'Good morning; Allen & Unwin; this is Susannah.'
'Good morning, Allen & Unwin. This is Margaret Mahy.'
Margaret Mahy.
Margaret. Mahy.
On the phone.
To me.
I mumbled something incoherent; I cleared my throat and tried to breathe
as my Best Professional Phone Manner dissolved into a puddle of Unprofessional
Stammering.
'I love you. I mean ... I love ... your books. I love you and your books. I
love...'
'Thank you. Can I speak to Sarah, please.'
And so I transferred her. And then I sat quietly for a moment. And then I
experienced an exalted moment of knowing I was working in a place where Margaret
Mahy sometimes telephoned. She was writing Kaitangata Twitch and we (WE!) were publishing it. It's a moment I've never really
recovered from.
Margaret Mahy died yesterday, aged 76.
When I found out, I rang my mum. Because it was Mum who read me The
Great Piratical Rumbusitification and The Librarian and the
Robbers, The Chewing Gum Rescue and The Downhill Crocodile
Whizz. We had laughed and laughed and laughed. So now we cried a
little.
And it was Mum who bought me a copy of The Changeover, but wisely left it on the shelf for me to discover myself. I avoided it for years
because it looked like this:
and had "a supernatural romance" on the cover.
But finally I picked it up, and by happy chance or grand design I was just
the perfect age for Laura Chant and Sorry Carlisle, then Harry and the Carnival
brothers, and Angela and Tycho. And I've been the perfect age ever since.
It's hard to define what it is that makes Margaret's writing so special.
There is humour and wit and sadness, strength and vulnerability (and often
strength in vulnerability), the wonderful terrible power of being a
girl, and the breathtaking possibility and serious responsibility of making
yourself, definining yourself, and then changing the definition.
Her writing means something powerful for New Zealanders -
reflecting their stories, their land, themselves.
It means something adjacent to that for Australians, and something else
again for the rest of the world - who honoured her with awards like the Hans
Christian Andersen and the Carnegie.
I read recently that one of Jeffrey Eugenides's characters yearns
for new words for complex emotions, for 'the happiness that attends disaster' or
'the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.' I want a word for 'the joyous
aching melancholy one experiences while reading a Margaret Mahy novel.'
I find that feeling again in Karen Healey's writing, and in Penni Russon's,
and in a different, fiercer way in Margo Lanagan's. I will always be seraching
for it in new writers, and can always find it again in Margaret's 100+ books.
Where will I begin the re-reading?
Where will you?
Thank you, Margaret. I love you. I love your books. I love...
*I believe it was about five minutes into our first meeting with Karen to
discuss her novel, Guardian of the Dead, that she pulled a battered copy
of The Changeover out of her bag, and we knew then that we were going
to get along just fine.
