Shivaun Plozza, The Worst Perfect Moment, Walker Books Australia, January 2025, 368 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760659455
Shivaun Plozza is an Australian writer but this novel is set in America, in the worst motel in New Jersey, and in heaven. Tegan, the main character, is dead and in a heaven she does not like. She is happy to complain about this to anyone who will listen and constantly questions the calculations of Zelda, the 16-year-old angel, who has worked out the calculations that have constructed the place where Tegan finds herself for eternity. Her complaints lead to a more senior angel decreeing that Tegan and Zelda embark on a kind of fact-finding mission to see if in fact Zelda was right and Tegan should stay in this heaven or that Tegan is correct and Zelda has devised the wrong heaven for her. If Zelda is right and Tegan simply won’t accept that, then she is destined to spend several thousand years in purgatory. Thus Zelda and Tegan begin a journey of discovery where Tegan is shown that memories are not always accurate, that people are not necessarily what they seem and one perfect moment can be the most important thing of all.
In order for this premise to work, dead Tegan has to be allowed some human emotions and emotional growth. The book is a bildungsroman of sorts as Tegan develops self-awareness and psychological growth although she will not, of course, ever become an adult. Her self-awareness includes coming to understand Zelda, to warm towards her, to miss her when she is away and gradually to fall in love with her. Tegan also uses her self-discovery to tackle the administration on what she regards as failures in the system for some of the other inhabitants of heaven, including a threat to demote Zelda – and, as we learn at the end of the book, she is successful in her insistence that things change.
The author uses both first and third-person narrative throughout the book. When we see Tegan in heaven, she narrates in the first-person. When we have flashbacks, including mention of her fatal bike ride, the third-person is used. A range of characters passes through Tegan’s ‘life’ in heaven, including some described as coming from ‘upper management’. These are all well drawn, rounded characters with their own quirks, habits and attributes. There is Barb, who discusses with Tegan her complaints and who has an array of different coloured pants suits, and her PA, Carol, who knits incessantly; there is Kelvin whose job it is to shadow Tegan and Zelda on their journey of discovery and who is constructed by the author as a kind of cynical teenage boy and there are many others.
This is a slightly whimsical and unusual tale of memory, of love, of belonging, of friendship and of love. Tegan is a feisty and endearing character whose story will be enjoyed by many young adult readers.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel
