Fiona Farrell ONZM is a New Zealand novelist, poet and playwright, and she writes non-fiction too, notably about the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. I discovered her writing last year when I read (and reviewed) The Deck (2023), and promptly ordered Decline and Fall on Savage Street and (mistakenly thinking it was a novel) its companion NF title The Villa at the Edge of the Empire (2015). From her website, I learned the origins of these two books:

In 2013, Farrell received Creative New Zealand's premier award, the Michael King Fellowship, to write twin volumes, one fiction, one non-fiction, prompted by the Christchurch earthquakes and the reconstruction of the city. The Villa at the Edge of the Empire, was shortlisted for the non-fiction section in the 2016 Ockham NZ Book Awards while its fictional twin, Decline and Fall on Savage Street was published to critical acclaim in 2017 and received that year's NZSA Heritage Book Award for fiction. Together, the books have been described as ‘a wonderful piece of art.’

Decline and Fall on Savage Street is certainly absorbing reading, though it is not until Part Two that the Christchurch earthquake makes its deadly appearance. The preceding 200-odd pages compress to cover the story of a house, beginning in 1906.
Farrell has a gift for description with occasional sly wit, as you can see in Chapter 2: The Floor Plan, Spring 1908:

A villa. Not too large. Not one of the twenty-seven roomed fantasies that introduce his magnum opus: his catalogue of One Hundred Designs for New Zealand Residences. Not the two-storyed extravagance of Smoking Room, Billiard Room, Fernery and the rest, but something more modest: ten rooms, perhaps. A substantial villa for the man who is on his way, and for his dependants. A villa combining tradition with modernity, the best of the past with contemporary comfort, for that is the style for this country, where public buildings favour imperial gravitas with columns and Roman porticoes, along with ample windows and modern plumbing.

And when they leave the public realm, the citizens whom luck and industry have favoured like to stroll home to one or two storeys of vaguely Gothic timber and gabling, or perhaps Georgian brick, with bathroom and kitchen in the contemporary American manner, ideally linked to the modern marvels of metropolitan sewerage systems, gas and electricity, all set behind the fences of a pleasantly private quarter-acre. A house like this, for example: the ten-roomed villa, taking shape beneath the architect's busy pen. (p.11)

The first family to live in this villa is a large one and Farrell traces a patchwork of events in their lives, in chapters that move biennially through most of the century, interleaved with the endless life-cycle of eels in the river. Each chapter begins and end mid-sentence, and people come and go, leaving behind only traces of their activity in the house and garden. When the last of that family is gone in the 70s, the house is found by Min, a bit of a flower-child who is looking for a share-house. The villa has seen better days:

Midwinter, damp and grey, the river a ribbon of low-hanging fog. And there it was, half-buried beneath periwinkle, its walls dimpled with damp rot under a cloak of ivy. A leafless vine entangled the front porch, ornamented with the fluffy seed heads of old man's beard and fallen leaf lay knee-deep on the path between overhanging branches and the whole place reeked of damp and decay, cat pee and desolation.

Perfect.

Min stood in the overgrown garden, jeans soaked to the knees. She'd regret that later: flares took absolutely ages to dry. Beneath her sodden boots lay bricks and broken glass. Beer bottles littered the porch, and someone had set a fire at the foot of the steps where a half-burned wire wove rusted over charred wood and a shabby sofa and armchairs slumped either side in a parody of three-piece gentility. (p.127)

Min persuades her friends to buy it together. They made an offer, all chipping in as much as they could:

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/04/14/decline-and-fall-on-savage-street-2017-by-fi... ( )

(8.5)
I love the diversity of this author. This is a companion novel to her recent non-fiction book, [The Villa at the Edge of the Empire] which I have not read. I have always enjoyed her novels and this one does not disappoint.
The reader follows the rise of the city of Christchurch, in particular this villa on the banks of a river. We experience the arrivals and departures of those who reside in the house over a 100 year period. In this way the author provides a social commentary of life in New Zealand against a backdrop of both national and international events.
Farrell has achieved this by short chapters that move forward in 2 yearly bites and interspersed with this we follow the journey of an eel in the river. Of course, the story concludes with the demise of the house following the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. A remarkable book. ( )