Becky Manawatu (of Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe, Waitaha heritage) won Aotearoa New Zealand's leading fiction prize for her debut novel, Auē, which centered the youngest members of the extended Te Au family. The climax of Auē, when "the girl shot the man," is the central moment for Kataraina, which is both prequel and sequel to its predecessor. Virtually every Kataraina chapter title hauntingly repeats that phrase, presenting events as before or after--in hours, days, years--that pivotal moment when tween neighbor Beth shot Katarina's brutal husband, Stu.
Manawatu's remarkable narrative puzzles together Katarina's fractured life via nonlinear chapters, introducing her as "a worried baby... like she had arrived at the wrong place, at the wrong time." From childhood, her "power" is the ability to "absorb other people's mamae [pain]," but enduring means splitting her very self into escapist Swamp-Kat and obedient Mess-Kat, and later depleted Ghost-Kat in adulthood to survive violent Stu, who was once mistaken for a "good man." She loses both her older twin siblings but inherits their children. Intertwined with Kat's scattered story is a cautionary ancestral tale and a culturally significant environmental field study of Kat's family's surrounding swamplands.
Despite the single name, Kataraina is a sprawling, polyphonic experience. Abuse and tragedy give way to joy, recovery, reunion. Manawatu inventively manipulates time, place, and history, hinting at fabulism. Her lyrical vocabulary honors her strong connection to her Indigenous roots; she appends a detailed glossary of Māori words and phrases. Reading Auē and Kataraina together undoubtedly adds layers of insight, but Kataraina also stands staunchly, proudly, unabashedly alone. --Terry Hong