I have similar feelings toward The Godwits Fly as I do to Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! – which was published two years before Godwits. In both cases, I found them challenging, fascinating, confronting reads. They are the sorts of novel that deserve a type of patience and care that I’ve never possessed as a reader.

That’s not to say I didn’t appreciate or even enjoy Godwits. There are passages, whole chapters, that are breathtaking in their beauty. Descriptions of the natural world or interior thoughts that encapsulate the frailties, the doubts, the fears of being human.

Although the novel’s perspective floats between characters, much of the book focuses on Eliza Hannay (an analogue for Hyde… or should I say, Iris Wilkinson, Robin Hyde was her pen-name). Eliza is a precocious young girl living with her family in Wellington, New Zealand. As she gets older, her passions centre on literary pursuits, especially poetry. Her father, John, whom she adores, is a socialist and misery guts who gets on the nerves of Eliza’s mother, Augusta (to the extent that she packs up the kids and heads to Australia, only to return when John signs up for the Army at the eve of World War 1). As a young woman, Eliza falls in love with an idealist like her father, Timothy Cardew, an affair that does not end well. There are other tragedies, which I won’t spoil, but for all the misery that Eliza experiences, her creativity, imagination, and sense of self are never overwhelmed.

If the novel ends on a hopeful note, it sadly didn’t for its author. As someone who struggled with her mental health for years, Hyde took her own life in 1939. She was productive, writing poems and novels, some of which have been published. I feel this is a book I should come back to one day. Like Absalom, Absalom! I know it would reward a second read.