Some good news: we’ve booked our flights back to NYC, to arrive late afternoon on 03 June. 90 days in New Zealand (60 more than originally planned) have exponentially increased my respect for the people of this country. They know how to treat each other well.

If only …

Nope. I refuse to go down that road. Instead, let me introduce you to an Australian author, one who deserves more attention: Jaclyn Moriarty. If you know of her, it’s most likely through her YA Ashbury/Brookfield series, which includes The Year of Secret Assignments. Perhaps at some other time I’ll review those books, but today here are two that are so far apart in concept that I wouldn’t blame anyone who thought they weren’t penned by the same person.

The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone (2018, NYPL e-book) is MG fantasy-adventure at its best. 10-year-old Bronte, orphaned and living with an aunt, learns that her parents have recently died during a pirate raid. She has never lived with them (they set off on their travels just after she was born), so she isn’t very upset, but in order to inherit their estate, she must visit each of her other 11 aunts to hand-deliver some small gifts, following a precise itinerary (including where to stop for tea and tasty scones). And she has to do this alone, traveling across the realm by coach, ship, foot, and even dragon. Oh, yes, there are dragons, along with Spellbinders and Whisperers and child-snatchers, not to mention those pirates.

A mixture of the third-child trope from fairy tales (how she responds to the people and situations she meets along the way governs her luck) and practically every adventure yarn you can think of (including Sabatini’s Captain Blood), Moriarty’s fantasy delivers a perfect tale with complex plot strands that are all neatly tied up by the end. Early on, Bronte jumps into a raging river to save a baby, building a chain of connections that come into play when she finally has to face the Whispering King.

Moriarty undercuts our expectations of fantasy. For instance, Bronte’s Aunt Sophy is a dragon vet, and explains how to talk to dragons:

… if you want to say “Sleep is the best thing for you, Dragon Sayara, and when you wake, your throat will feel much better,” you make these noises: grrrr eek! eek! bro, grl, brl, and at the same time, you bend, touch your toes, straighten, then punch yourself in the stomach.

The 12 aunts, each with her own special attributes, include ship captains, that dragon vet, a queen, parents, businesswomen, and one who is in love with a mer-man. The variety is mind-boggling.

I can’t wait to get my hands on the sequel.

Moriarty’s other novel under review here, Gravity is the Thing (2019, NYPL e-book), is for adults and includes no fantasy at all. In it, Abigail (Abi) Sorenson, in her mid-thirties and recently divorced, single mother and cafe owner, is still mourning her brother, Robert, who disappeared the night of her 16th birthday and all these years later no one knows what happened to him.

Meanwhile, through all these years, Abi has been receiving bi-weekly letters from “The Guidebook”, some letters just two or three lines, others much longer, but each setting her a task (physical, mental, or otherwise). The novel begins as she heads off to a weekend retreat, where others on the same mailing list have gathered to “Learn the Truth about The Guidebook.”

The “Truth” is that The Guidebook has been preparing them to fly, without wings or equipment. No joke. And I remind you that this is not a fantasy.

From Abi we learn about her 3-year-old son, Oscar (who ages 2 years over the course of the novel), her divorced parents, her ex-husband and several disappointing, dissatisfying — even abusive — boyfriends, her former career as a lawyer and then decision to open the Happiness Cafe, where she wants to help her clients find happiness, even if only via a great muffin.* The chapters move back and forth in time, quoting occasionally from Abi’s annual “reflections” on The Guidebook (required for submission, but there are three she didn’t send), from The Guidebook itself, and then taking us through the weekly meetings of those who want to learn the Truth.

It’s impossible to represent the joy underlying this very dark book. The shadow of Robert’s disappearance lies over everything, and how this is resolved shows the power of Moriarty’s plotting and careful writing.

Moriarty, in Abi’s voice, attacks the labels rom-com, and chicklit — both of which could accurately be applied to this novel. But because it goes much deeper into Abi’s “rage at a world that cheapens, dismisses [her] need for sex and love,” this novel stands out:

The sneering at the happy ending, the pursed lips intoning: You don’t need a partner! You must be happy with yourself, content to be alone! ¶I don’t want a man to save me; I am happy with myself. Only, this longing for physical contact is real, a shape with dimension, and it’s all on a continuum with longing for closeness, for friendship, connection, for love. It’s a yearning that reaches back to lost best friends, lost brothers, lost birthdays, lost birthday wishes.

The realness of every character in this novel is a big part of what made me so happy I’d read it.

*If you listen to podcasts, Freakonomics’ recent episode, “Reasons to be Cheerful” addresses this very issue.