It seems years since I have picked up a book that I could not put down. Yesterday was a first for quite a while - and well timed, too, as Wellington was locked down with a red weather warning.
I picked up To the Sea in the library because of the title. Anything maritime rings an instant bell with me. The blurb was enticing, too. Skeletons and family secrets and people telling lies to keep those secrets are definitely come-hither stuff. I had never heard of the writer, Nikki Crutchley, (though I should have, as she was shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh) but what the hell. And definitely no regrets.
It's a brilliant book, brilliantly written, and instantly compelling. The prologue, with its detailed description of a particularly sadistic way of shifting a human being out of this life and into the sea, was both creepy and fascinating. It made up the first few pages of what turned out to be an absolute page-turner.
Set on a remote clifftop in rural New Zealand, Illuka is a small family farm run by an extremely reclusive group, comprised of grandfather, daughter, granddaughter, son and son's partner. All have names derived from the sea -- not their real names, but bestowed in a forced baptism by the extremely deluded and dangerous grandfather. He rules with the kind of merciless rod that reminds one of a particularly nasty evangelical sect, but his religion is not Christ -- his god is the sea. Mentally and physically damaged after the upsetting of his boat in a storm, he now believes with soul, body and heart that he belongs to the watery goddess, and reckons that so does his small, beaten down family.
That said, his daughter hangs onto the same strange belief, and treats her own daughter, teenaged Ana, with the same singleminded ferocity. Ana is properly subdued, but then a young, attractive journalist, Nikau, arrives, and upsets the apple basket with his pointed queries. And what he is after is the story of murder that he believes the family is hiding.
It is not the only murder. The sacrifice to the sea described in the prologue is by no means the only skeleton in this family closet. And, in this remarkable psychological thriller, every character is in acute danger of being a sacrifice too.
Thoroughly recommended. I will be looking for more books by this very promising writer.
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