Sarah Lark’s landscape novels and the “New Zealand exotic”

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on Sarah Lark’s first New Zealand trilogy, historical romances set in New Zealand and marketed as “landscape novels”. After a brief analysis of the landscape boom, it focuses on the novels’ construction of the “New Zealand exotic”, a landscaped version of New Zealand history and culture designed for the global literary marketplace which proves the enduring power of exoticizing discourses. The article argues that the novels create both tourist and settler landscapes: the former are reminiscent of contemporary articulations of Aotearoa New Zealand as an ideal tourist destination, which in turn go back to colonial renderings of Māoriland; the latter reshape historical material to prioritize stories of female development and settler triumph, minimizing discussions of interracial conflict and land dispossession.

KEYWORDS:

• Landscape novels
• New Zealand in literature
• historical romances
• popular historical fiction
• marketing the exotic
• Sarah Lark

Acknowledgments

The research for this article was carried out in the context of the project “The Politics, Aesthetics and Marketing of Popular Women’s Fiction: History, Exoticism and Romance” (FFI 2016-75130-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MINECO), the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For studies of the translation of New Zealand literature into different European languages, see Fresno-Calleja (2015); Haag (2013); Riemenschneider (2020).

2. Other German authors, such as Laura Walden, Emma Temple, and Anne Laureen, have also written popular novels set in New Zealand.

3. All interviews and reviews of Lark’s work quoted in this article were originally published in Spanish; the quoted extracts are all my translation.

4. Lark names her fictional tribe Kai Tahu in In the Land of the Long White Cloud, refers simply to “tribes” in Song of the Spirits, and employs Ngai Tahu in Call of the Kiwi and A Hope at the End of the World, where she first introduces the concept of hapu (subtribe).

5. In the last years, Ediciones B has dropped the label and advertised these titles as “Grandes Novelas” (Great Novels).

6. In 2014, for instance, Lark’s novels featured among the most commonly borrowed titles in Spanish libraries (https://www.culturamas.es/blog/2014/12/24/los-libros-mas-prestados-en-las-bibliotecas-espanolas/).

7. Examples of literary blogs in Spanish which provide their own definition of the genre include “La comunidad del libro”, “Devoradora de libros” (http://www.devoradoradelibros.com/2012/05/el-fenomeno-de-las-landscape-novels.html), “El rincón de Madame Lafayette” (http://rinconmadamelafayette.blogspot.com/2014/03/novelas-landscape-landscape-novels.html), “Librópatas” (http://www.libropatas.com/mundo-editorial/novelas-landscape-ultima-fiebre-mesa-novedades/), “Libros que hay que leer” (http://librosquehayqueleer-laky.blogspot.com/2014/03/mes-de-la-novela-landscape-y-exotica.html), and 1000 páginas, “El boom de las ‘Landscape novels’ ” (http://1000pag.blogspot.com.es/2013/02/el-boom-de-las-landscape-novels.html).

8. Despite such claims, the accuracy of some of the historical and cultural material is debatable. Online reviews of the novels are overwhelmingly positive; nevertheless, some readers have drawn attention to inaccuracies, misspelt Māori words, historical errors, anachronisms, and an inconsistent use of language in the translation from German into (American) English, especially in relation to In the Land of the Long White Cloud. See, for example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2K6J89144W8WT/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=161218426X; https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2Q60N9JLIG2MY/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=161218426X; https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2TZM8V1R8TP34/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00802UZ1E.

9. The period includes the government of the Liberal Party (1891–1912), but extends to the years in which “the Liberal Party’s broader agenda defined the political character of the nation” (Werry 2011, 250n20).

10. Surprisingly, most readers do not seem to be particularly bothered by these descriptions, as online reviews show. An exception is the comment by a Goodreads reviewer of Song of the Spirits who condemns the “hyper-sexualization and fetishization of the only non-white female lead [Kura]” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1776855888?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1). Similarly, in an Amazon review of A Hope at the End of the World (Lark 2017), a reader of Ngāi Tahu descent opines that “the depiction of Maori and Maori culture lacked insight and depth”, concluding that “my difficulty in finding personality in the depiction of my culture affected my ability to empathize with the characters” (https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R26HLBUJ95DHOB/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B01J582M1C).

11. This would be historically inaccurate, if we consider that Sir George Grey’s (1855) widely circulated Polynesian Mythology had already appeared, and works published from the second half of the 19th century also contained accounts of the main Māori myths.

12. In fact, the author herself reinforces this idea in an interview when stating that New Zealand’s history was “very peaceful, with few fights” (http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/ocio-y-cultura/nube-blanca-maori-996905; see also https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20180218/44884677245/sarah-lark-la-formula-del-exito-es-escribir-historias-buenas.html).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paloma Fresno-Calleja

Paloma Fresno-Calleja is senior lecturer in English at the University of the Balearic Islands. Her research focuses on New Zealand and Pacific literatures, on which she has published monographs, book chapters, and numerous articles.