Kokomo by Victoria Hannan
“There were too many what-ifs, too many maybes. She felt suddenly as though there were too many possible endings, too many twists and turns. She felt overwhelmed by the unpredictability of life by how the future was unknowable. Maybe this meant there were no wrong choices, no right answers. The more she thought about it, the harder it became to catch her breath.”
Winner of the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, Kokomo (2020) is the debut novel by Melbourne-based Victoria Hannan. Kokomo, if you didn’t already know, is a song by the Beach Boys. The quartet croons the lyrics: “Off the Florida Keys, there's a place called Kokomo / That's where you want to go to get away from it all / Bodies in the sand, tropical drink melting in your hand.”
The real Kokomo is something far less exotic - an industrial city in Indiana, USA - as our protagonist, Mina, a thirty-something Associate Creative Director, snarkily informs her ex-boyfriend after returning to Melbourne from London after seven years away. The revelation that nothing is really as it seems sets the scene for much of the novel.
Through a series of flashbacks and present-day narration, we learn more about Mina and her fraught relationship with her hometown and her mother. Since her father died twelve years ago, Mina’s mother, Elaine, has not left the house, too grief-stricken to face the world. Tired of feeling abandoned and caged herself, and without any sign of an explanation from Elaine, Mina decides to move to London to pursue her creative dreams. She’s been doing well, landing a great job and on the cusp of a mutually longed-for relationship with her colleague Jack.
That is until she receives a phone call from her childhood friend, Kira, with news she never expected: Elaine has finally left the house.
Mina books herself onto the first flight home and so begins her unravelling. Her own polished “Kokomo” is uncovered as something far less shiny. Through confrontations with her old friends and the different paths they’ve pursued in life, Mina is called to reflect inwardly and acknowledge that much of her carefully balanced ideas about her own life are lies. Jack doesn’t communicate with her at all, except to let her know he’s been chosen for promotion over her. No one from London seems concerned about her swift departure, and Elaine has little affection or desire to share the longed-for answers Mina craves about why she’s stayed inside all these years. Mina erratically attempts to regain some control over her life:
“She thought about how much easier her life would be if she didn’t care at all. But what is love if not the inability to abandon hope?”
Halfway through, the narration flips and Elaine begins to tell her story. It’s in these passages that Hannan’s prose shines, as she explores a common theme with nuance and depth: the struggle to understand what one wants in life and love.
“She liked having him as a buffer, an antidote. I am happy, I am happy, she said to herself. She knew a person could convince themselves of almost anything.”
Relationships, distance, disappointment and making peace with the reality we’ve ultimately weaved for ourself are all strong themes throughout Kokomo. The desire to be seen and to feel something extraordinary beyond what may be our “lot” in life lead both Mina and Elaine to pursue pathways and act in ways that I think many readers will identify with. Although I found the revelation for why Elaine had stayed indoors for twelve years to be a little far-fetched, ultimately it speaks to the lengths we are prepared to go to for love and acceptance of the life we feel we deserve. When Mina finally does get the answers she’s been begging her mother for, Hannan uses the dialogue to expertly detail the moment we recognise our parents, especially our mothers, as people in their own right. They are people who have struggled with the same internal battles around life and forging a path as we have:
“She had seen for the first time that her mother was a whole person. It was easy to forget our mothers weren’t born with us. That before they were mothers, they were women with pasts, with secrets, desires, needs; that being a mother didn’t cancel that out, didn’t wipe the slate clean. It all came along with them.”
There are laughs along the way and Hannan uses a myriad of characters to bring some lightness to the intensity of the themes she explores. Although I had a few quips with some of the details (an associate creative director earning £80k in London? Penises described as ballerinas in the first position?), this is a heartfelt debut which keenly highlights the importance of the relationships we seek out and maintain in our lives. It is a meditation on love and the transformative power of genuinely allowing ourselves to be seen by those we hold close.
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in Hobart, Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online under @wordswithelaine.
