Kokomo by Victoria Hannan
“She wanted this. This new understanding that love was never everything you wanted or needed it to be. It was uncontrollable, it misbehaved. It tethered you but helped make you free.”
In the 1988 hit song Kokomo, the Beach Boys croon “Off the Florida Keys, there's a place called Kokomo / That's where you want to go to get away from it all”. Kokomo is described as a paradise and calls on the listener to imagine “Bodies in the sand, tropical drink melting in your hand”. As it turns out, the real Kokomo isn’t a paradise at all – instead, it’s an industrial city in Indiana, USA.
Like the song, nothing in the eponymous debut novel by Victoria Hannan is as rose-tinted as it seems. ‘Kokomo’ tells the story of Mina, a 30-something creative making waves in her advertising career and who is, seemingly, on the cusp of a much sought-after romantic relationship with her co-worker, Jack. However, a call from Mina’s best friend in her hometown in Melbourne changes everything. Her agoraphobic mother, Elaine, has left the house for the first time in twelve years, compelling Mina to leave her life in London behind. Upon her immediate return home, Mina struggles to re-ignite the relationship, as Elaine neither talks about Mina’s return nor why she has spent so many years hiding in her house.
As the story goes on, we see Mina struggle with the strained relationship, not feeling valued at work and feeling blindsided by Jack and their relationship, which she misconstrued as love. In the passages dedicated to Elaine’s point of view, the reader learns of her past and how she struggled to know what she wanted in life and love.
The themes of disappointment, disillusion, and expectations being upended by reality weave throughout. The vast majority of character in Kokomo all struggle with the dichotomy of what they want in life and what they get, what they think is true, and what’s reality – whether it be in their personal lives, professionally, in their relationships, or how they ‘see’ one another. For anyone who has ever experienced the anguish of feeling lost or disconnected in this sense, Hannan’s prose is keenly felt.
“For most of her life, Elaine had felt like an escaped helium balloon in a shopping centre. Twisting, climbing higher, but thwarted. Deflating.”
There are several touching relationships in this novel, namely the friendship between Elaine and her effervescent next-door neighbour and the friendship between their daughters. However, what I loved most about this novel is the portrayal of parental relationships through Mina and Elaine. In a particularly moving passage, Hannan deftly describes the moment we see our parents through adult eyes and acknowledge their flaws and desires beyond their parental responsibilities.
“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”.
It is this realisation that lays the foundations for shared understanding between the mother and daughter, as Mina comes to see that Elaine has grappled with the same unknowns in life and dealt with it the only way she knew how at the time.
“Mina imagined young Elaine trying to find her place in the world, trying to understand what it was to love, knowing she needed more but not knowing how or where to get it.”
My only quips about Kokomo is I felt that Mina’s section of the novel was a little laboured. Hannan’s writing truly shines when she shares Elaine’s point of view, a character I adored, and I would’ve much preferred reading more about her. What’s more, the big reveal regarding why Elaine stayed inside for 12 years initially struck me as far-fetched. In retrospect, I appreciate how it speaks of just how far we may be willing to go for someone we love and for the life we believe we deserve, even if nothing is guaranteed.
Kokomo is a poignant and bittersweet novel. Above all, it’s a heartfelt meditation on the people who can help us find our way and make life worth living. Despite all of us harbouring secrets, dashed dreams, and inner lives, Hannan reminds us that hope is found in the company we choose to keep and work hard to protect.
Kokomo
by Victoria Hannan
2020.
About
Carina Mancinone
Carina is a digital marketer by day and a freelance writer by night, based in Western Australia. Her penchant for stories and writing have been constant in her life and she believes they allow us the means to imagine endless possibilities as we find our way in the world. Carina is equally obsessed with cooking and one day aspires to line her walls, Nigella Lawson style, with cookbooks from around the world.
