Blog Archives

Lucky to survive, Nicholas Butler

Posted on March 11, 2015 by NZ Books

Greece Crete Stalag Dachau: A New Zealand Soldier’s Encounters with Hitler’s Army
Jack Elworthy
Awa Press, $40.00, ISBN 9781927249123

The Lost Pilot: A Memoir
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
Penguin, $40.00, ISBN 9780143568766

There is a void at the heart of both these WWII memoirs. In Greece Crete Stalag Dachau, it is the time Jack Elworthy spent in Stalag VIIIB, four of his five years at war but given just eight pages in the book, a time he’s tried to forget. In Holman’s book, it is the space left by his father, lost first to the Navy, then to the war, and later to drink, gambling, prison and, finally, cancer.

Tagged with: Autumn 2015, Awa Press, Issue 109, Jack Elworthy, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, Nicholas Butler, Penguin Books
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review

Chimes of conviction, David Hill

Posted on March 11, 2015 by NZ Books

How Does it Hurt?
Stephanie de Montalk
Victoria University Press, $40.00,
ISBN 9780864739698

What Lies Beneath: A Memoir
Elspeth Sandys
Otago University Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9781877578892

Give Us This Day: A Memoir of Family and Exile
Helena Wiśniewska Brow
Victoria University Press, $40.00,
ISBN 9780864739681

Somebody once wrote ponderously that some of the best fiction s/he’d read came in the form of memoirs. Actually, I think it was me. And I’m reminded of the anecdote about Jonathan Raban and Paul Theroux, after they met up while travelling around the United Kingdom gathering material. When Raban’s travel journal Coasting subsequently appeared, Theroux commented that every page gleamed with authenticity, except for Raban’s account of the afternoon they’d spent together. Theroux didn’t recognise that at all.

Tagged with: Autumn 2015, David Hill, Elspeth Sandys, Helena Wiśniewska Brow, Issue 109, Otago University Press, Stephanie de Montalk, Victoria University Press
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review

Poem – Jan FitzGerald

Posted on March 11, 2015 by NZ Books

The joy gatherers

Tagged with: Autumn 2015, Issue 109, Jan Fitzgerald
Posted in Poem

At the whim of larger, terrifying forces, Angelina Sbroma

Posted on March 11, 2015 by NZ Books

The Deadly Sky
David Hill
Puffin, $20.00, ISBN 9780143308157

The Red Suitcase
Jill Harris
Mākaro Press, $25.00, ISBN 9780994106902

Spark
Rachael Craw
Walker, $22.00, ISBN 9781922179623

David Hill’s The Deadly Sky is set in 1974, when the nuclear proliferation of the Cold War was at the forefront of political debate, and France was, quite literally, dropping bombs in the South Pacific. Modern global terror has a different focus (the Big Red Button seems old-fashioned from today’s perspective), but the ethical quandaries at the heart of the arms race – whether militarisation works to promote security or to endanger it; whether national and global security is worth its economic, ecological and individual cost – remain pertinent.

Tagged with: Angelina Sbroma, Autumn 2015, David Hill, Issue 109, Jill Harris, Mākaro Press, Puffin, Rachael Craw, Walker
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Young adults

Boys’ own adventures, Tina Shaw

Posted on March 11, 2015 by NZ Books

Singing Home the Whale
Mandy Hager
Random House, $20.00, ISBN 9781775536574

Magic and Makutu
David Hair
HarperCollins, $25.00, ISBN 9781869509330

If these two titles are anything to go by, New Zealand young adult fiction is in good shape. These are two very different novels, although both integrate Māori culture into the storyline, and both feature a boy as the main protagonist.

Tagged with: Autumn 2015, David Hair, HarperCollins, Issue 109, Mandy Hager, Random House, Tina Shaw
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Young adults

Gee-whizz, Roger Robinson

Posted on March 11, 2015 by NZ Books

Maurice Gee: A Literary Companion: Fiction for Young Readers
Elizabeth Hale (ed)
Otago University Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9781877578847

Maurice Gee published Under the Mountain in 1979. It was a success in print and on TV, but for some years it was possible to regard it, and his subsequent work for young readers, as a sideline, a paying Saturday morning job that freed him for the serious adult writing. Times have changed.

Tagged with: Autumn 2015, Elizabeth Hale, Issue 109, Maurice Gee, Otago University Press, Roger Robinson
Posted in Literature, Non-fiction, Review

Town and country, Brian Easton

Posted on March 11, 2015 by NZ Books

Growing Apart: Regional Prosperity in New Zealand
Shamubeel Eaqub
Bridget Williams Books, $15.00,
ISBN 9781927277614

When the Farm Gates Opened: The Impact of Rogernomics on Rural New Zealand
Neal Wallace
Otago University Press, $30.00,
ISBN 9781877578724

In the last hundred years, the median population centre of New Zealand has moved from near Nelson (which is at the geographic centre of New Zealand) to near Hamilton. The drift north has been remorseless, as has been the drift to the cities. A hundred years ago, one in two New Zealanders lived rurally; today it is one in six, fewer than those who live in Auckland.

Tagged with: Autumn 2015, Brian Easton, Bridget Williams Books, Issue 109, Neal Wallace, Otago University Press, Shamubeel Eaqub
Posted in Economics, Non-fiction, Review

Brave new worlds, Ian Lochhead

Posted on March 11, 2015 by NZ Books

Vertical Living: The Architectural Centre and the Remaking of Wellington
Julia Gatley and Paul Walker
Auckland University Press, $60.00,
ISBN 9781869408152

The very notion of so rapid and wholesale a change to a city’s fabric … is a high-risk undertaking, not unlike performing open-heart surgery with a Kango hammer. The feverish uncoordinated fingers of the city’s many, self-appointed quacks have ripped out flesh and transplanted organs with almost total disregard for the patient’s ability to survive in any recognisable form. Not surprisingly, the city is bleeding – badly – with many of its inhabitants in deep, post-operative shock.

Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Autumn 2015, Ian Lochhead, Issue 109, Julia Gatley, Paul Walker
Posted in Architecture, Non-fiction, Review

New waters, Emma Martin

Posted on March 11, 2015 by NZ Books

Reach
Laurence Fearnley
Penguin, $38.00,
ISBN 9780143571728

Novels about art sometimes also seem to be novels about novels. Laurence Fearnley’s latest work, Reach, not only explores the relationship between life and creative expression but also, in a sense, enacts it. It picks out recognisable elements of contemporary New Zealand life, shakes them around a little, turns them inside out, and searches for the meanings within.

Tagged with: Autumn 2015, Emma Martin, Issue 109, Laurence Fearnley, Penguin Books
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Beyond beige, John Newton

Posted on March 11, 2015 by NZ Books

A Rainbow Reader
Tessa Laird
Clouds, $25.00, ISBN 9780987659378

Plato, I learned recently from the wonderful Maggie Nelson (Bluets, 2009), wanted to banish not just the poets from his republic but also the painters. They were “mixers and grinders of multi-coloured drugs”; colour itself was a menace, a kind of narcotic. But then as David Batchelor argues in Chromophobia (2000), nothing much has changed in western culture in the intervening centuries. The closer you come to the domain of elite taste (the styliest bar, the most exclusive boutique) the more you are reminded that colour is not cool. Bright tones are for pimps and foreigners, for children, for primitives, for hippies and mad people. Who paints their living room other than off-white? Who goes to art school dressed in anything but black?

Tagged with: Autumn 2015, Clouds, Issue 109, John Newton, Tessa Laird
Posted in Art, History, Non-fiction, Review