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Issue 31 | December 1997

Volume 7 | Number 5 | Issue 31 | December 1997   Harry Orsman’s NZ English Curnow at the “utmost reach of his power” Mark Williams admires Lloyd Jones’s magic realism Sharon Crosbie storms up on cooks Alan Riach assesses

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Harissa at home, Sharon Crosbie

Forget socio-political analysis. If you want to gauge the extent of change in this country just look at the cookbooks, study the restaurant section of the Yellow Pages and think about what you’ve eaten during the past week. Was it roast

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Failing at order, Harvey McQueen

Obviously of peasant stock, I enjoy grubbing in my own particular patch of soil, pottering and planting around every home I have occupied in my adult life. I am in Stephanie Parkes’ words “an amateur gardener”, a term she uses in

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Letters – Issue 31

Puzzles and solutions In his stimulating study, A Talent to Deceive: An appreciation of Agatha Christie, Robert Barnard argues that, in “approaching Agatha Christie and her fellows … as novelists and by looking for the same sort of qualitites one may

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Posted in Letters

Self-absorbed provincial, Gregory O’Brien

All Our Own Work: New Zealand’s Folk Art Richard Wolfe Penguin, $36.95, ISBN 0 670 87551 1 Charles Brasch wrote in Landfall in December 1950 that Colin McCahon, “hampered at every turn by an inadequate technique… was not well enough

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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review

Editorial – Issue 31

Changing of the guard Independence, Colin James More than Rogernomics, the recovery of the treaty and the other momentous policy changes, the 1980s was the decade of independence. In that decade the people who make up New Zealand found a voice:

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Limbering up, Anne French

It could be You Sue McCauley Vintage, $24.95, ISBN 1 86962 008 9 The Mathematics of Jane Austen Elizabeth Smither Godwit, $24.95, ISBN 1 86941 317 2 Remember Me Linda Burgess Otago University Press, $21.95, ISBN 1 877 13335 3

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Laughter and the force of dreams, Brian Turner

Work in progress Recently I listened to the now former New Zealand cricket representative Danny Morrison saying some uncomplimentary and patronising things about the cast-off captain, Lee Germon. The reason? Danny’s just published his autobiography, written in conjunction with an adoring

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Sweetening the demon, Paul Goldsmith

Memories of Muldoon Bob Jones Canterbury University Press, $39.95, ISBN 0 908812 69 8 Prime ministerial careers usually end in failure: it occurs to few to leave when they are on top. Sir Robert Muldoon’s time as Prime Minister was brought

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Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

A place to go ‘where your life, Alan Riach

Mutes & Earthquakes: Bill Manhire’s Creative Writing Course at Victoria University ed Bill Manhire Victoria University Press, $34.95, ISBN 0 86473 318 6 In his 1965 book on Picasso, John Berger said: “Events in our century occur on a global scale.

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Posted in Literature, Short stories
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