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Issue 57 | March 2003

  Volume 13 | Number 1 | Issue 57 | March 2003 Joan de Hamel: Sandy McKay, Recycled and My Dad the All Black; Vince Ford, The Dare Club; Jan Thorburn, Stranded; Jack Lasenby, Aunt Effie Editorial A farewell Letters

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Capitalists or cavaliers, Stevan Eldred-Grigg

No Idle Rich; The Wealthy in Canterbury & Otago 1840-1918 Jim McAloon University of Otago Press, $39.95, ISBN 1877276235 Rich and poor have always fought a war of words – turning at times to fists, batons and cavalry charges –

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review

Bad girls and bright boys, Raymond Huber

No Alarms Bernard Beckett Longacre, $16.95, ISBN 1877135755 Spider William Taylor Longacre, $16.95, ISBN 1877135607 These two young adult novels are character studies that reveal both the desperation and the potential of the teenage years. No Alarms is a fast-paced,

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Young adults

Nudging the unsuitable, Cilla McQueen

How To Make A Million Emma Neale Godwit, $22.95, ISBN 18692100X The Unfortunate Singer Rachel Bush Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864734360 My reading’s re-creation, via language, of another poet’s perceptions, thoughts, aural sensibility and verbal skill, allows me a

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Against cupidity, Ian Johnstone

Five Holocausts Derek J Wilson Steele Roberts, $59.95, ISBN 1877228419 It’s been a drawn-out business preparing this review. For the first week after the great volume (472 pages long) bumped through the letterbox, it sat on the window sill, glowering

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Wicketkeeping religion, Neville Emslie

Spirit in a Strange Land (2002), edited by Paul Morris, Harry Ricketts, and Mike Grimshaw, is, apparently, the first anthology of New Zealand poetry to focus on “our spiritual experience”. The collection is a delight and a surprise. The appearance

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Far and near: some thoughts on the poetry of Bill Sewell, Brian Turner

Fair-minded people like to see others given their due. That has been my experience, although I’ve often wondered about just what percentage of such fair-mindeds there are, especially in literary circles. Most writers I know have a list of other

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Posted in Comment, Obituaries

The gods gathering, John Dickson

Valparaiso Bob Orr Auckland University Press, $21.95, ISBN 1869402820 Human Scale Tony Beyer Sudden Valley Press, $16.95, ISBN 0958368481 The first time I read these two books, I read fast to find out whether I would want to read them

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Editorial – Issue 57

Poetry reviewing and the art of dullness Reviewing poetry is hard, harder probably than any other kind of reviewing. With fiction, there are (usually) characters and a plot to provide a starting point. With history, ecology, or economics, there are

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Man in the dock, Lynley Hood

The Trials of Eric Mareo Charles Ferrall & Rebecca Ellis Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0864734328 Some crimes touch a collective nerve, trigger a collective outrage. The high-pitched intensity of the debate – the foam-flecked arguments, the inflammatory media stories,

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review
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