by Damien Wilkins
FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD RICKY LIVES IN ASPIRING, A TOWN GROWING AT AN ALARMING RATE, LIKE RICKY HIMSELF, WHO HAS HIT 6’7” AND IS GETTING TALLER BY THE DAY. IT’S THE SECOND YEAR OF THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY. CLIMATE CHANGE FRAMES EVERYTHING. RICKY’S INTERNAL MONOLOGUEIS GETTING LOUDER. “THE SELFIE STICK CARRIED IN ITS TIP THE MOST POWERFUL POISON ON EARTH. BUT HOW COULD HE PROVE IT?”
Aspiring is, in all but name, Wanaka, and Southern Lakes locals will immediately recognise the particular brand of malaise that is troubling Ricky: it’s hard to deal with grief, boredom and generational angst when beauty almost blinds you every time you look up. Also, it sucks not to have Uber.
Aspiring is aimed at young adults, but it’s the kind of book adult adults will enjoy too. It’s very well-written – on the first page Wilkins compares the contents of a meat freezer to “a murder scene at Scott Base” –and very funny. There’s a mountain bike race in Wanaka called the King & Queen of Sticky Forest, and this title is appropriated in the book as, instead, a crown the local teens vie for by doing, um, other stuff in the woods.
Ricky’s height is a nice device, echoing what is happening to his progress-plagued hometown, a place overrun with tourists and one percenters, “where the wealthy were gathering in flight, building perches high above our lake, awaiting some cataclysm, grouped around their grand pianos for a final singalong in the softening snow and the melting ice.”
It also serves as a statement on what it feels like to be 15, the way everything feels out of control. “I was weak against my own cells,” Ricky says, “the forces tearing me apart internally.”
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There’s a mystery involving a strange new Cadillac in town, a nail- biter of a basketball final, unresolved family issues, and a bit of romance, but it’s the sardonic look at what it’s like to try to come of age in the middle of a life-sized Instagram story that makes Aspiring such a good read. “We don’t do crime here… the hoodlums are too busy trying to qualify for the fucking X Games,” says one character. It’s funny because it’s true.
LAURA WILLIAMSON
