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Women’s histories, Elizabeth Crayford

Posted on June 6, 2018 by NZ Books

The Ventricle of Memory
Shelagh Duckham Cox, 
Shelagh Duckham Cox Co, $35.00,
ISBN 9780473363864

Casting Off
Elspeth Sandys
Otago University Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9780947522551

Shelagh Duckham Cox’s memoir, The Ventricle of Memory, begins in June 1940. Aged five, Shelagh and her younger siblings are on a train bound for north Wales, having left behind their substantial upper-middle-class home in Surrey, and “the people who used to look after our family”: the gardener, the gardener’s boy, nanny, housemaid, kitchen-maid and cook, as well as a much-loved grandmother. Her parents sit opposite them, and Shelagh watches her mother’s “secret smile” as she lights a cigarette, only to be interrupted by baby Katherine’s cry. “Do something,” her father says, and returns to his book.

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Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review

Biting wit, with an undertow of melancholy, Jim Mora

Posted on February 24, 2018 by NZ Books

Drawn Out: A Seriously Funny Memoir
Tom Scott
Allen and Unwin, $45.00,
ISBN 9781877505911

 

We all store trivial moments that hang around in the hippocampus for some sort of reason. I remember the late Kenny Everett on Capitol Radio in London back-announcing the song “Suspicious Minds” once. “I could have been Elvis”, he mused, “if only I’d had the talent, the looks and the voice.” Many of us who observe politics professionally to any extent have this sort of feeling when we compare our contributions with Tom Scott’s.

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The dangers of absolutism, John Larkindale

Posted on February 24, 2018 by NZ Books

Balancing Acts: Reflections of a New Zealand Diplomat
Gerald McGhie
Dunmore, $35.00
ISBN 978927212318

Friends and relations often suggest to diplomats following their retirement that they should write a book about their experiences. Not so, in my view; the world has little to gain from the reminiscences of run-of-the-mill former officials, no matter how personally interesting, quirky or even challenging their lives may have been. There are, of course, exceptions, especially in cases where the author was substantively involved in critical diplomatic events of the day. Into this category, I place memoirs such as Dean Acheson’s Present at the Creation, Anatoly Dobrynin’s In Confidence and, in a New Zealand context, Gerald Hensley’s Final Approaches.

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A bizarre, but very New Zealand, world, Jonathan Lane

Posted on February 24, 2018 by NZ Books

Daughter of Gloriavale: My Life in a Religious Cult
Lilia Tarawa
Allen and Unwin, $37.00,
ISBN 9781760631499

Lilia Tarawa’s memoir, Daughter of Gloriavale, paints her childhood somewhere between an idyllic summer camp in the country and the winged bonnets and forced procreation of The Handmaid’s Tale. Tarawa grew up in Gloriavale, a fundamentalist Christian community nestled in prime moss-growing conditions on the West Coast, subject of a recent set of TV2 documentaries. Gloriavale is managed by male elders, roles defined strictly by gender, and closed off from the world, except for occasional trips to the Gomorrahs of Greymouth and Christchurch. Tarawa is a granddaughter of the original founder, Hopeful Christian, who runs Gloriavale with an iron fist and a disturbing criminal record. 

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Art about sadness, Dylan Horrocks

Posted on February 24, 2018 by NZ Books

Out of the Woods: A Journey Through Depression and Anxiety
Brent Williams (Korkut Öztekin illus)
Educational Resources, $40.00,
ISBN 9780473390068

American cartoonist Keiler Roberts, whose comics have eloquently documented her own struggles with mental illness, recently wondered on Facebook about the usefulness of her art: “I think some of the best books about depression aren’t necessarily helpful during the process,” she wrote. “Is there any art… about depression or grief that has been helpful to you?”

Brent Williams’s and Korkut Öztekin’s graphic novel Out of the Woods is a valiant attempt to answer Roberts’s question in the affirmative. A deliberate mixture of personal memoir and self-help guide, its primary purpose is therapeutic.

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Posted in Art, Memoir, Non-fiction, Review

Peacetime at last, Helen Watson White

Posted on February 24, 2018 by NZ Books

Astride a Fierce Wind
Huberta Hellendoorn
Submarine, $38.00,
ISBN 9780473395216

Writing in retirement in the small Dunedin apartment she shares with her husband Bart, Huberta Hellendoorn characteristically uses a domestic metaphor to describe her ever-changing experience:

The revolving dryer reminds me of my life, the moving and whirling of complicated situations, sometimes sudden, other times slow in reaching a climax. Tossed about by circumstances that could only be fully acknowledged by the passing of time and often hard work.

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Brave writing, Charlotte Simmonds

Posted on September 10, 2017 by NZ Books

The Walking Stick Tree
Trish Harris
Escalator Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9780994118646

A Small Blue Thing
Julie Hanify
Submarine, $35.00,
ISBN 9780994123770

The Case of the Missing Body
Jenny Powell
Otago University Press, $30.00,
ISBN 9781877578311

What Does the Sea Sound Like?
Evie Mahoney
Mary Egan Publishing, $30.00,
ISBN 9780473367718

My friend Uther once called a play A Show About Superheroes, partly as a ploy to get non-theatre people into theatres, under the logic that there are people who will go to anything if it is about superheroes. Similarly, there are people who will read any book on certain topics.

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Making friends with Mansfield, Ashlee Nelson

Posted on May 28, 2017 by NZ Books

Mansfield and Me: A Graphic Memoir
Sarah Laing
Victoria University Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9781776560691

The graphic form is in some ways a more complex undertaking than straightforward prose, for a graphic text must concern itself not only with the words of the narrative, but the art. Even more than this, the words and the art in a good graphic work should add to the meaning of the text by the way the two work skilfully together. In Mansfield and Me: A Graphic Memoir, both the words and the art belong to Sarah Laing. Laing is a writer, a cartoonist, and a graphic designer by trade and she has applied her skills to each in a uniquely beautiful way. Nor is this the only synthesis accomplished by the book: Mansfield and Me is both a biography, of sorts, of Mansfield, and an autobiographical narrative.

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The scars remain; the story must be told,  Helena Wiśniewska Brow

Posted on May 28, 2017 by NZ Books

Budapest Girl: An Immigrant Confronts the Past
Panni Palásti
Matai River Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9780473343712

“Who wants to talk about the past anymore? And who wants to hear?” It’s a challenge to the author from a former Budapest schoolmate, one that haunts this memoir’s final pages. For Panni Palásti, though, it’s no deterrent; her friend’s reaction shows only the new cultural disconnect between them. “Vali’s 1944,” she writes, “is different from mine.”

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Writing about writing, Anne Else

Posted on March 8, 2017 by NZ Books

Talk of Treasure  Jane Carswell Submarine, $35.00, ISBN 9780994137913 How do you depict the process of writing? Very few of the many films about writers try to show their protagonist actually doing it. Doctor Zhivago demonstrates why: Omar Sharif sits…

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