Book Review: Kokomo by Victoria Hannan

RACHEL SOO THOW - 26 JULY 2021

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This book was incredible - having devoured this in 3 days, I can confidently say this novel has and will forever change my view on love. Everyone needs to read this ASAP.

Kokomo by Victoria Hannan opens with the most poetic description of an erect penis - an entry point to a novel that simultaneously unsettles you and is absolutely unexpected but draws you in due to its intriguing and unusual style. On the night of Mina’s first romantic encounter with co-worker Jack whom she has had an attraction for some time, she receives a call from her best friend in Australia that her mother Elaine has unexpectedly left the house - a house she hasn’t left in eleven years since her husband Bill, Mina’s father, passed away. And so, Kokomo begins.

The novel is structured in two parts, the first being the perspective of Mina and the second of Elaine’s. What follows through each page is the story of a mother and daughter trapped in a cycle of grief and failed communication and an investigation to the very trigger of Elaine’s agoraphobia. Hannan has succeeded in my opinion, in the way each character has been constructed - the initial two-dimensional representation of each character in the initial chapters to the inner complexities of their lives in the second. I felt that as a reader I was able to gather true empathy for all characters in their depth and humanity not only from halfway but also through the ability of Hannan to use odd images of scenes that smoothly disrupted the flow of the novel: a dog recklessly enacting its sexual desires on Mina to re-enacting kitchen scenes in meal prep.

As we are shown two sides of the story, secrets are revealed and a yearning for a different life shakes the reader out of complacency; what we know to be bricks and mortar could easily have become diluted if we had chosen another path. I think that’s what made me think more about my decisions I’m making today- how many times have I asked myself, ‘what if?’. What if things were different, what if I had made that decision instead, what if I had said that or done that thing I was supposed to do - would this whole ‘choose your own adventure’ life be any different? Like Elaine, are we viewing our lives as a self made prison?

For Hannan’s debut novel this is incredible. I can’t think of the last time a novel has succeeded in its simplistic aim to describe modern life and the trials and tribulations of a forbidden love. Having recently gone through a breakup of a long-long-term relationship myself, I found moments of raw emotion coming through - yes, I was a complete mess on my bedroom floor and found myself going through the motions of restless thought and a bottle of gin. Never had I come across a novel that quite so much as offered a slap to the face - what if I hadn’t made these very decisions about love, would I really be where I am today? In my thirties, single and with a book account? Stop me before I get into the motions again. The title itself now makes sense and carries with it some relevance to the overall premise of the novel - this is a novel about imagined different futures, a longing for escape and our continuous dismay that in life our reality will never ever really match our ideal expectations.

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