In the Time of the Manaroans

by Miro Bilbrough

At fourteen Miro Bilbrough falls out with the communist grandmother who has raised her since she was seven, and is sent to live with her father and his rural-hippy friends. It is 1978, Canvastown, New Zealand, and the Floodhouse is a dwelling of pre-industrial gifts and deficiencies set on the banks of the Wakamarina River, which routinely invades its rooms.

Isolated in rural poverty, the lives of Miro and her father and sister are radically enhanced by the Manaroans—charismatic hippies who use their house as a crash pad on journeys to and from a commune in a remote corner of the Marlborough Sounds. Arriving by power of thumb, horseback and hooped canvas caravan, John of Saratoga, Eddie Fox, Jewels and company set about rearranging the lives and consciousness of the blasted family unit.

In the Time of the Manaroans brilliantly captures a largely unwritten historical culture, the Antipodean incarnation of the Back to the Land movement. Contrarian, idealistic, sexually opportunistic and self-mythologising too, this was a movement, as the narrator duly discovers, not conceived with adolescents in mind.

Genres: Memoir, Autobiography

300 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Miro Bilbrough is a filmmaker, writer and poet whose memoir of a counter-culture New Zealand adolescence, In the Time of the Manaroans was shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction 2021. She wrote and directed the feature films Being Venice (2012) and Floodhouse (2004), an adaptation of Herman Melville’s Bartleby (2001), and the ciné-poem Urn (1995). She has a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the Writing and Society Research Centre, WSU, and makes her living as a script editor and a teacher of screenwriting. She is published in HEAT Series 3 Number 19.

Reviews

[Deb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had this not been a Book Group choice, it would not have been on my radar to read. Miro's memoirs provide a snapshot into the “hippy 70’s” in an isolated, rural setting on the Whakamarina River banks. Whilst “subsistence living” might be an excuse to do nothing and have nothing it is not an excuse to neglect children and adolescents, for whom this lifestyle choice was made for them. Apart from not providing the basic necessities in life to their children, they subjected them to inappropriate adult interactions at an age where they were most vulnerable. As a parent, there were some lumps in my throat, reading this book. I found the style of writing overly descriptive and poetic for a memoir, which lead to me getting lost and confused over the people dropping in and out of the book. But then again, perhaps that was exactly what life for Miro was like during the period she writes about. I found myself skimming pages and chapters and was more drawn to the wonderful photo’s interspersed throughout the book. Being born only a few years apart from the author, it certainly cast my mind back to my own adolescence in the 70’s. Credit to Miro for a brave and personal account, softened by her beautiful writing.

[Ross MacNicol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miro Bilbrough has written a deeply moving, yet matter of fact, account of her child/youth hood with her opinionated activist maternal grandmother- after Miro's parents had separated and thence living in a remote rural 'community' Manaroa. Semi neglect but great freedom under the eyes of the regulars and irregulars. Aotearoa NZ transitioned during this period from a homogenous Anglo 'Pakeha' society and a distinct- sometimes intersecting Maori society to something quite different. Artists and alternatives, shysters and creatives-hard workers and drones- She recounts in vivid and compelling style her life- her Dad - less so her Mum-and the friends and allies along her journey. Compelling, beautifully written yet accessible and fluid. I just love the book.

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

How our childhoods impact, a memoir - trying to make sense of what and how is remembered. Painful in parts and also fiercely joyous.

[Amelia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will start my review by saying, I sadly don’t think this book was right for me. I was very interested in the concept and was excited to read about this unique piece of NZ history however I just wasn’t fully able to submerge myself into this story. However, the reasons I did not enjoy this book and couldn’t get into it are the reasons others would love it.

The writing itself is very beautiful, with long lyrical sentences and descriptions of rural NZ and the people she meets and it felt very poetic and calming to read. I found personally I often got lost within these descriptions and had trouble focusing on the stories themselves and following what was happening. I often found myself skipping passages and then unable to understand what was happening. I would have also enjoyed hearing more of Miros thoughts and feelings as I found myself not understanding her motivations and felt emotionally detached from the story because of this.

The book features many pictures taken of Miro and others from her life and add a great deal to the story. It was great being able to see and visualise what it was like and I think I would have felt very lost without these images. I found myself wanting to skip forward just to se what the next image would be! I can’t help but mention too that the book itself is also beautifully printed on very thick paper and cover and must be the most beautifully printed book I own.

I think this memoir would be well suited to someone who enjoys lyrical descriptions and has a connection to this area and wants to learn about this unique bit of NZ history - sadly this one wasn’t quite for me! A big thank you to Victoria University Press for this gifted copy in exchange for an honest review 💕

[Bronwyn Hegarty · Rating 2 out of 5]

A poetic and lyrical work. I particularly enjoyed the first descriptions of her early life when she went to live first with her grandmother and then her father. THe people she encountered, in particular the Manaroans, provided a colourful and interesting focus. I was bemused by her acceptance of such bizzare people. It was not clear how these experiences affected her at the time or later on. Maybe I should have kept reading to find out rather than stopping a third of the way through. I may come back to it another time.

Later on, the narrative began to become a little disjointed and I lost interest in the craziness of this woman's life. The writing also became increasingly convoluted and affected. I prefer more simple language. Therefore, I was unable to continue reading. Perhaps if I had, the strangeness of the narrative may have become easier to understand.

It is worth a look to experience another author's literary style.

[Mary Garden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found myself fascinated by some of the descriptions having lived through the hippy era 1960s and 70s - I was on the fringes and went on to be entangled in Eastern cults.
Having grown up in New Zealand the book has a special appeal.
However it is not an easy read and I got lost in places.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

The locals call our house The Hippy House, which strikes me as inept and inaccurate code for goings-on. For orgies and bong haze and other phenomena that some in the Wakamarina Valley clearly perceive their lives to be deficient in. They have no idea how lacking our household is in the most basic stimulants - television, Coca-Cola, instant coffee, white sugar - let alone opportunistic sex parties. Don’t they realise my father is a puritan? Pooling our isolation in the wooden house propped unsteadily on five-o’clock-shadow lawn, abstaining from mainstream entertainments, it is just the three of us, alone together again.

Then, an explosion of hooves around the bend in the valley road: The Manarooans! Come to break their journey north or south at my father’s, they arrive by collective noun: by horse drawn hoop and canvas wagon as if directly out of a Western or Eastern European saga; by power of thumb, in ones or twos; or solitary by steed. But, however the Manaroans arrive the air is charged as it is right before an extreme weather event. A weather event inside and outside my head.

My daughter loaned this book to me when I was visiting her in New Zealand. We kept referring to it as the “the hippy book” and finally she dug out of the van she was living in and I read it. My daughter and I have our own leanings to “hippiness,” at least in the sense that we are both drawn to rural landscapes and certain ideas of freedom and homemade, wholesome food. I could never hack the lifestyle, but my daughter doesn’t mind physical challenges and privations so much - as the fact that she has been living in a van in New Zealand kind of proves. As for me, I, too, was a child in the 1970s and something of that time got into me even though I had a much safer and more suburban American childhood than the author of this book. Miro Bilbrough had the full-on, hardcore experience, as this memoir more than amply testifies.

Near the beginning of the book, the author mentions that she was 54 at the time of writing. A lot of time has elapsed since childhood and adolescence, then, despite the author’s deployment of some very specific details. Truth and timeline aren’t really the point of the book, though. There are a lot of gaps and ellipses, and it makes for more enjoyable reading if the reader doesn’t mind that so much and just surrenders to the voice and descriptions, the mood and the vibe. It’s really a collection of character portraits, more than anything else. Some of the strongest material is at the beginning, and I especially liked her descriptions of living in her grandmother’s household in Wellington. That part is so clear and well-described, while some of the later parts seem muddy, or hazy - or perhaps there are just too many characters drifting in and out. It’s hard to keep track of them.

You have to pay attention when you read; this is really not a book that you can skim. The author’s voice is unapologetically poetic, ornate, metaphorical and playful. She plays with language. She enjoys her command of it, and emphasises that her gift for words has always been what has differentiated and driven her. Sometimes the author’s voice is wonderful; sometimes it is just tiring.

I lost momentum with this book, sadly, and went from reading it with great pleasure and interest to that more stubborn and even suffering state of just wanting it to get to the end. I don’t know if that is a fault with the book that others share my opinion of, or just some inadequacy in me as a reader. Perhaps it’s because I left New Zealand and the book just didn’t seem as alive to me in a different setting. I don’t know, but my rating reflects my overall enjoyment of the reading experience.

[Anna Mahoney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book and a sad one too. It’s subtle and lyrical text reveals all the passionate belief, unrealistic hope, bloody careless cruelty and abject squalor of the hippy seventies. Miro navigates her treacherous landscape with an empty belly and youthful optimism, transcending abuse and neglect and using her extraordinary memory and nascent photographic talents to record a singular slice of New Zealand history. Her observations on the insanity of subsistence living and substance abuse are insightful and often hilarious. She survived by living on her wits and doesn’t shrink from self-criticism. I liked her enormously, which is more than can be said for the majority of adults whose often inappropriate proximity she had to endure.

[lucy black · Rating 2 out of 5]

Communes make for good reading and this memoir is primarily about the authors experiences at and around a hippy commune in the upper South Island in the 7os. It also touches on her childhood in Wellington and her tumultuous relationships with her mum and grandmother. There are far too many characters to keep track of, many of them described similarly, virtually no good analysis of communal life and the language was painfully poetic and flouncily impenetrable. The few black and white photos were far more interesting and telling than the actual writing in this insubstantial but sometimes still endearing story.

[Jonathon Hagger · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are few people who can wield the sword of language as easily as Miro does. At times her eloquence is overwhelming and at other times the text washes over the senses. It took me a bit to find the rhythm of the memoir but once I found it I loved it. Sadly the memoir splutters towards the end before climaxing with a magnificent retrospective. This is one book that a reader can go back to, time and time again, and enjoy it just as much as they did the first time.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

The blurb is actually more interesting than the book, which is written in brief episodes/memories around people, events, objects. And it’s only about her adolescent years. While it sounds like the story is embedded in a political context there is nothing of that in the book. Communist grandmother? So what if it has no impact or none of her ideas are present; it’s just attention grabbing. A disappointing and increasingly self indulgent and uninteresting read.

[Helen Cummings · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be quite a tough read. It was difficult to read about the neglect and abuse of vulnerable children by self centred adults enjoying an alternative lifestyle plus the writing style although lyrical demanded concentration. An interesting and thought provoking memoir.

[Celeritas2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

A difficult life not felt difficult until in reflection in beautiful prose is a delight to marinade in. A very New Zealand story that felt so palpable. Thank you Miro for the gift of your memories and your voice.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it

[Karen Ross · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is no doubting this is a perspective of a time and place. I just didn't like this book. It's not the writing, maybe its the content.
Time to move on

[Corin Haines · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional memoir. One of the finest I've read. I wanted it to go on.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just brilliant . Well written . Loved it more as it’s set in an area of NZ I know we’ll .

[Jenny Toune · Rating 5 out of 5]

This woman can write. Brilliant metaphors and acute observations of a time and place previously undocumented. A little saggy close to the end but redeemed with an accomplished summary.

[Jimmy Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Telling snapshots of an alternative existence

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Immersive but strange. I think more plot/sense of intent would have been good.

I liked the writing style - it actually managed to slow my pace down, which is Highly Unusual!

[E Flah · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read of an alternative lifestyle and upbringing in NZ. Poetically written with depictions of people living their lives on their own terms.