Blog Archives

“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

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

Making Art in words and paint

Posted on September 11, 2018 by NZ Books

Grahame Sydney, artist, recalls a significant book.

It lay beside my bed through most of my teenaged years, one of two constant companions of my privately turbulent adolescence. The other was Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit, and both paperbacks grew imperceptibly more battered with miles and years, finally so fragile in their sellotaped bandaging that pages worked free of their spinal gum. They were the only two books I took with me on my melancholy odyssey to England, dreaming of artistic stardom in early 1973, and I have them both still.

Tagged with: Grahame Sydney, Issue 123, Spring 2018
Posted in Imprints

Beginning with myths

Posted on May 28, 2017 by NZ Books

The novelist Hamish Clayton rereads Lloyd Jones’s The Book of Fame

I first read Lloyd Jones’s The Book of Fame soon after it had won the Deutz Medal for fiction, at the then-Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2001. It had been published the year before, not surprisingly, to critical acclaim. I barely remember reading any reviews at all when it first appeared, but I do remember the talk around the novel, the excited edge of the chatter about this book that felt different to almost anything else going around in local fiction at the time. As the judges of the Montana put it: “On any scale of originality this novel is in a class of its own.” It’s not hard to see why.

Tagged with: Hamish Clayton, Issue 118, Lloyd Jones, Winter 2017
Posted in Imprints

The longings of the placid, Mary McCallum

Posted on May 30, 2014 by NZ Books

Mary McCallum recalls the pleasures of The Wind in the Willows and traces its influence on her first children’s book

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.

Tagged with: Issue 106, Mary McCallum, Winter 2014
Posted in Imprints

Fireflies in the twilight, Gregory O’Brien

Posted on December 5, 2013 by NZ Books

Painter and poet Gregory O’Brien reflects on Jean Arp’s Collected French Writings. i was born in nature … i have four natures. i have two things. i have five senses. sense and non-sense. nature is senseless. make way for nature.…

Tagged with: Gregory O’Brien, Issue 104, Summer 2013
Posted in Imprints

Slow, sure meaning, Hamish Clayton

Posted on June 1, 2013 by NZ Books

Hamish Clayton reflects on The English Patient. “The first time she dreamed of him she woke up beside her husband screaming.” When I was 21, I wrote that line out dozens of times, by hand, into a battered school exercise…

Tagged with: Hamish Clayton, Issue 102, Winter 2013
Posted in Imprints

Bookshelf

Posted on June 1, 2013 by NZ Books

Non-fiction Diplomatic Ladies: New Zealand’s Unsung Envoys, Joanna Woods, Otago University Press, $50.00, ISBN 9781877578304 Using private letters and interviews, the author of Katerina: The Russian World of Katherine Mansfield (2001) writes about the wives and daughters who have…

Tagged with: Bookshelf, Issue 102, Winter 2013
Posted in Imprints

Hums, James Brown

Posted on December 1, 2011 by NZ Books

James Brown looks back at A A Milne’s classic books for children. The World of Pooh is my all-time favourite formative book. This is a collection containing A A Milne’s two Pooh books – Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh…

Tagged with: A A Milne, Issue 96, James Brown, Summer 2011
Posted in Children, Imprints, Literature

Not on the Cromwell Road, Margot Schwass

Posted on December 1, 2011 by NZ Books

Margot Schwass travels A Long Way from Verona with Jane Gardam. It was the school holidays; I was 12 or so, much given to moping about and staring fruitlessly out of windows when I had nothing to read. This of…

Tagged with: Issue 96, Jane Gardam, Margot Schwass, Summer 2011
Posted in Imprints, Literature, Young adults