Kelly Ana Morey’s sixth and final novel, Ordinary People Like Us, appears roughly a year after the author’s death in September 2025. Morey had not finished what she considered to be her great New Zealand novel at the time of her death, and it was completed by Catherine Chidgey and Harriet Allan. This tragedy adds a compelling dimension to a novel which is constantly interrupted by the voices of three older women in the Devich family, who chatter and comment on the lives of their daughters and granddaughters. Morey’s own voice now joins them, watching over what is possibly her most ambitious novel.
The story begins in 1865 with Nana Bird, a Māori woman working in the gumfields of Te Hāpua in northern New Zealand. The following 400 pages follow her family through five generations: her daughter Kaa, granddaughter Annie, great-granddaughters Jen and Lorna, and finally Lorna’s daughter Pax, as they navigate the 20th century and move from rural New Zealand towards metropolitan Auckland and, eventually, London.
Such an expansive story produces a narrative style which is initially quite disorientating. The narrative shifts between third and first person, constantly interrupted by the three kēhua (spirits), while remaining distant and reserved. This distance is especially confronting when the novel recounts events of profound emotional significance: marriage, childbirth, and death. What results is more akin to a sketch than a novel.
However, its distance reveals resonances within the main characters’ lives: they are painted with the same broad brushstrokes, if not with the same colours. For the kēhua, who seem able to access time all at once, these personal tragedies become evidence of a steady rhythm within a changing world. As the women move through the 20th century, their heritage, material circumstances, working lives and attitudes towards family evolve dramatically. But the same patterns of adventure, love, and fulfilment emerge again and again. The delight of the book lies in the tranquillity it offers in the face of such change: an increasingly necessary pause from modern life.
“1948 New Zealand map” by peonyandthistle is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
