Blog Archives

In the hybrid zones, Airini Beautrais

Posted on November 29, 2019 by NZ Books

How To Live
Helen Rickerby
Auckland University Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9781869409050

Ransack
essa may ranapiri
Victoria University Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9781776562374

Conventional Weapons
Tracey Slaughter
Victoria University Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9781776562206

In a literary sense, genre is problematic. While it’s convenient to categorise texts for the purposes of libraries, book awards and so on, drawing a line between poetry and fiction, fiction and non-fiction, or poetry and essay is evidently reductive and arguably somewhat pointless. Given that poetry and fiction stem from root words meaning “to make” and “to form”, historical distinctions have been primarily formal, linked to the emergence of these modes at different points in the history of writing. After 60-odd years of poetry being dominated by free verse, in which formal divisions are based on visual more than aural units, and given the perennial ubiquity of prose poetry (something of a dubious term itself), these distinctions appear narrower and less relevant.

Tagged with: Airini Beautrais, Auckland University Press, essa may ranapiri, Helen Rickerby, Issue 128, Summer 2019, Victoria University Press
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

It’s in the detail, Trevor Agnew

Posted on November 29, 2019 by NZ Books

The Cat From Muzzle Sally Sutton (Scott Tulloch illus) Puffin, $20.00, ISBN 9780143773085 Bess The Brave War Horse Susan Brocker (Raymond McGrath illus) Scholastic, $28.00, ISBN 9781775435563 Home Child: A Child Migrant In New Zealand Dawn McMillan (Trish Bowles illus)…

Tagged with: Alexandra Stewart, Bloomsbury, Dawn McMillan, Edmund Hillary, Issue 128, Joe Todd-Stanton, Oratia, Puffin, Raymond McGrath, Sally Sutton, Scholastic, Scott Tulloch, Summer 2019, Susan Brocker, Tenzing Norgay, Trevor Agnew, Trish Bowles
Posted in Children, Literature, Review

Express lane, John Horrocks

Posted on November 29, 2019 by NZ Books

Peat
Lynn Jenner
Otago University Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9781988531694

Lynn Jenner lives on the Kāpiti Coast, not far from the new expressway between Mackays Crossing and Peka Peka. She writes in Peat that thinking about the construction of the road meant that she needed “the close company of a writer as a bulwark against its enacted power and concrete”. Charles Brasch, whose work she hardly knew before she started her project, was the chosen author. The resulting book is a marvellous and unexpected combination of the two topics.

Tagged with: Issue 128, John Horrocks, Lynn Jenner, Otago University Press, Summer 2019
Posted in Literature, Non-fiction, Review

Timeless and timely, Hannah Marshall

Posted on November 29, 2019 by NZ Books

Winter Of Fire (25^th Anniversary Edition)
Sherryl Jordan
Scholastic, $19.00,
ISBN 9781775435983

A dismal world where the sun has disappeared is the backdrop for Sherryl Jordan’s hard-hitting and powerful novel Winter Of Fire. Back in print 25 years after its initial publication, Winter Of Fire blends a strong, rebellious protagonist with the difficult themes of slavery, sexism and pollution, to create a powerhouse of a novel with ideas that still stand strong today.

Tagged with: Hannah Marshall, Issue 128, Scholastic, Sherryl Jordan, Summer 2019
Posted in Imprints, Review, Young adults

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”, Amy Brown

Posted on November 29, 2019 by NZ Books

Winter Of Fire (25^th Anniversary Edition)
Sherryl Jordan
Scholastic, $19.00,
ISBN 9781775435983

I was ten when Winter Of Fire was first released, three years after Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. It was a little later that I read Sherryl Jordan’s novel: maybe in 1997, when Jenny Shipley became prime minister, or 1999, when Helen Clark was elected. The unforgettable protagonist, Elsha of the Quelled, would have been another model of female leadership in a patriarchal world. I wonder if 14-year-old Jacinda Ardern read Winter of Fire the year it came out? It might have been inspiring.

Tagged with: Amy Brown, Issue 128, Scholastic, Sherryl Jordan, Summer 2019
Posted in Imprints, Review

Back to the future, Harvey Molloy

Posted on November 29, 2019 by NZ Books

Where We Land
Tim Jones
The Cuba Press, $22.00,
ISBN 9781988595023

Īnangahua Gold
Kathleen Gallagher
KingFisher Publishing $30.00
ISBN 978047345945I

Small presses continue to publish some of our most exciting new fiction. Both Where We Land and Īnangahua Gold take us away from present-day New Zealand. In doing so, they ask us to consider where we have come from and where we are going.

Tagged with: Harvey Molloy, Issue 128, Kathleen Gallagher, KingFisher Publishing, Summer 2019, The Cuba Press, Tim Jones
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Lies and damned lies, Gyles Beckford

Posted on August 26, 2019 by NZ Books

Truthteller
Stephen Davis
Exisle Publishing, $30.00,
ISBN 9781925335897

“Aren’t we all investigative journalists?” my colleague asked, as we lamented the quality of the coffee at an early hour in the newsroom kitchen.
“We’d all like to think so,” I replied. “But some of us are more investigative than others, perhaps.”

It was one of those innocent, non-committal exchanges prompted by the question, “What are you up to?”

At the base of my colleague’s question, of course, was the presumption that all journalists ask questions, investigate, probe, take nothing for granted, look for the spin, the obfuscation, the smokescreens … the bullshit.

Tagged with: Exisle Publishing, Gyles Beckford, Issue 127, Spring 2019, Stephen Davis
Posted in Media, Non-fiction, Review

Letters – Issue 127

Posted on August 26, 2019 by NZ Books

Downsizing We hear about the problems of empty nesters, but seldom the difficulties of the bibliophile facing the downsizing of their book collections and the heartache that can ensue. Jane Westaway’s “Cohabiting Libraries” (NZRB Winter 2019) is an apt, amusing…

Tagged with: Issue 127, Spring 2019
Posted in Letters

Watching the watchers, Ian F Grant

Posted on August 26, 2019 by NZ Books

Dead Letters: Censorship And Subversion In New Zealand 1914–1920
Jared Davidson
Otago University Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9781988531526

Dead Letters contains intriguing detail about a random cast of now-forgotten people who were considered likely subversives in New Zealand during WWI. For their stories to be told at all, we have to thank both the pedantically plodding public-servant compilers of long-buried files and author Jared Davidson, an archivist by trade, for his skill in researching and giving human faces to the consequences of a government obsessively prying into private lives at times of perceived national crisis.

Tagged with: Ian F Grant, Issue 127, Jared Davidson, Otago University Press, Spring 2019
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, War

Diplomat, translator, academic … Ken Ross

Posted on August 26, 2019 by NZ Books

From Cairo To Cassino: A Memoir Of Paddy Costello
Dan Davin
Cold Hub Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9780473474485

Paddy Costello’s forte was Russian scholarship. Dan Davin’s was academic publishing. Each acquired other formidable reputations by which they are better known to New Zealanders: Davin as a fiction writer, though his masterly tome Crete (1953) is a war history, and Costello as a Soviet spy, which he was not.

Tagged with: Cold Hub Pres, Dan Davin, Issue 127, Ken Ross, Paddy Costello, Spring 2019
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review