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A Change of Key
Marko has come to the ends of the earth to escape a once illustrious past in Bulgaria. So why does a Polish bookstore owner call him a traitor? And who covertly photographed him for the newspaper?
Someone knows who he is. They are trying to expose him in his new country, and there is nothing he can do to prevent it.
Someone knows who he is. They are trying to expose him in his new country, and there is nothing he can do to prevent it.
246 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 19, 2018
1 person is currently reading
8 people want to read
About the author
Adrienne Jansen
30 books9 followersJansen, Adrienne (1947 - ) writes fiction and non-fiction for both adults and children, and poetry. For many years she taught ESOL and was involved in refugee resettlement and immigration issues, and this long interest in cross-cultural experience is reflected in her writing.
Her first books were small practical publications designed to meet particular needs. Having a Baby in New Zealand (1985) was published in Samoan, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Khmer as well as English. She co-authored a second book with a practical focus, Neighbourhood Groups (1986).
Borany's Story (1991) is an account of the life of Borany Kanal, a Cambodian immigrant and co-author of the book. It was originally a series for radio broadcast by Radio New Zealand in 1989. It is a simply-written and moving first person account of a woman’s escape from the Khmer Rouge, and eventual resettling in New Zealand. The book was shortlisted for the New Zealand Library Association Non Fiction Award, and is widely used in schools.
Ten immigrant women tell their stories to Adrienne Jansen in I have in my arms both ways (1990). The title comes from one of the women, immigrant Valeti Finau: 'I have in my arms both ways. I can see my Tokelau way, it's good. I can see the palagi way, it's good. I don’t want to put one down and lift the other up... I can carry them both.' The book is one of the few accounts of immigrant women's experiences in New Zealand.
Her first novel, Spirit Writing was published in 1999. It is the story of a young woman who is drawn into what is for her a foreign world of Lao refugees and political activism, and discovers the costs of misunderstandings and misplaced idealism. '[C]aptivating, powerful and beautifully written,' writes Michael Larsen in The Evening Post, while Beryl Fletcher writes ‘it’s great to read a New Zealand novel that explores the fraught relationships that can occur between refugees and locals’ (Waikato Times).
Jansen’s second novel, Floating the Fish on Bamboo (2001), described by Sue McRae in the Evening Post as ‘a page-turner with real class, falling squarely between the arthouse and the blockbuster’, is also a story set in a multicultural community.
Both Spirit Writing and Floating the Fish on Bamboo (2001) were adapted for broadcast on Radio New Zealand. Jansen has also had short stories broadcast on Radio New Zealand, including ‘War’, highly commended in the Commonwealth Short Story competition in 2002.
Adrienne Jansen was one of four poets in the collection How Things Are (1996), where her work appeared with that of Meg Campbell, Harry Ricketts, and J.C. Sturm. Her first solo collection of poetry is a stone seat and a shadow tree (2001). She has had poems in a number of publications and in several anthologies.
In 2009, Jansen teamed up with photographer Ans Westra in The Crescent Moon: The Asian Face of Islam in New Zealand, a publication for the Asia New Zealand Foundation, intended to present a more accurate ‘snapshot’ of this largest group of Muslims in New Zealand, and to correct some stereotypes and media misrepresentation. The Crescent Moon is also a photographic exhibition touring New Zealand.
In 1993 Adrienne Jansen founded the Whitireia Polytechnic Creative Writing Programme, and was its coordinator until 1999. She now teaches fiction and editing on the programme, and has written several of its online courses. She is part of the writing team at Te Papa, New Zealand’s National Museum, and does some freelance work. She lives in Titahi Bay, Porirua.
Her first books were small practical publications designed to meet particular needs. Having a Baby in New Zealand (1985) was published in Samoan, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Khmer as well as English. She co-authored a second book with a practical focus, Neighbourhood Groups (1986).
Borany's Story (1991) is an account of the life of Borany Kanal, a Cambodian immigrant and co-author of the book. It was originally a series for radio broadcast by Radio New Zealand in 1989. It is a simply-written and moving first person account of a woman’s escape from the Khmer Rouge, and eventual resettling in New Zealand. The book was shortlisted for the New Zealand Library Association Non Fiction Award, and is widely used in schools.
Ten immigrant women tell their stories to Adrienne Jansen in I have in my arms both ways (1990). The title comes from one of the women, immigrant Valeti Finau: 'I have in my arms both ways. I can see my Tokelau way, it's good. I can see the palagi way, it's good. I don’t want to put one down and lift the other up... I can carry them both.' The book is one of the few accounts of immigrant women's experiences in New Zealand.
Her first novel, Spirit Writing was published in 1999. It is the story of a young woman who is drawn into what is for her a foreign world of Lao refugees and political activism, and discovers the costs of misunderstandings and misplaced idealism. '[C]aptivating, powerful and beautifully written,' writes Michael Larsen in The Evening Post, while Beryl Fletcher writes ‘it’s great to read a New Zealand novel that explores the fraught relationships that can occur between refugees and locals’ (Waikato Times).
Jansen’s second novel, Floating the Fish on Bamboo (2001), described by Sue McRae in the Evening Post as ‘a page-turner with real class, falling squarely between the arthouse and the blockbuster’, is also a story set in a multicultural community.
Both Spirit Writing and Floating the Fish on Bamboo (2001) were adapted for broadcast on Radio New Zealand. Jansen has also had short stories broadcast on Radio New Zealand, including ‘War’, highly commended in the Commonwealth Short Story competition in 2002.
Adrienne Jansen was one of four poets in the collection How Things Are (1996), where her work appeared with that of Meg Campbell, Harry Ricketts, and J.C. Sturm. Her first solo collection of poetry is a stone seat and a shadow tree (2001). She has had poems in a number of publications and in several anthologies.
In 2009, Jansen teamed up with photographer Ans Westra in The Crescent Moon: The Asian Face of Islam in New Zealand, a publication for the Asia New Zealand Foundation, intended to present a more accurate ‘snapshot’ of this largest group of Muslims in New Zealand, and to correct some stereotypes and media misrepresentation. The Crescent Moon is also a photographic exhibition touring New Zealand.
In 1993 Adrienne Jansen founded the Whitireia Polytechnic Creative Writing Programme, and was its coordinator until 1999. She now teaches fiction and editing on the programme, and has written several of its online courses. She is part of the writing team at Te Papa, New Zealand’s National Museum, and does some freelance work. She lives in Titahi Bay, Porirua.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 2, 2019
This novel is about a group of immigrants and refugees who live in a block of Council flats. It is about their lives and their back stories and about the friendships, ones that emerge over the course of the book and just feel real.
We begin with Marko who has been trying to get his life back on track, but when a grainy photo of him appears in the newspaper with an article about a KGB spy being allowed into New Zealand by the Immigration department, he is back to square one, drinking gin, frightened and staying inside all day. All he has rebuilt is lost.
This has taken on a veneer of truth with the real-life Karol Sroubek case, where a Czech drug smuggling criminal was given citizenship by an inept Government minister who was then forced to backtrack.
Stefan is from Portugal and is always helping those around him. He has a steady job tuning pianos and is trying to get Marko back on track. He is helping the student from Somalia to look after her young son, he is helping the Iranian to fit in to life in the block of flats when people start a rumour that he is a terrorist. He is also trying to bring music to all those who do have a little musical skill. Forming a band, making people play together. He is a rock for so many people.
I love the simple stories, the way that rumours can spread and have no basis in truth, and the way that music can help to turn people around. I love the mix of stories, cultures and backgrounds in this novel.
This is a heart-warming tale with characters that are brimming with life in a way than many novels fail to capture.
We begin with Marko who has been trying to get his life back on track, but when a grainy photo of him appears in the newspaper with an article about a KGB spy being allowed into New Zealand by the Immigration department, he is back to square one, drinking gin, frightened and staying inside all day. All he has rebuilt is lost.
This has taken on a veneer of truth with the real-life Karol Sroubek case, where a Czech drug smuggling criminal was given citizenship by an inept Government minister who was then forced to backtrack.
Stefan is from Portugal and is always helping those around him. He has a steady job tuning pianos and is trying to get Marko back on track. He is helping the student from Somalia to look after her young son, he is helping the Iranian to fit in to life in the block of flats when people start a rumour that he is a terrorist. He is also trying to bring music to all those who do have a little musical skill. Forming a band, making people play together. He is a rock for so many people.
I love the simple stories, the way that rumours can spread and have no basis in truth, and the way that music can help to turn people around. I love the mix of stories, cultures and backgrounds in this novel.
This is a heart-warming tale with characters that are brimming with life in a way than many novels fail to capture.
November 26, 2018
My review as reposted from Bookseller's Association of New Zealand: http://booksellersnz.wordpress.com from 22 November 2018:
On first immersion, this is a novel full of shadows, muffled voices behind closed doors, with single, solitary loners, ears pricked up in paranoia, pacing the empty corridors of a council housing project. How the loners ache to be included in the simple goings-on of neighbours they can hear through the thin walls, but fear of their own past catching up with them haunts their every motive and move. Behind and between all this however, threads of music slowly weave the residents together in ways none of them could possibly have expected.
This book, by Adrienne Jansen, is centred on the same characters as her 2013 novel The Score, but it isn't necessary to have read this first.
The story starts with Marko, a once illustrious Bulgarian musician, peering through foreign language books in a second-hand bookstore far away from his home country. At the counter he is spat upon by the old Polish shop owner and called a traitor. Someone has taken his picture, and there is his face in the newspaper, attached to a small headline on the front page: MP Claims KGB Spy Living Here. At the same time, living on the same floor is Stefan, Marko’s piano-restoring neighbour. Both men have run away from their home, and run far. The men, joined by others also separated from their own origins, bond through the shared love of music, a language common to all.
Each character faces the threats and challenges of being a foreigner in a foreign land - trying to fit in, to be accepted, to work in employment beneath their qualifications just to pay the rent, and the sadly common experience: racism born of intolerance and ignorance. Throw in a hefty building rent hike, terrorist suspicion, blackmail, threats of exposure, and you have a physical and mental health bomb waiting for detonation.
Sadly, the author is not making all of this stuff up. The novel draws on Adrienne Jansen’s years of experience working amongst New Zealand immigrants, and their collected anecdotes as people who have lived the immigrant experience in New Zealand.
A Change of Key is a moving story, and in that movement, music reveals itself as an integral part of life. The musical interludes between the fear and angst reveal how music both weaves the characters together into unexpected and welcome friendships, but also helps to unravel the tension experienced by them all. Marco, Stefan and the mentally fraught Phil experience freedom from the world through playing their instruments together. Within music they loosen and sometimes lose their fears and inhibitions. And those that listen to their music are also consoled by it. A lasting image for me is Haider, suspected terrorist and Stefan’s neighbour, head against the wall listening to Stefan playing the piano he’s been restoring within his flat. The sense of longing for connection in a foreign land is intense in that moment.
The ability Jansen has to weave so many characters from so many ethnic backgrounds, ages, and economic statuses into one, easy-to-hold paperback novel is to be applauded. A lot of graft and care has gone into this work and I am glad to have had the opportunity to read it. If you want to be moved yourself, by music, or, by life stories foreign to your own, then you’ll want to read this novel. I haven’t read a book invoking this much feeling in quite some time. Potentially it will make you look at your world and perhaps your own words and actions in quite a different way. Possibly it will even inspire you to more inclusive action in your everyday life. Forming your own band maybe?
On first immersion, this is a novel full of shadows, muffled voices behind closed doors, with single, solitary loners, ears pricked up in paranoia, pacing the empty corridors of a council housing project. How the loners ache to be included in the simple goings-on of neighbours they can hear through the thin walls, but fear of their own past catching up with them haunts their every motive and move. Behind and between all this however, threads of music slowly weave the residents together in ways none of them could possibly have expected.
This book, by Adrienne Jansen, is centred on the same characters as her 2013 novel The Score, but it isn't necessary to have read this first.
The story starts with Marko, a once illustrious Bulgarian musician, peering through foreign language books in a second-hand bookstore far away from his home country. At the counter he is spat upon by the old Polish shop owner and called a traitor. Someone has taken his picture, and there is his face in the newspaper, attached to a small headline on the front page: MP Claims KGB Spy Living Here. At the same time, living on the same floor is Stefan, Marko’s piano-restoring neighbour. Both men have run away from their home, and run far. The men, joined by others also separated from their own origins, bond through the shared love of music, a language common to all.
Each character faces the threats and challenges of being a foreigner in a foreign land - trying to fit in, to be accepted, to work in employment beneath their qualifications just to pay the rent, and the sadly common experience: racism born of intolerance and ignorance. Throw in a hefty building rent hike, terrorist suspicion, blackmail, threats of exposure, and you have a physical and mental health bomb waiting for detonation.
Sadly, the author is not making all of this stuff up. The novel draws on Adrienne Jansen’s years of experience working amongst New Zealand immigrants, and their collected anecdotes as people who have lived the immigrant experience in New Zealand.
A Change of Key is a moving story, and in that movement, music reveals itself as an integral part of life. The musical interludes between the fear and angst reveal how music both weaves the characters together into unexpected and welcome friendships, but also helps to unravel the tension experienced by them all. Marco, Stefan and the mentally fraught Phil experience freedom from the world through playing their instruments together. Within music they loosen and sometimes lose their fears and inhibitions. And those that listen to their music are also consoled by it. A lasting image for me is Haider, suspected terrorist and Stefan’s neighbour, head against the wall listening to Stefan playing the piano he’s been restoring within his flat. The sense of longing for connection in a foreign land is intense in that moment.
The ability Jansen has to weave so many characters from so many ethnic backgrounds, ages, and economic statuses into one, easy-to-hold paperback novel is to be applauded. A lot of graft and care has gone into this work and I am glad to have had the opportunity to read it. If you want to be moved yourself, by music, or, by life stories foreign to your own, then you’ll want to read this novel. I haven’t read a book invoking this much feeling in quite some time. Potentially it will make you look at your world and perhaps your own words and actions in quite a different way. Possibly it will even inspire you to more inclusive action in your everyday life. Forming your own band maybe?
December 24, 2023
This is a story of various immigrants with the mantra 'Don't tell anyone your past': Stefan, now a piano tuner, left Portugal because of his ex-wife's accusations. Marko, his flatmate with forged immigration papers, left Bulgaria because he may or may not have killed a man. Next door is Haider who left Iraq. Another neighbour is Nada who left Serbia and Phil, the cellist, and ex-high-school-wrestler. Singh is a taxi driver turned police informant who thinks Marko is ex KGB. Veronica is a single mother to Joseph from Sudan. “Once a whisper starts snaking through the corridors, it gathers mass, it becomes a rumour, a question, then an openly spoken phrase, a sentence. A statement in the lift.” Phil quotes the Internet, voicing other concerns - “Proximity without contact is the perfect medium for breeding prejudice.” This novel is about loss, rumour, risk, rent challenges, fellowship, peace, and rebirth.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews