Blog Archives

Ships that can sink without trace, Roger Robinson

The Faber Book of Contemporary South Pacific Stories C K Stead (ed), Faber & Faber, distributed in New Zealand by Penguin, $39.95 This is the riskiest review I’ve done since I got stuck with The Satanic Verses. Worse, really; I’d

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , ,
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Short stories

Right up there with Frame and McCahon, John Roberts

Jane Campion (dir), The Piano   At irregular, generally long, intervals, works of great force emerge from the ruck of creative aspiration. They mark a new manifestation of the power inherent in different forms of art. They challenge comfortable assumptions

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , ,
Posted in Comment

Objects that look like books, Brian Easton

Performance Without Profit: The Voluntary Welfare Sector in New Zealand Gary Hawke and David Robinson (eds), Institute of Policy Studies, $25.00 Women and Taxation Claudia Scott (ed), Institute of Policy Studies, $25.00 From Birth to Death III Judith Davey, Institute

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

Part of the democratic pantomime: An edited transcript of the 1993 Shelley Lecture, Margaret Mahy

Some years ago I wrote a children’s story called A Work of Art in which a woman made a particularly beautiful cake. Two gentlemen, proprietors of an inner-city art gallery, see it through the window, and ask if they may

See more ›

Tagged with: , ,
Posted in Comment

Digging through the permafrost, Stephen Levine

Season of Discontent: By-elections and the Bolger Government Raymond Miller and Helena Catt, Dunmore Publishing, 1993, $29.95 The “season of discontent” to which this book refers began within weeks of National’s victory in October 1990. When the Bolger Government found

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , ,
Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

A frightening, different creativity, Anne French

The Inward Sun: Celebrating the Life and Work of Janet Frame Elizabeth Alley (ed), Daphne Brasell Associates Press, $34.95 Perhaps the worst fate a writer can suffer is to have their life talked about while their work is ignored. If

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , ,
Posted in Biography, Literature, Non-fiction, Review

Poem — Julie Leibrich

The Jug   Almost an indecent act. Indelicate at least. Yet as I wash away three hundred years of grime I speed through light years of combustion. Past the wars, the Regency and all the Georges strung in line to

See more ›

Tagged with: , ,
Posted in Poem

Here and now, Tom Beard

Scenes from a Small City Lauris Edmond, Daphne Brassell Associates, $24.95   Lauris Edmond’s poems have always conveyed a strong sense of time and place, so it is no surprise that in a volume based around life in Wellington the

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Making women’s past accessible, Barbara Brookes

Standing in the Sunshine: A history of New Zealand Women Since They Won the Vote Sandra Coney, Penguin Books, $59.95 Women’s history, once a marginal pursuit and still not entirely integrated into the academy, is popular. Each year, and particularly

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Gender, History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

A quite atypical farm, Tom Brooking

Imperial Patriot: Charles Alma Baker and the History of Limestone Downs Barrie Macdonald, Bridget Williams Books, $59.95 One of the strangest features of New Zealand’s written history is that the rural sector has been relatively neglected. Even though farming, apart

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , ,
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review
Search the archive
Search by category