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A complicated relationship, Thom Conroy

The Ice Shelf
Anne Kennedy
Victoria University Press, $30.00,
ISBN 9781776562015

What role does a book invite me to accept as its reader? I need not comply with a book’s request, of course, but I’m bound to recognise or, at the very least, consider the question when beginning a review. Never an advocate of unnecessary terminology, the critic Wayne Booth used the term “friendship” to describe this relationship between what a book asks of us as readers and our response to that request. Anne Kennedy’s latest novel, The Ice Shelf, makes some strenuous demands on its readers and promises an intense – if intensely muddled – friendship in return.

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

The mess we’re in, Anne Kennedy

Lifting
Damien Wilkins
Victoria University Press, $30.00,
ISBN 9781776561025

In the opening scene of Lifting, Amy, a department store detective, is pursuing a “Person of Interest” (POI) – a ubi-quitous, parka-wearing woman who is probably about to nick the wallets she has in her hand – when the POI stops to gaze at the indoor fountain, and the cat-and-mouse game pauses. Amy has noticed that lots of people hover at the fountain in Cutty’s store, not just because indoor water has “a terrible magic … might flow out and wreck things”, but for the opulent statue at its centre, a bronze Mercury, the Roman god (we are reminded) of “commerce, poetry and theft”. Despite the poor guy having been puritanically castrated years before, he remains focal in the store, with his winged feet and helmet, his attendant serpents.

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Posted in Fiction, Literature

Mending and pairing, Heather Roberts

The Writing Class Stephanie Johnson Random House, $38.00, ISBN 9781775532590 The Last Days of the National Costume Anne Kennedy Allen and Unwin, $37.00, ISBN 9781743313862 Two writers of a similar age and stage in the development of their writing careers,

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Memories, Möbius strips and Morse code, Elizabeth Crayford

Common Land Lynn Davidson Victoria University Press, $28.00, ISBN 9780864737601 The Darling North Anne Kennedy Auckland University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9781869405939 Birds of Clay Aleksandra Lane Victoria University Press, $30.00, ISBN 9780864737588 “Common Land is possibly the most successful mix

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Unearthly mapmaking, Anna Jackson

Dreamhunter  Elizabeth Knox HarperCollins, $24.95, ISBN 0732281938 The Time of the Giants Anne Kennedy Auckland University Press, $27.99, ISBN 1869403428 Maddigan’s Fantasia Margaret Mahy HarperCollins, $24.95, ISBN 1869505611 Maddigan’s Fantasia opens with Garland Maddigan’s note to herself, “Written down things

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Young adults

Eczema and ampersands, Janet Hughes

Sing-song  Anne Kennedy Auckland University Press, $24.95, ISBN 1869402952 Electric Yachts Tony Beyer Puriri Press, $26, ISBN 0908943253 Nonsense Nick Ascroft Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864734514 Imagine a sequence of 80-odd poems centred on a case of eczema. That’s

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

The sadness of the incomplete, Elizabeth Caffin

A Boy and his Uncle Anne Kennedy Picador $24.95 ISBN 0 33036057 4 Leave Before You Go Emily Perkins Picador $24.95 ISBN 0 33037204 1 In the opening pages of both these novels is that journey we all are heir

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Map of the Heart, Lee Wallace

Musica Ficta Anne Kennedy, Auckland University Press, $24.95   Now, to the scandal of men, women are prophesying. So runs the epigraph of Anne Kennedy’s Musica Ficta, though quite what scandal the novel involves remains a puzzle. In so far as it frames

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