Rebecca K. Reilly's exploration of love, family, karaoke, and the generational reverberations of colonialism will make you laugh, cry, and fall for the whole Vladisavljevic bunch.

This book follows an absolutely hilarious family as they try to get their lives together, both professional and personal, and we see more and more of their pasts revealed as the book goes on. The thing that stood out to me about this book was the complete joy of being queer, Maori, and Russian (and Jewish!). There is so much queerness and it is so normal in this family, literally everyone is queer and it's such a beautiful thing to see. I felt so warm inside reading the family dynamics, because while they are messy and imperfect, there is love there.Reading and writing about Greta and Valdin feels like an act of radical self-acceptance. This is not something many people say about writing anything. Usually it’s a process plagued by doubt. Yet in this case, the only real cause for trepidation is that Reilly can see and hear cliché as if attuned to a frequency many of us would miss without narrowing our eyes or straining our ears. Linsh and Beatrice are written as real parents of children in their 20s in the second decade of the 21st century – not caricatures who don’t know how to text or use social media. Linsh attempts to settle the stupidest, funniest fight via an online call to Russia. The recognisable inner monologues and glorious domestic insights (the flexible washing basket “that every person in the whole country has”; learning ”how to set the VCR to record McDonald’s Young Entertainers”) feel familiar because Reilly writes intergenerational family so well. She joins her contemporaries at this prolific juncture in New Zealand literature in just writing this country the way it is, unapologetically, without excuse.

The book follows the lives and loves of Greta and Valdin, alternating chapters between them as they try to navigate aforementioned crushes, and pining, but also worrying about their careers, and their relationships with other members of their family. To be honest, I didn't think I particularly liked either of them in the opening chapters but by the end I was cheering them both on as they try to find the stability, groundedness, and love that they both need to be happy. The publisher says: “Reilly’s exploration of love, family, queerness, migration, karaoke, the generational reverberations of colonialism and the disturbing realisation that your parents have a past will have readers falling in love with Greta, Valdin, and all of the Vladisavljevics.” It's all rather messy. The original title of the novel was Vines (it was under this title that author Rebecca K. Reilly (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Wai) won the 2019 Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing). I can see why - the lives of the central characters and their families and lovers become fairly well tangled by the end of things, twining about each other in a well-watered but unpruned kind of way. The characters might be slightly at odds with the world but Reilly loves them and the affection shows.It doesn’t take long to become invested in mum Beatrice’s secrets, Valdin’s longing for ex-boyfriend Xabi (who happens to be his uncle’s husband’s brother), Greta’s misdirected affection for Holly, brother Casper’s past scandals, nephew Tang’s newly discovered monogamy or trying to figure out how almost-cousin Cosmo, currently unaccounted for, features in all of this. Greta & Valdin is fresh, funny, tangled and brilliant. I can’t wait for someone to make the sitcom so I can keep Reilly’s characters in my life. I can't remember the last time I read a book that was as genuinely and uniquely funny as Greta & Valdin. But it's also so much more than that. Reilly's voice is wise and full of life, and her observations about queer love, heartbreak, and the complexities of family are poignant without ever succumbing to sentimentality. This is a wholly original, laugh-until-you-ugly-cry-on-the-subway debut." —Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding

Yes, by the end of this funny, smart, tangled web of family and romantic relationships you really can't help but root for everyone involved. Rebecca K. Reilly, you have a new fan. Greta & Valdin is hilarious, touching and hotly sublime. The kind of novel that simultaneously makes me wish I were funnier and absolves me from the need to try—I’ll never be as funny as Rebecca K Reilly (and that’s OK).” —Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea So there’s a pervasive cuteness or playful charm, depending on your take, but there’s also variety, richness, a gratifyingly complicated set of relationships, a large and interesting cast of characters. The connections are tangled and numerous enough that we need the helpful cast list at the beginning.