First review of my new novel The Christmas Maze

Redemption and recovery in Danny Fahey’s The Christmas Maze

There are few things more magical for a child than the fantasy and mythology of Christmas. This is the idea at the heart of a novel that combines the dissonant suburban world of Australia in the mid-twentieth century with the received mythology of European Christmastime.

Despite the magical themes and lush, festive folklore, Fahey’s novel begins with two disturbing scenes of childhood separation and angst that set the main character, Matthew, on his journey to make everything right again. The only way he can restore the safety of his family life is through the Christmas Maze – the place where all children can be redeemed for their misdeeds, and become whole again.

On his quest, Matthew encounters characters who embody literary archetypes, and who weave his story into a bigger, timeless narrative. Fahey weaves rich mythology and folklore into his tale, and his own creations are seamlessly interwoven with those that are already well-established. Matthew becomes a character who, through his ordinariness, becomes resilient, empathic and determined, learning how his own experiences are informed by others who went before him.

The story twists and turns through dreamscapes and scenes that destabilise the reader’s assumptions in ways that are sometimes delightful and sometimes confronting – all pushing towards the goal of the Maze. This push is underpinned by a sense of loss that threatens to tip into tragedy, and some scenes in the novel are almost unbearably sad – relieved in part by Fahey’s characteristic humour — pushing the reader on towards the sense that joy is waiting at the end of the quest.

Fahey’s balance of the tragic with the joyous is skillful, and as a writer he walks a line as precarious as that of his hero’s own circus tightrope. The story is as informed by his own understanding of long-established storytelling traditions as it is by Fahey’s own vivid and fantastical originality. As readers we are hooked into Matthew’s story by his own attempts to grapple with the situation in which he finds himself, and thus the choices that face him in his attempt to reclaim wholeness. Fahey explores Matthew’s angst with depth and complexity.

A story like this promises much in terms of restoration and the subversion of our expectations, and delivers both. For persisting through the difficulty of the quest and the discomfort of its origins, the reader is well-recompensed with an ending that is as joyous as it is unexpected.

This novel explores all the uncertainty and joy of childhood, delivering a Christmas journey that is – as the season demands – restorative.

 

by Dr. Miriam Nicholls.