For many Kiwi baby boomers, growing up in New Zealand in the 1950s and 60s was a special time – heaps of playmates, freedom to run wild, and opportunity to exercise imagination. Pete Majendie’s stories of his childhood in New Brighton capture those experiences.
At times laugh-out-loud funny, at other times heartbreaking and poignant, the stories range from the adventures and misadventures of free-range fun with mates to the effects of hereditary deafness and the death of Pete’s older brother at age eight on family, neighbours and friends.
Pete coped with his brother’s death, his mother’s debilitating grief and his father’s increasing deafness by developing a strong sense of humour, pivotal friendships and a growing interest in and talent for art.
Several themes run through the book – deafness, silence in its many forms, responses to grief, battles with mental and physical health, the importance of inter-generational relationships and friendships, the power of play and imagination, and the joys of reading, poetry and art. And always there is the sense of the absurd and the laughter that sustained a young boy who struggled on occasion to be seen and heard.
Although the stories are grounded in Pete’s experiences, aspects of them sometimes veer into autobiographical fiction, so enhancing the essence of a type and time of childhood that will resonate with boomers and non-boomers alike.