right directions, but then again you look at the state of world politics and the rise of the nationalistic mobs, environmental degradation and climate change denial, and it's getting hard to see any light at the end of an increasingly long, dark tunnel. Tina Makereti has chosen to take this situation, and the hopelessness generated hyper-local, with THE MIRES. Into a small community, living on top of a swamp in Kapiti, on the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand which is trying to coexist, and it's in their interactions and responses to threats that we have been given the opportunity to learn something,

The story is centred around three women - all from different countries and different decades, all of whom with children and life experience that vary dramatically. First up is Keri, a Māori woman who lives with the aftermath of domestic violence, struggling to feed her two children - a lively four year old called Walty and her reserved teenage daughter Wairere, who hears the voices of her ancestors and has the gift of sight.

She lives between, on the one side, refugees from ecological breakdown in Europe - Sera, her husband Adam and baby Aliana. On the other Janet, another survivor of domestic violence, she's a white New Zealander woman with very fixed ideas about how everybody else should live. Meanwhile her son, Conor, is becoming increasing radicalised, behaving very secretly and strangely.

These three women - Keri, Sera and Janet - form the core of this novel, but it's Conor who becomes the catalyst, returning home without warning, sporting tattoos and a buzzcut, his behaviour really causing the tension to ramp up. Whilst the older women may not immediately realise just how warped Conor's beliefs have become, Wairere immediately senses the danger.

As with the outstanding and very moving KATARAINA, central to the core of the Māori people is their connection to vital areas of the landscape - in this case, again, a swamp that forms both part of the community and their sensibility for want of a better description. The novel starts out quite deceptively, with the feel of a gentle, domestic styled story about women, families and living in small communities or suburbs. As friendships are formed, and the younger children in particular form initial bridges between them, the novel itself starts to build through the gathering of strangers and the perceived threat of difference to a very particular threat within. Conor and his extremist right-wing connections, isolation, and targeting of women and migrants in particular becomes something that could break this small, almost insulated world apart.

Informed strongly by indigenous sensibilities, beliefs and spiritual connections to Country, and ancestors, THE MIRES also isn't afraid to use the examples of the horror of white supremacy, the massacres that are all too often performed in its name, and attempt to shine a light on that darkest of human behaviour whilst more importantly, providing examples of how the best of humanity can rise above. 

Whilst parts of THE MIRES were devastating, and very discomforting to read, it's message of hope and connection shone through. It has a particularly indigenous sensibility - the things that matter - people / community / connection to those and to place, always to place, feels very much like an answer we could all be looking towards. .

Karen Chisholm is one of Australia's leading crime reviewers. She created Aust Crime Fiction in 2006, a terrific resource - please check it out. Karen also reviews for Newtown Review of Books, and has been a regular judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and Ngaio Marsh Awards. This review was first published on Karen's website; she kindly shares some of her reviews of crime and thriller novels written by New Zealanders adn Australians on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction.