Next to Gods: A Cleaner’s Story Don Franks Four Winds Press, $14.95, ISBN 0958251487 On Getting Old Kevin Ireland Four Winds Press, $14.95, ISBN 0958251479 On Going to the Movies Peter Wells Four Winds Press, $14.95, ISBN 0958251460 I have…
The Scornful Moon Maurice Gee Penguin, $34.95, ISBN 0143018752 Anyone who has heard Maurice Gee read can summon up his tone of voice: discerning, patient and artful. He is a shrewd observer of the human condition with, at times, an…
Iridescence Peter Wells Random House, $34.95, ISBN 1869415833 With its gorgeously frilled and furbelowed Victorian crinolines, melodrama and high camp, Iridescence is strongly reminiscent of Peter Wells’s screenplay for Desperate Remedies, which blew the mandatory bucolic naturalism of New Zealand…
The House at Karamu Beryl Fletcher Spinifex, $29.95, ISBN 1876756357 Travelling with Augusta 1835 and 1999 Ingrid Horrocks Victoria University Press, $34.95, ISBN 0864734476 Initially, when I received these two books for review, I thought I would resist the contrast-and-compare…
Long Loop Home: A Memoir Peter Wells Vintage, $27.95, ISBN 1869414683 The body language in the photograph forecasts much about the story between the covers of Peter Wells’s Long Loop Home. A Memoir. Three figures pose on a deserted beach,…
The World Regained Dennis McEldowney Auckland University Press, $34.95, ISBN 1869402537 From the Wisteria Bush Vanya Lowry Auckland University Press, $39.95, ISBN 1869402561 The nature of memoir is an act of resurrection, exploration, delineation. It is both a wreath placed…
Boy Overboard by Peter Wells Vintage New Zealand, $24.95, ISBN 1 86941 319 9 Boy Overboard is a great novel. It is a work which will resonate for many a year, and become as important a marker of growing up in…
Poor Behaviour Bill Payne Secker & Warburg, $24.95 The Duration of a Kiss Peter Wells Secker & Warburg, $24.95 I wonder what Bill Payne and Peter Wells make of each other. Simultaneous publication by Reed’s new Secker & Warburg imprint…
Tell us about the book you want to give everyone for Christmas and/or the book you hope no one gives you for Christmas, we asked twenty-four of our top writers and critics. Fifteen of them dared to respond. Jenny…