Centered in Wellington, New Zealand, and the surrounding countryside, Peter Walker's Some Here Among Us is a quiet contemplation on the friendships between diverse characters who come of age during the late 1960s. Race, Candy, Chadwick, FitzGerald and Morgan (the only Maori in the group) protest the Vietnam War, smoke pot and experiment with sex as their friendships coalesce.
When Morgan, the group's true intellectual, dies in a mysterious manner, the rest are affected in ways that become clear only as they continue to grow older and move through the 20th century without him. Employing the viewpoints of all the characters, including Morgan, Walker subtly intertwines historic moments with the experiences of ordinary people who face the normal highs and lows associated with life: passionate love affairs that fail, marriage, the birth of children, advancing age and the aches, pains and dementia associated with it.
Walker's novel is not full of fast-paced action or suspense, but it demands attention as the lives of the characters unfold, revealing hidden thoughts, desires, disappointments and feelings each person has about the other protagonists. It's also an intimate look into the race and class differences in modern New Zealand. Some Here Among Us is Walker's U.S. fiction debut and provides a welcome addition to the arena of good literary fiction by writers from outside the U.S. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer