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All This by Chance
If we don’t have the past in mind, it is merely history. If we do, it is still part of the present.
Esther’s grandparents first meet at a church dance in London in 1947. Stephen, a shy young Kiwi, has left to practise pharmacy on the other side of the world. Eva has grown up English, with no memory of the Jewish family who sent their little girl to safety. When the couple emigrate, the peace they seek in New Zealand cannot overcome the past they have left behind.
Following the lives of Eva, her daughter Lisa and her granddaughter Esther, All This by Chance is a moving multigenerational family saga about the legacy of the Holocaust and the burden of secrets never shared, by one of New Zealand’s finest writers.
Cover design by Keely O'Shannessy
Esther’s grandparents first meet at a church dance in London in 1947. Stephen, a shy young Kiwi, has left to practise pharmacy on the other side of the world. Eva has grown up English, with no memory of the Jewish family who sent their little girl to safety. When the couple emigrate, the peace they seek in New Zealand cannot overcome the past they have left behind.
Following the lives of Eva, her daughter Lisa and her granddaughter Esther, All This by Chance is a moving multigenerational family saga about the legacy of the Holocaust and the burden of secrets never shared, by one of New Zealand’s finest writers.
Cover design by Keely O'Shannessy
335 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2018
10 people are currently reading
117 people want to read
About the author
Vincent O'Sullivan
186 books9 followersVincent Gerard O’Sullivan, DCNZM was a New Zealand poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, critic and editor. He was the New Zealand Poet Laureate for the term 2013–2015.
He attended St Joseph's Primary, Grey Lynn, and Sacred Heart College. He graduated from the University of Auckland and Oxford University; he lectured at Victoria University of Wellington (1963–66) and the University of Waikato (1968–78).
He served as literary editor of the NZ Listener (1979–80).
Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Vincent^O'Sullivan
He attended St Joseph's Primary, Grey Lynn, and Sacred Heart College. He graduated from the University of Auckland and Oxford University; he lectured at Victoria University of Wellington (1963–66) and the University of Waikato (1968–78).
He served as literary editor of the NZ Listener (1979–80).
Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Vincent^O'Sullivan
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 23, 2019
This is quite an artful novel. It has such elegance in the way the prose unfolds. It reminds me of Henry James, but without the meanness of Henry James. O'Sullivan, born in 1937, must have drawn on childhood memories of WWII and the immediate post-war era, because there is such a lively reality in this novel, and especially in the early scenes, set immediately after the war. It feels like we're running out of time to be graced with such fictional realism of these times. The author creates a sense of place that is very hard to pull off for writers born after the era they're writing about--something is lost once a given era recedes into the category of 'historical novel.'
There are so many small gestures and so many distinct and vivid observations in each scene. The things that O'Sullivan chooses to write about, and those he chooses to leave out, feel like unique and thoughtful choices, and nothing like the other 2018 novels I've read. A word that comes to mind to describe this novel is "genteel." An old-fashioned word for a quality that's difficult to find in contemporary fiction. The novel is filled with wonderful humane characters whom I cared about and who were remarkable individuals, people I would recognize if I ever met them.
My deep thanks to Marcus Hobson for sending me a copy of this wonderful novel!
There are so many small gestures and so many distinct and vivid observations in each scene. The things that O'Sullivan chooses to write about, and those he chooses to leave out, feel like unique and thoughtful choices, and nothing like the other 2018 novels I've read. A word that comes to mind to describe this novel is "genteel." An old-fashioned word for a quality that's difficult to find in contemporary fiction. The novel is filled with wonderful humane characters whom I cared about and who were remarkable individuals, people I would recognize if I ever met them.
My deep thanks to Marcus Hobson for sending me a copy of this wonderful novel!
March 6, 2019
I was a little late arriving at this brilliant New Zealand novel, and hence I also read an interview with the author back in November. As one of New Zealand’s most celebrated authors, O’Sullivan is better known as poet or playwright. His last novel came out twenty years ago.
I enjoyed one of the statements in the interview, because it sets this book up beautifully. “As a schoolboy living in Westmere, O’Sullivan was intrigued by the Jewish family, their European connections as strange and foreign as the cries of coyotes he’d hear at night, drifting from the nearby Auckland zoo.” While he didn’t know where the family came from or indeed what happened to them, such memories, in this case their closeness to the Holocaust, are the spark from which writers’ stories grow.
'All This by Chance' is wonderfully diverse and expansive, spanning two thirds of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Characters escape the simplicity of New Zealand life for Europe and then return for the peace and simplicity, while their children and grand-children escape the insular nature of New Zealand for a more exciting life in Europe.
The novel follows a chronology, starting with Stephen’s escape from Auckland to a London just emerging from the Second World War, his return with wife Eva in 1948, their daughter Lisa in Greece in 1968, and her then working in London and Africa in the late 1970s, and finally to the daughter of Lisa’s brother David, again back in London but travelling to Poland in the search of long lost stories. Whilst moving in a strict chronology, the final chapter flicks back to 1938 to bring the story full circle.
We are following a family saga, watching it unfold not over weeks and months but across years and generations of a single family. The characters are so well painted, made even clearer by the shadowy nature of their lives and the unspoken horrors of the past. And that link to the past was so tenuous to begin with that it could have been so easily missed. Stephen, working in a pharmacy in north London, encounters Eva at a dance, where both are out of place, somehow recognising that they are both in an alien setting, they run off and become lovers. As they are about to leave for a life together in New Zealand, they are united with a relative, an old woman who speaks only German and is supposed to be Eva’s aunt. Eva’s Jewish parents has sent her to England as a child to avoid the approaching horrors of the Holocaust. Her aunt, with her tortured body and lack of English, will haunt their remaining years and cast an influence over their children.
Stephen and Eva’s children are like chalk and cheese, Lisa like her father, calm and considered and learning medicine, while David is angry and comforted only by turning more towards the Jewish faith that has skipped a generation in his family. David’s daughter Esther will help set the story in its proper context.
The dialogue between the characters is excellent, as you would expect of a playwright and the beauty of the descriptions of place and scene hold all the beauty that a poet brings. We are indeed lucky to find all these talents merged into one brilliant novel. Talking about his wife's aunt, a woman who suddenly appeared in their lives and about whom they knew almost nothing, Stephen says:
"...the woman they had buried was a life they had seen like a shape through frosted glass, its reality quite other to what they saw."
I enjoyed one of the statements in the interview, because it sets this book up beautifully. “As a schoolboy living in Westmere, O’Sullivan was intrigued by the Jewish family, their European connections as strange and foreign as the cries of coyotes he’d hear at night, drifting from the nearby Auckland zoo.” While he didn’t know where the family came from or indeed what happened to them, such memories, in this case their closeness to the Holocaust, are the spark from which writers’ stories grow.
'All This by Chance' is wonderfully diverse and expansive, spanning two thirds of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Characters escape the simplicity of New Zealand life for Europe and then return for the peace and simplicity, while their children and grand-children escape the insular nature of New Zealand for a more exciting life in Europe.
The novel follows a chronology, starting with Stephen’s escape from Auckland to a London just emerging from the Second World War, his return with wife Eva in 1948, their daughter Lisa in Greece in 1968, and her then working in London and Africa in the late 1970s, and finally to the daughter of Lisa’s brother David, again back in London but travelling to Poland in the search of long lost stories. Whilst moving in a strict chronology, the final chapter flicks back to 1938 to bring the story full circle.
We are following a family saga, watching it unfold not over weeks and months but across years and generations of a single family. The characters are so well painted, made even clearer by the shadowy nature of their lives and the unspoken horrors of the past. And that link to the past was so tenuous to begin with that it could have been so easily missed. Stephen, working in a pharmacy in north London, encounters Eva at a dance, where both are out of place, somehow recognising that they are both in an alien setting, they run off and become lovers. As they are about to leave for a life together in New Zealand, they are united with a relative, an old woman who speaks only German and is supposed to be Eva’s aunt. Eva’s Jewish parents has sent her to England as a child to avoid the approaching horrors of the Holocaust. Her aunt, with her tortured body and lack of English, will haunt their remaining years and cast an influence over their children.
Stephen and Eva’s children are like chalk and cheese, Lisa like her father, calm and considered and learning medicine, while David is angry and comforted only by turning more towards the Jewish faith that has skipped a generation in his family. David’s daughter Esther will help set the story in its proper context.
The dialogue between the characters is excellent, as you would expect of a playwright and the beauty of the descriptions of place and scene hold all the beauty that a poet brings. We are indeed lucky to find all these talents merged into one brilliant novel. Talking about his wife's aunt, a woman who suddenly appeared in their lives and about whom they knew almost nothing, Stephen says:
"...the woman they had buried was a life they had seen like a shape through frosted glass, its reality quite other to what they saw."
April 28, 2018
Reading notes
March 30
All This by Chance (ATBC) by Vincent O'Sullivan is a compulsive read. I started reading the novel during a time when my world was spinning with a greater than normal intensity. I didn't have the luxury of a day or two set aside for finishing a book. Yet, by the time I reached page 111 I seemed to have been reading for only a few hours. The écriture is mesmerising. ATBC feels like a river that entices the reader to surrender to it, until all that they want is to listen to that voice, part poetic, part magician-like, part Joycean.
Vincent O'Sullivan's voice is that of a story-teller who knows countless stories but has chosen to share but a few, which he distills and sublimates in tales emblematic for the human condition. He tells these stories in tones whose emotions are barely betrayed, yet so alive and powerful, suggesting layers upon layers of thoughts, experience, insights.
All This by Chance is an exquisitely crafted yet accessible book about the chosen people and about Kiwis, about love in the aftermath of WWII and relationships that buckle or endure under circumstances. A most subtle book woven of understandings that took lifetimes to be arrived at or are but fresh revelations. It's one of those novels that I wish would never end.
More reading notes
April 2
Past the first 200+ pages, I still love All This By Chance (Victoria University Press, 2018). I love the flow of its phrasing, the daring turns of sentence and innovative word order. I love it even more when Lisa turns philosophical briefly and reflects on solitude; and when the narrative voice notes her intransigence as a young person - when she leaves a lover for a lie - and is a few years later compelled to lie when she attempts saving a life. The wisdom that experience teaches us: that principles are there to be followed and then moved beyond when lives are at stake, when care and innocent love move us to.
I don't read much about the Holocaust, yet I couldn't skip McGovern's soliloquies about Ruth and her life in the work camp. Nabokovian prose in its compelling beauty that contrasts with the horrendous facts it narrates.
It's strange how some of the moments in the book - even if seemingly brushed over, like the episode with the rabbits that McGovern shared with her sister - stay with me, for I return to them time and again. Perhaps because Vincent O'Sullivan is a poet, hence the force with which emotions are condensed in an image or an episode.
There were times in the novel when the narrator seemed to be speaking of Stephen or Lisa, but I felt as if the writer was speaking of himself over the heads of his characters. What comes to mind are the passages about the warm comfort of solitude, the wonder in face of European architecture, or Lisa's bewilderment when trying to make discursive sense of the African landscape in her letters to her father.
Final notes
April 7
I finished ATBC on Thursday afternoon and today I started Let the River Stand also by Vincent O'Sullivan. (It feels good to be welcomed by an already familiar style and voice when opening a new book.)
I find the female characters in ATBC round, deep, quite pronounced in their intellectual and emotional lives (perhaps because women are so? - my son would say). However, I quite like Kiwi Stephen, whose depth and kindness isn't spelled out, but intuited there, constant through the novel. I find his son David intriguing: he seems to assume masks that aren't his in an attempt to gain a sense of identity. I love Esther as much as Lisa, and found Eva's defection saddening, but not entirely surprising. I grew to like Babcia and McGovern too. Very lovable characters. What's the death of a character if you didn't root for them, my son commented when I told him about the novel.
I love how the narrative slides from Esther's visit to her relatives' last days in their home, with a credible rendering of the fears and the mixed emotions and the strange sense of irreality/ teatrality in Berlin in 1938. I love how Esther redeems the characters who have died during the Holocaust, through her visit and her saying their names, even if she believes that we cannot do much for one another when it comes to personal tragedies.
However, the most present character for me and the most alive is the writing. If read out ATBC would have the rhythm of poetry, a flow kindred to James Joyce's Dubliners or Finnegans Wake.
March 30
All This by Chance (ATBC) by Vincent O'Sullivan is a compulsive read. I started reading the novel during a time when my world was spinning with a greater than normal intensity. I didn't have the luxury of a day or two set aside for finishing a book. Yet, by the time I reached page 111 I seemed to have been reading for only a few hours. The écriture is mesmerising. ATBC feels like a river that entices the reader to surrender to it, until all that they want is to listen to that voice, part poetic, part magician-like, part Joycean.
Vincent O'Sullivan's voice is that of a story-teller who knows countless stories but has chosen to share but a few, which he distills and sublimates in tales emblematic for the human condition. He tells these stories in tones whose emotions are barely betrayed, yet so alive and powerful, suggesting layers upon layers of thoughts, experience, insights.
All This by Chance is an exquisitely crafted yet accessible book about the chosen people and about Kiwis, about love in the aftermath of WWII and relationships that buckle or endure under circumstances. A most subtle book woven of understandings that took lifetimes to be arrived at or are but fresh revelations. It's one of those novels that I wish would never end.
More reading notes
April 2
Past the first 200+ pages, I still love All This By Chance (Victoria University Press, 2018). I love the flow of its phrasing, the daring turns of sentence and innovative word order. I love it even more when Lisa turns philosophical briefly and reflects on solitude; and when the narrative voice notes her intransigence as a young person - when she leaves a lover for a lie - and is a few years later compelled to lie when she attempts saving a life. The wisdom that experience teaches us: that principles are there to be followed and then moved beyond when lives are at stake, when care and innocent love move us to.
I don't read much about the Holocaust, yet I couldn't skip McGovern's soliloquies about Ruth and her life in the work camp. Nabokovian prose in its compelling beauty that contrasts with the horrendous facts it narrates.
It's strange how some of the moments in the book - even if seemingly brushed over, like the episode with the rabbits that McGovern shared with her sister - stay with me, for I return to them time and again. Perhaps because Vincent O'Sullivan is a poet, hence the force with which emotions are condensed in an image or an episode.
There were times in the novel when the narrator seemed to be speaking of Stephen or Lisa, but I felt as if the writer was speaking of himself over the heads of his characters. What comes to mind are the passages about the warm comfort of solitude, the wonder in face of European architecture, or Lisa's bewilderment when trying to make discursive sense of the African landscape in her letters to her father.
Final notes
April 7
I finished ATBC on Thursday afternoon and today I started Let the River Stand also by Vincent O'Sullivan. (It feels good to be welcomed by an already familiar style and voice when opening a new book.)
I find the female characters in ATBC round, deep, quite pronounced in their intellectual and emotional lives (perhaps because women are so? - my son would say). However, I quite like Kiwi Stephen, whose depth and kindness isn't spelled out, but intuited there, constant through the novel. I find his son David intriguing: he seems to assume masks that aren't his in an attempt to gain a sense of identity. I love Esther as much as Lisa, and found Eva's defection saddening, but not entirely surprising. I grew to like Babcia and McGovern too. Very lovable characters. What's the death of a character if you didn't root for them, my son commented when I told him about the novel.
I love how the narrative slides from Esther's visit to her relatives' last days in their home, with a credible rendering of the fears and the mixed emotions and the strange sense of irreality/ teatrality in Berlin in 1938. I love how Esther redeems the characters who have died during the Holocaust, through her visit and her saying their names, even if she believes that we cannot do much for one another when it comes to personal tragedies.
However, the most present character for me and the most alive is the writing. If read out ATBC would have the rhythm of poetry, a flow kindred to James Joyce's Dubliners or Finnegans Wake.
April 10, 2019
All This by Chance was the last for me to read of the four titles shortlisted for the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Like the other titles (see links to my reviews gathered in one place here) it explores what it means to tell the truth:
“They stood out for their ability to explore personal memory and collective mediation of the truth in new and provocative ways that have a lasting impact on the reader,” says the Fiction category convenor of judges Sally Blundell. (Auckland Literary Festival website, viewed 10/4/19)
O'Sullivan, who among other distinctions was Poet Laureate in NZ from 2013-2015, is of Irish heritage, but the characters in All This by Chance have a heritage that they themselves are unsure about. The story is told in parts, from the unshared perspective and chronology of different generations, but all in third person narrative which effectively distances the characters from each other.
The story begins in postwar Britain, where a shy young pharmacist called Stephen escapes from Auckland, a place he sometimes hated, to a place he knew nothing of. There in 1947, in London, under the benign paternalism of David Golson, he begins both his career and a puzzled engagement with a post-Holocaust world. He meets and marries Eva, a woman without a past because she knows nothing at all about her family. As a baby she had been adopted out from Berlin, and then sent to safety with a Quaker family in England when anti-Semitism was on the rise. So it is a shock when the past that Eva has been shielded from emerges into their lives: an elderly aunt of whom she knew nothing has survived the Holocaust and been brought to London to be with the sole remnant of her family.
Ruth goes with them when the couple set sail for Auckland. She is, they were warned, badly damaged by her experience, but the gulf between them is not just because of the impenetrable barrier of unshared languages. A specialist tells them one day that they should be grateful that she remembers so little of the dreadful years in the camp. Yet Ruth seemed to know Miss McGovern when they recognised each other on the ship, and Miss McGovern becomes a regular if not really welcome visitor in Auckland. The genesis of their curious friendship remains unexplained for a long time, until in 1976 a Holocaust researcher panics Miss McGovern into telling Stephen their shared story. She and her sister Irma were imprisoned because they would not renounce their beliefs as Jehovah's Witnesses, and Ruth had suffered brutal and enduring punishment because she tried to help Irma in a moment of crisis. Miss McGovern now is terrified that the researcher will trigger cruel memories which have mercifully been lost.
“They stood out for their ability to explore personal memory and collective mediation of the truth in new and provocative ways that have a lasting impact on the reader,” says the Fiction category convenor of judges Sally Blundell. (Auckland Literary Festival website, viewed 10/4/19)
O'Sullivan, who among other distinctions was Poet Laureate in NZ from 2013-2015, is of Irish heritage, but the characters in All This by Chance have a heritage that they themselves are unsure about. The story is told in parts, from the unshared perspective and chronology of different generations, but all in third person narrative which effectively distances the characters from each other.
The story begins in postwar Britain, where a shy young pharmacist called Stephen escapes from Auckland, a place he sometimes hated, to a place he knew nothing of. There in 1947, in London, under the benign paternalism of David Golson, he begins both his career and a puzzled engagement with a post-Holocaust world. He meets and marries Eva, a woman without a past because she knows nothing at all about her family. As a baby she had been adopted out from Berlin, and then sent to safety with a Quaker family in England when anti-Semitism was on the rise. So it is a shock when the past that Eva has been shielded from emerges into their lives: an elderly aunt of whom she knew nothing has survived the Holocaust and been brought to London to be with the sole remnant of her family.
Ruth goes with them when the couple set sail for Auckland. She is, they were warned, badly damaged by her experience, but the gulf between them is not just because of the impenetrable barrier of unshared languages. A specialist tells them one day that they should be grateful that she remembers so little of the dreadful years in the camp. Yet Ruth seemed to know Miss McGovern when they recognised each other on the ship, and Miss McGovern becomes a regular if not really welcome visitor in Auckland. The genesis of their curious friendship remains unexplained for a long time, until in 1976 a Holocaust researcher panics Miss McGovern into telling Stephen their shared story. She and her sister Irma were imprisoned because they would not renounce their beliefs as Jehovah's Witnesses, and Ruth had suffered brutal and enduring punishment because she tried to help Irma in a moment of crisis. Miss McGovern now is terrified that the researcher will trigger cruel memories which have mercifully been lost.
March 4, 2020
I struggled a little with this book. Perhaps it was the heavy topics, I'm not certain. At times I have to go back to find out who it was referring too and how it was connected. It was a good story, I just was not in the right head space for it.
June 3, 2018
In 1947 Stephen leaves New Zealand, “ A farm, Cows and mud and half a day by bus from anywhere” to train as a pharmacist in in post war London. It was there he met Eva, “Tall and quiet and calm, the words first occurring to him as he walked beside her”.
“All this by chance ,as they kept saying to each other in those first months together… the sheer chance of a church social both had felt so awkward at as to run away from.”
Growing up with an English family Eva has suppressed much of her early life and Jewish background, but as the couple are about to return to New Zealand her Aunt Babcia (Ruth) is reunited with her, and stirs memories of their life in Europe and Hitler’s Germany.
There are a number of characters in the book and the author has listed the key people in the front of the book with the year of their birth, which helps the reader keep the storyline in context, as it progresses through the chapters from 1947 to 2004, and then back to 1038 for the finale. Stephen and Eva’s son and daughter deal with their family history completely differently, with David keen to delve into a Jewish way of life, while Lisa is content to ignore her mother’s background.
Born in Auckland in 1937 Vincent O’Sullivan is the author of two previous novels Let the River Stand which won the 1994 Montana NZ Book Award, and Believers to the Bright Coast which was shortlisted for the 2001 Tasmania Pacific Region prize .He has also written a number of plays, short stories and poems and worked as an editor and critic.
Now living in Dunedin O’Sullivan was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 200o Queens Birthday Honours and was the New Zealand poet laureate 2013-2015.
All This By Chance is a beautifully written book which requires concentration to capture the moving family story told by three generations, of the horrors of the holocaust and the burden of secrets never shared. Keely O’Shannessy has designed a very fitting cover which invites the reader down the path through the trees into a family who has tried to forget the atrocities of war, but finds the following generations becoming fascinated with their background history, and wanting to learn more.
I enjoyed this book, especially the author’s choice of words and phrases such as “Against the wall a gas heater she fed with shillings and florins purred when the weather turned”, and anyone who enjoys family history will find it a great read.
“All this by chance ,as they kept saying to each other in those first months together… the sheer chance of a church social both had felt so awkward at as to run away from.”
Growing up with an English family Eva has suppressed much of her early life and Jewish background, but as the couple are about to return to New Zealand her Aunt Babcia (Ruth) is reunited with her, and stirs memories of their life in Europe and Hitler’s Germany.
There are a number of characters in the book and the author has listed the key people in the front of the book with the year of their birth, which helps the reader keep the storyline in context, as it progresses through the chapters from 1947 to 2004, and then back to 1038 for the finale. Stephen and Eva’s son and daughter deal with their family history completely differently, with David keen to delve into a Jewish way of life, while Lisa is content to ignore her mother’s background.
Born in Auckland in 1937 Vincent O’Sullivan is the author of two previous novels Let the River Stand which won the 1994 Montana NZ Book Award, and Believers to the Bright Coast which was shortlisted for the 2001 Tasmania Pacific Region prize .He has also written a number of plays, short stories and poems and worked as an editor and critic.
Now living in Dunedin O’Sullivan was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 200o Queens Birthday Honours and was the New Zealand poet laureate 2013-2015.
All This By Chance is a beautifully written book which requires concentration to capture the moving family story told by three generations, of the horrors of the holocaust and the burden of secrets never shared. Keely O’Shannessy has designed a very fitting cover which invites the reader down the path through the trees into a family who has tried to forget the atrocities of war, but finds the following generations becoming fascinated with their background history, and wanting to learn more.
I enjoyed this book, especially the author’s choice of words and phrases such as “Against the wall a gas heater she fed with shillings and florins purred when the weather turned”, and anyone who enjoys family history will find it a great read.
April 17, 2018
hard work. Unnecessary use of narratives within narratives, time-shifts, sometimes within paragraphs, unclear who was being referred to, clipped sentence fragments for no obvious reason, written in the past tense, about the past, but with later knowledge).
Also poor editing (both in body text and also section titles (eg 1945 labelled as 1948 - was it written about 1945 from 3 years later)
Interesting story of 3 generations, but seriously marred by writing style/techniques
Also poor editing (both in body text and also section titles (eg 1945 labelled as 1948 - was it written about 1945 from 3 years later)
Interesting story of 3 generations, but seriously marred by writing style/techniques
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 14, 2019
Set predominantly in the post World War II era, in both New Zealand and Europe, "All this by chance"is the story of a Jewish family haunted by the past, and the secrets and loss which threaten the family relationships across generations. Too slow-moving and subtle for me. The plot interweaves through the book but it takes so long to get to answers. Clever and introspective, but confusing at times. Was determined to finish this, but not a winner for me.
September 22, 2025
“Love. You shy away from saying that as if it will scald you”
“The words others would most often say of her as well, at the beginning, at the end, although the last becoming that touch more insistent, as one life changed to another, and then another again”
“For Eva to love him was a gift that must come entirely from her own expansive kindness. It could not relate to anything he might deserve or be”
“You cannot describe a wall even if you’ve lived against it”
“They had spoken little else at home but the language that would later oppress them”
“Everything you are looking at, is built on the fact that the country exists because of its peasants”
“His contempt for most nationalities was a gift he cherished. An obligation, even”
“It is possible to be a good person and a bastard, you know that, don’t you, Lisa? It does not happen often but we are privileged with Ambrose to see a rare instance of the phenomenon”
“The past as if rising like reflux from his stomach, tasted in his mouth”
“The charm of such places, that striking him, he remembers. Wondering what it would be like to live in a place like this. The same hankering to get out, he supposed, as you’d find any place else”
“Children actually love not knowing things. Half-knowing them. The mystery of it”
“The end of life that must be there in the beginning, somehow, surely?”
“The past always waiting to happen”
“I’m sort of the end to a long story I don’t even know. If you’re wondering why im here. I wouldn’t know how to tell it even if I knew what it was”
“The man I work for sometimes talks about God as if he holds the mortgage on the farm and other times as if he’s an employee he’s disappointed in”
“When Gods around all the time I suppose you tend to get a bit casual”
“Just how much is us, how much is them. The before people. No one ever quite works out the mix”
“And then it was her father they were speaking about, something more even than loneliness, Esther said, something sadder. What you wanted always somewhere else. Not the place you were in, not the person you were with. Lonely before the reason for it even happens”
“What we don’t know then, we at least know that”
“The words others would most often say of her as well, at the beginning, at the end, although the last becoming that touch more insistent, as one life changed to another, and then another again”
“For Eva to love him was a gift that must come entirely from her own expansive kindness. It could not relate to anything he might deserve or be”
“You cannot describe a wall even if you’ve lived against it”
“They had spoken little else at home but the language that would later oppress them”
“Everything you are looking at, is built on the fact that the country exists because of its peasants”
“His contempt for most nationalities was a gift he cherished. An obligation, even”
“It is possible to be a good person and a bastard, you know that, don’t you, Lisa? It does not happen often but we are privileged with Ambrose to see a rare instance of the phenomenon”
“The past as if rising like reflux from his stomach, tasted in his mouth”
“The charm of such places, that striking him, he remembers. Wondering what it would be like to live in a place like this. The same hankering to get out, he supposed, as you’d find any place else”
“Children actually love not knowing things. Half-knowing them. The mystery of it”
“The end of life that must be there in the beginning, somehow, surely?”
“The past always waiting to happen”
“I’m sort of the end to a long story I don’t even know. If you’re wondering why im here. I wouldn’t know how to tell it even if I knew what it was”
“The man I work for sometimes talks about God as if he holds the mortgage on the farm and other times as if he’s an employee he’s disappointed in”
“When Gods around all the time I suppose you tend to get a bit casual”
“Just how much is us, how much is them. The before people. No one ever quite works out the mix”
“And then it was her father they were speaking about, something more even than loneliness, Esther said, something sadder. What you wanted always somewhere else. Not the place you were in, not the person you were with. Lonely before the reason for it even happens”
“What we don’t know then, we at least know that”
October 20, 2019
An interesting story, tracing the lives of members of one family across 3 generations, but it wasn't for me. I just didn't click with the writing style and found it hard to connect with the characters - they seemed to always be at arms-length from the reader. I'm pleased I read this and found it thought provoking but I didn't love it as much as I'd hoped.
March 5, 2022
I really wanted to like this book. I love the author but for some reason I just found it a bit too morose. Maybe it’s because life at the moment is a bit chaotic - Putin invading Ukraine, Protestors/rioters recently at Parliament and omicron ramping up in NZ. Just not in the right head space for this book right now. Will try again later when life feels a little bit lighter.
March 23, 2023
I wanted to love this book. However it lost me in many ways. I had a hard time following time-wise and I don’t think the women were fleshed out well enough in any case. I was left with so many unanswered questions that could have been addressed. It feels unfinished to me.
March 12, 2020
It was fine. Some bits were really beautiful and moving, and others were kind of confusing and seemed pointless.
October 3, 2022
Bad. I only got half way through. The sections don’t link together well, so it’s like collected stories. But some of them, like the doctor in Africa, are just boring, boring, boring.
December 21, 2024
A skillful telling of characters spanning three generations of a family and the ongoing impact from WW2; and showing in great relief the randomness of our lives!
March 1, 2022
Beautifully written, causing the reader to really slow down & take notice. Quite an epic multi-generational story. But I struggled a bit to get into the characters - maybe because the writing was so dense it was hard to "feel" them. & understand them. Slow pacing. A worthy read, rather than an enjoyable one.
August 21, 2021
I enjoyed this rich, thought provoking and lastingly haunting novel. It’s a slightly challenging read that spans decades and takes a bit of perseverance but throughly worth it in the end.
In the beginning it feels a bit pedestrian and seemingly wanders aimlessly along as a young man Stephen travels from Westmere New Zealand to London (as many of us have). Boy meets girl, they become lovers. Then the girl Eva who is adopted finds out she was originally from Germany and her aunt is now the sole holocaust survivor of a family she didn’t know she had. On the eve of their leaving for a different life back in New Zealand.
It transpires that the Aunt travels with them via ship speaking no English, obviously deeply traumatised yet silent and unyielding with mysterious physical disabilities to her hand and arm. Her presence in their family life insidiously impacts the subsequent children and grandchildren. Yet nobody knows her story.
It unfolds slowly for the reader through every ones lives. Lisa and David such different siblings with opposing views on life’s very matrix who experience the landing of the unspoken generational trauma in uniquely complex ways. It’s essentially up to Esther David’s daughter to close the circle of hurt. To do so we travel through New Zealand, England, Greece, Italy, Germany, Poland and Africa.
In the beginning it feels a bit pedestrian and seemingly wanders aimlessly along as a young man Stephen travels from Westmere New Zealand to London (as many of us have). Boy meets girl, they become lovers. Then the girl Eva who is adopted finds out she was originally from Germany and her aunt is now the sole holocaust survivor of a family she didn’t know she had. On the eve of their leaving for a different life back in New Zealand.
It transpires that the Aunt travels with them via ship speaking no English, obviously deeply traumatised yet silent and unyielding with mysterious physical disabilities to her hand and arm. Her presence in their family life insidiously impacts the subsequent children and grandchildren. Yet nobody knows her story.
It unfolds slowly for the reader through every ones lives. Lisa and David such different siblings with opposing views on life’s very matrix who experience the landing of the unspoken generational trauma in uniquely complex ways. It’s essentially up to Esther David’s daughter to close the circle of hurt. To do so we travel through New Zealand, England, Greece, Italy, Germany, Poland and Africa.
May 13, 2022
Starting with Stephen's escape from Auckland to a London just emerging from WWII, his return with wife Eva in 1948, their daughter Lisa in Greece in 1968, and later her working in London and Africa in the late 1970s, and finally to the daughter of Lisa's brother David, the novel follows a chronology. All This by Chance is a fantastically varied and wide collection that spans two-thirds of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Characters flee New Zealand for a more adventurous life in Europe, then return to New Zealand for peace and simplicity, while their children and grandchildren flee New Zealand for a more exciting life in Europe. “We don’t have the past in mind, it is nearly history”. This quote stood out to me because everything is in the moment but as they get past it all it’s history. I think it’s more obvious on why the quote is what it is.
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