Blog Archives

Portrait of an irritating lady, Isa Moynihan

Vibrant with Words: The Letters of Ursula Bethell ed Peter Whiteford Victoria University Press, $49.95, ISBN 0864735049 Editor Peter Whiteford, a senior lecturer in the English Department at Victoria University, has done Ursula Bethell proud with this generous selection of

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Posted in Letters, Non-fiction, Review

Kissing the gunner’s daughter, Raymond Huber

A Respectable Girl Fleur Beale Random, $19.00, ISBN 186941764X Sea of Mutiny  Ken Catran Random, $18.95, ISBN 1869417070 Red Leader Down  Ken Catran Random, $19.99, ISBN 1869417593 Red Haze: Australians and New Zealanders in Vietnam Leon Davidson Black Dog, $16.95,

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Posted in Literature, Non-fiction, Review, War, Young adults

For New Zealand, read Auckland, Bruce Wallace

City Of Enterprise: Perspectives on Auckland Business History ed Ian Hunter and Diana Morrow Auckland University Press, $59.99, ISBN 1869403517 City of Enterprise presents an unashamedly Auckland Point of view on business, and why not? So little is known about

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

Awkward positions , Christina Thompson

Pictures by Goya and Other Stories Vincent O’Sullivan Penguin, $28.00, ISBN 0143020552 In the title story of Vincent O’Sullivan’s collection Pictures by Goya, two characters find themselves in an awkward position. They have been carrying on an adulterous affair when

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Short stories

Telling moments, Lawrence Jones

Collected Stories Barbara Anderson Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0864734980 In the “Author’s Note” prefacing her The Peacocks and Other Stories, Barbara Anderson said that she found “writing short stories requires a completely different technique from writing novels”, and that

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Short stories

The inside story, Neil Cameron

More Than Law and Order: Policing a Changing Society 1945-92 Susan Butterworth University of Otago Press, $49.95, ISBN 1877276995 More Than Law and Order is the fifth in the by now massive and somewhat diverse official history of the New

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

Letters – Issue 74

Nuclear reactors We wish to dissent from the lengthy review accorded to Dr Andew McEwan’s book Nuclear New Zealand: Sorting Fact from Fiction (NZB, October 2005). This review contains errors. One is the claim that New Zealand is poor in

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Posted in Letters

The mundane and the marvellous, Adrienne Gavin

Marvellous Codes: The Fiction of Margaret Mahy ed Elizabeth Hale and Sarah Fiona Winters Victoria University Press, $39.95, ISBN 0864735162 Any addition to critical publications on Margaret Mahy is to be welcomed. Elizabeth Hale’s and Sarah Fiona Winters’ Marvellous Codes:

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Posted in Literature, Non-fiction

Editorial – Issue 74

Love and theft At first glance, what does and doesn’t constitute literary plagiarism looks pretty straightforward. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh certainly thought so. They tried to prove in a London court that Dan Brown took “at least 15 core

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Posted in Editorial

A very late Victorian, David Young

Charles Fleming: Environmental Patriot Mary McEwen Craig Potton Publishing, $50.00, ISBN 1877333239 Before the imposition of celebrity culture on the recent New Zealand telescape and its consort media, being famous in New Zealand was possibly even more of a problem

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Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
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