Book of the Week: On the crisis of masculinity

Newsroom

21-05-2025

The world and much of its art at the moment is consumed with the crisis masculinity finds itself in. The loudest voices want to frame the problem in terms of binaries – good and bad, masculine and feminine, guilt and innocence, us and them. Social media is to blame for the changing roles men and women play in society or the rise of feminism or evolving gender norms or often just 'woke'. Dominic Hoey's new novel 1985 offers a far more nuanced exploration of masculinity and in doing so gets amongst the roots of behaviours we section off into the box of male toxicity.
While 1985 is an incredibly well-crafted portrayal of a range of expressions of masculinity, the real success of the book is its ability to offer a visceral representation of being cold and hungry in Aotearoa in 1985. Through this evocative portrayal of poverty Hoey guides us through literary acts of compassion back to the base of the hierarchy of needs reminding us that generations of cold and hungry boys need to go to desperate lengths to get warm and fed, setting in motion events that escalate into violence. Although set in 1985, this book waves an urgent warning beacon as we turn once again toward the bad old days. I think it's impossible to read 1985 without hearing our wealthy and sorted Prime Minister tell every school kid in Aotearoa that if they don't like school lunches with plastic in them they should make a Marmite sandwich and put an apple in a bag, like his parents used to.
The plot of 1985 is flanked by two dead bodies. The first appears on the berm outside 58 Crummer Road in Grey Lynn, a property that sold for $2.5 million last year, but in 1985 is the home of one of the few white families in Grey Lynn. Obi, the eleven-going-on twelve-year-old narrator of 1985, lives at 58 Crummer Road with his sister Summer, his mum who is really sick, their dog Ham and his dad who is a poet, a drinker and the chaos the rest of the family orbit; in turns attracted and repulsed.
Obi's dad won't get a regular job and the risk of the family losing the house sits heavy in the novel and inspires many of the bad decisions made by the men in this book. To say money is tight is grossly understating the circumstances Obi and his family live in. Food is hard to come by and the house is bitterly cold. In the hands of a lesser writer Obi's dad might have been simply 'deadbeat'. Instead, in contrast to the risks he places the family in the way of, he defines himself by the love he has for his wife and as a provider for his family. He steals food, he bakes cakes, he is trying to fix the car. He is undyingly loyal to his family, his community and his friends. He writes poetry that is stunningly astute and demonstrates a deep understanding of himself and the systems he lives under.
Obi's dad believes crime is a far better option to save the family home than working at the local bacon factory and instead of asking us to read against this, Hoey offers us the insight to see that he's probably right. Obi's family is in big financial trouble and Obi's dad needs big financial returns to get out of the trouble. Not the tiny wage afforded him in return for long shifts and physically draining work. Money is the problem, not any innate violence or dereliction of responsibilities. Instead, the low investment and high return of crime offers one of the few possibilities for Obi's dad to meet his responsibilities. He needs to be at home to care for his sick wife and to take up many of the household tasks that might have been seen as hers. For a fighter and a criminal Obi's dad seems not at all emasculated by shifting between gender norms.
Obi's family would be okay with the label counter-culture – they protest, they hate the government, they like drugs. However I still think, despite what people might want you to believe about this era as one when men simply were men, this more fluid expression of masculinity seems far more inline with my experience of 1985. I think this way of being a man was far more prevalent in the 1980s than is remembered now. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a golden age of freedom and equality and the book doesn't shy away from the awful things that happen to women, but I think what the book also captures is expressions of masculinity that have been lost under the myth of the singular New Zealand man that we often find when we look back at dominant culture from this time. A myth that is often elevated when it's suggested that men are confused now about gender roles. A simpler time when men could be men and not feel bad about it that was abandoned in favour of 'woke' ideas that have left all men in crisis. I really like the way 1985 and probably all of Hoey's work complicates this simplistic idea of where violence comes from and how we can stop it.
Early in the novel Obi, reflecting on the love his parents have for each other, says, 'For as long as I can remember I was trying to get Dad to share a bit of that love. But it seemed like he only had enough for Mum.' Obi's feelings toward his dad are complicated and in many ways the narrative of the book is Obi coming to terms with his need for his father's love. This isn't a gentle transition and the realisation that his dad can't give Obi what he needs or wants is beautifully rendered in all its pain, power and confusion. Here as in so many other aspects of the book Hoey complicates the reasons a reader might believe people do crime and violence. These are not 'good and bad' people. The book does have one 'big bad' but by the time he enters the story even he is complicated by the lives Hoey has so expertly created. This is a community who feeds whoever is in the house at dinner time with whatever they have to offer. This is a community that picks each other up from hospital, the police cells, the psychiatric hospital and the prison.
One of the really amazing parts of the book is the way money becomes everyone's in Obi's house. At several stages in the plot he finds money in people's wallets, takes it and it isn't mentioned again. There is a new type of economy being modelled in 1985 that reflects the real-world fact that those who have the least give the most. Hoey creates a world where bad people do good things and good people do bad things in a way that complicates so much of what the current Government would like us to believe about crime and poverty.
But this isn't a story about the 'noble poor'. People in 1985 make terrible decisions and these decisions have a range of consequences – some destructive. Hoey has created a book that states and operates under its own internal morals. I'm in awe of how he has done this while maintaining an immersive reading experience. The prose just flows and it is a satisfying read while at the same time challenging much of the status quo of the world we are reading it in. Like any set of agreed terms, the moral rules of the book sometimes cause incredible harm but I don't think I was once stopped with the thought, 'Why are they doing that?' Sure, sometimes I was almost screaming at the page for someone not to do that, but the world the characters live in is complete and well-rendered and I was quickly schooled in the logic and emotional physics of this world.
Love is a massive part of the emotional landscape of this book. Familial love, coercive love, romantic love and standing as an exemplar to all of us the platonic love between Obi and his best friend Al. Al is Samoan and lives with his family a couple of houses over from Obi. Al's aunty is good friends with Obi's mum. Al's mum left. Obi and Al's relationship offers the most hopeful experience of masculinity in the book and offers an alternative to the dominant expressions of masculinity that Obi is surrounded by. Obi's struggle with his father echoes and leaks into his relationship with Al. Obi often makes decisions motivated by his desire to please his father that leave Al in the lurch and it is often in the moments when Obi realises he has let Al down that he sees his father in new ways. The friendship also gives Obi access to a love that is different from what his father can offer. One that is patient and attentive. I think this is also part of the excellence of Hoey's craft. Obi's character develops through both these relationships and they are in perfect balance with each other in the narrative of the book.
1985 begins with an epigraph about nostalgia and I think it is really aware as a work of how it operates as a machine fuelled by the past. The first body of the book appears on the morning after the Rainbow Warrior bombing and although this event unfolds in the background of the work, Hoey uses far more modulated details to render the 1985 of his book. Obi is good at spacies and in the scenes that take place in the video game parlours and takeaways anyone my age will experience an almost haptic response to Hoey's vivid descriptions of sounds and visuals. 1985 also captures Grey Lynn before gentrification. There is one house of 'rich cunts' who are out of step with everyone else but are grudgingly included in street parties and other events.
Anyone who walked these streets in the 1980s will recognise so much of it which is gone. Hoey describes the path of a dropped card as it blows through the Grey Lynn shops. 'It flew through the music of the street, a chorus of Tongan, Māori, Niuean, Chinese, Samoan, English, Fijian, Hindi'. Hoey captures the old Grey Lynn without appropriation through his central narrator, born and bred in the suburb – acutely aware that he is the 'diverse' one. 'I was in the cultural group at school,' Obi says. 'In the photos I'm the fat white kid looking confused. Al said I had to join. 'Don't be racist.'' Throughout the book white people are described as white – 'A white guy with a thick moustache', 'One of the only white faces in there.' In this way Hoey manages to produce a work that pushes against the idea of equating whiteness with neutrality. Instead, whiteness is charged in the work in a way that feels useful both creatively and politically.
This concentration on the past and especially a past before gentrification also makes it possible for Hoey to explore the different relationships rich and poor people have with the past. In one of the scenes where Obi talks with his mum in the bedroom where she spends increasingly more of her time he asks about the past. Obi can't understand why his father retells it with such a positive glow. His mother replies, 'Those without much future tend to fall in love with the past.'
Often the only thing that is abundant in the world of 1985, is art. Obi's dad is a poet, his mum studied literature at university until she was too sick to carry on. Obi's sister is a visual artist. Al wants to make films. There are several models of how to be an artist in the book. The portrayal of Obi's poet dad made me cringe at some of my own behaviour that makes me, as a writer, really hard to live with. It's an astute description of the possible necessity of living in two worlds as a writer – one not very grounded in reality, of the isolation I often need to 'get my head right', of my vagueness when I look like my family has my full attention.
The overwhelming story of the art in this book, however, is the barriers that stand between some people and some art. Al sneaks into theatres to see film festival movies and dreams of having a camera he can't afford. The resources needed for filmmaking stand in contrast to those needed for writing. Obi's dad writes his poetry on the back of receipts and other scraps of paper he finds as part of his day. He is always able to participate in his art. The poems are often abandoned after he reads them. He's had one poem published but publishing doesn't pay so speaking these poems at parties and pubs is his preferred way of sharing his work. Despite the lack of access to the resources of filmmaking though, Al is still a filmmaker. He speaks his film treatments out as he and Obi wander the streets of Grey Lynn, the central city and West Auckland. No one ever tells Al he can't be a filmmaker. He is learning his craft stealing films in the cinemas on Queen Street and watching videos recorded off television or pirated from the video store copies.
At the same time we are questioning why men feel so lost, there is a toughening happening. As if we need to meet the crisis of masculinity with out-dated and binary ideas of masculinity. An odd reaction to violence with violence. On Mata recently, Shane Jones described 'woke' as 'excessive bouts of political correctness'. I've lived through the rise of political correctness, the backlash against it, the backlash against the backlash, the rise of woke and the current backlash against that. The fight always seems one over whether or not we should give people the benefit of the doubt. Whether we should try to care for people or punish them. It's no secret which side I come down on and this is why I'm so grateful for a book like 1985 at this moment. It's tough to be hungry, it's tough to be cold, it's awful to be frightened. But it's also really hard to imagine these things if you've never experienced them. This is what I think is powerful about Hoey's book. While it's hard to care about hunger in the abstract, I challenge anyone not to care about Obi and Al.
1985 by Dominic Hoey (Penguin, $38) is available in bookstores nationwide.