Little Masters

the long version

This second novel by Damien Wilkins follows the overlapping paths of two young New Zealanders - Adrian, living frugally in London with his motherless son, and Emily, nanny to the child of an American and a German - who are drawn together through vast reaches of space and various cultures other than their own. Each in the large cast of characters here - including a quirky English publisher and his family and the international staff of an insect research laboratory - struggles with a distinctive inheritance, the gifts and burdens of their pasts; each is brilliantly and sometimes comically particularized by Wilkins. Although the desire to share, whether through confession or caretaking, is paramount in these uprooted lives, they often fall just short of that satisfaction. Moving from one sensibility and circumstance to the next, the narrative of Little Masters progresses in the manner of a thoroughly absorbing relay, motivated by the acts of giving and receiving.