Not fantasy. Be ready to enter a setting which will make you think you are on holiday with a Prime Minister and cronies. Oh, please tell me we are talking fantasy after all!
In this book, one character in this story is certainly closely modelled on our own dear PM. Fortunately however, he is not the main character - that would be too obvious and boring. Instead we follow a "friend" of his, Simon, a wealthy doctor. We are led into a subtle story of a good man maintaining a fragile equilibrium, but making bad decisions, leading to political fandangaling and manipulation of public processes, and more importantly, an evil jealous woman who tells small boys complicated fairy stories with real life parallels.
While my closest personal experience of John Key is holding the opener to the Grey Lynn Library toilet, (and I am happy to keep it that way), I really enjoyed this novel. I felt sure while reading that Grimshaw knows JK personally (or had infiltrated his social circle), and has merely changed some names to (ineffectually) try and protect identities. The holiday home set up with friends and hangers-on was realistic enough to me. This almost-familiarity is one of the things I like about Grimshaw's novels - the settings are close to known experience, very New Zealand, and you can just imagine events happening so easily.
The dwarf Soon is in a story within a story - look for clues as to what the real characters are thinking, and enjoy!
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