Way back in 2018 when I stumbled on a recommendation for Maori playwright, novelist and screenwriter Whiti Hereaka's debut novel The Graphologist's Apprentice, I bought it without knowing that it had been shortlisted for Best First Book in the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Asia/Pacific region).

This year Whiti Hereaka (b. 1978) went on to win the $60,000 Jan Medlicott medal at the the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for her book Kurangaituku. which inverts the legend of Hatupatu and the fearsome birdwoman Kurangaituku by narrating the story through Kurangaituku's perspective in an experimental form. So I'm late to be discovering what an exceptional author Hereaka is... but better late than never!

The central character in The Graphologist's Apprentice is January, who has made a complete break with her former life by changing her name by deed poll. She is alone and alienated from the people around her, from her job, and from a family never mentioned. As one of the characters says, January is...

A girl who lacks empathy and seems to want to keep the world at a distance. (Kindle Loc 1540)

Her inner commentary on the people around her is often very funny, but they are a sign that she is in psychological distress.

January imagines the Situations Vacant ad for her position. Are you an unmotivated no-getter who is sick of a challenge? Do you suffer fools gladly? Do you have limited aspirations for your future? If you answered ‘yes’ you’re the perfect fit for our company. Welcome! (Loc 1787)

The firm's Christmas party is real torment:

A murder of managers, black suits and constricting ties, frown into their wine, a flock of geeks try to out-lame each other with their ironic t-shirts and their micro-brewery beer, and a pride of those who have lost all of their attempts to dance in the corner. (Loc 411)

Alice looks as if she is having the time of her life. For some reason she invited a date along. The guy doesn’t look like a gormless freak, but if he’s laughing at her jokes he may just be mentally defective. Alice moves her hand on top of his. January suddenly feels like a voyeur. The gnawing in her organs doesn’t abate with a sip of her drink, and not for the first time tonight January wishes that it were something stronger. Cyanide perhaps.

It is the first awkward moment of a romance – when you lie about little things, like your love of blue cheese, just to appease the other. Then later you find that you both detest the stuff; that you were both being polite, and you fall into each other’s arms laughing. The potential of intimacy is heady, and your entire being is focused on getting to know another. Each other’s mind and moods are a mystery that you can’t wait to solve. (Loc 430)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/07/10/the-graphologists-apprentice-by-whiti-hereak... ( )

This was a good depiction of the most thoroughly unpleasant viewpoint character I've had the misfortune of reading for a very very long time. January is self-centered, chronically socially inept without ever so much as regretting (on those rare occasions when she cares enough to notice) how much she hurts people, and, it eventually emerges, dangerously delusional.

Now, I generally like unreliable narrators. But this book I nearly put down long before I was convinced that we were intended to dislike her or distrust her point of view. Only the long commute and something nagging compelled me to open it up again.

The titular graphologist, Mae Raine, was more tolerable, but it must have been a good halfway through the novel before we met her, and even so, it's only in comparison to January. She's still obsessively focused inwards - in her case, on her vocation and the legacy she wants to pass on to someone before she dies.

January's friend Alice could have been sympathetic but she has too little self. She's in the novel primarily to be treated like a doormat and then in the last scene to happen to want a friend just when January decides to say sorry and attempt to be a friend. The problem is that I don't know if January's capable of being a friend, even if she still wants to be a day or two beyond the end of the book. Aside for the whole erotomania deal, for which she seriously needs professional help for the safety of herself and others, this is someone who can't even keep it together long enough to organise decorations for a party.

On the whole, my favourite character was Jasmine. Now she I think would make a better apprentice. If the book had started half the novel in, and drawn more parallel/contrast between Mae trying to teach January and finding it easy to teach Jasmine, I could have really enjoyed it. Not that this would have been the story the author was trying to tell; but it would have lived up better to the title. ( )