Two very interesting characters inhabit this story: Roza, the Prime Minister’s wife, a creative maverick who still manages to fit in with his circle; and her precocious young son Johnny, who is clever and manipulative and a bit of a nightmare. Throughout the novel, Roza tells Johnny a story featuring a large cast of characters including a nasty dwarf called Soon, and surreal happenings, all based on the other people in the novel. It’s like a terrifyingly twisted Enid Blyton romp, and it’s fun drawing parallels between Roza’s story and the novel.
The rest of Soon is nicely written and compelling, but the plot and the other characters are a bit more formulaic than Roza and Johnny. It’s a story of powerful people behaving badly. The right-wing Prime Minister himself is popular, but is also a cynical, amoral figure; a parallel here to the current New Zealand political scene, and also to another novel within this novel.
There’s lots to chew on in this book. The way these privileged people interact with each other and the world around them is carefully and plausibly rendered. It’s a bit depressing to consider how accurate it might be.