Blog Archives

“Lashings of empathy”, Tina Shaw

From the Ashes Deborah Challinor HarperCollins, $37.00, ISBN 9781460754122 What You Wish For Catherine Robertson Black Swan, $38.00, ISBN 9780143772811 Discovering that From the Ashes is a sequel to Fire, Challinor’s 2006 novel, makes sense of this novel’s title. Fire…
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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Darkening and deepening, Catherine Robertson

Through the Lonesome Dark Paddy Richardson Upstart Press, $35.00, ISBN 9781927262986 Paddy Richardson takes a risk with her latest novel. By setting it in Blackball, a mining town on the West Coast in the early 1900s, she raises expectations of…
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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Knowing one another, Maggie Trapp

The Beat of the Pendulum: A Found Novel Catherine Chidgey Victoria University Press, $35.00, ISBN 9781776561704 Tess Kirsten McDougall Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9781776561001 Gabriel’s Bay Catherine Robertson Black Swan, $38.00, ISBN 9780143771456 Imaginative writing takes the hurly-burly of…
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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

The Sharp end of the stick, Catherine Robertson

Novelist and reviewer Catherine Robertson takes the pulse of local book reviewing “Tame, dull, lazy, cowardly and predictable” is how Iain Sharp described New Zealand’s book reviewers in an opinion piece for website The Spinoff (March 23). He called for…
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Posted in Comment

Tea and comfort, Sarah Laing

The Hiding Places Catherine Robertson Black Swan, $37.00, ISBN 9781775536420 Where is the line between popular and literary fiction? If the latter is rich with poetic language and literary references, then Catherine Robertson has crossed it. But if popular fiction…
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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Ticking on by, Catherine Robertson

Carnival Sky Owen Marshall Vintage, $38.00 ISBN 9781775535827 The White Clock Owen Marshall Otago University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9781877578632 Both of Marshall’s latest works centre on confrontations with mortality, and both do a fine job of showing that these are…
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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Dizzy rascal, Catherine Robertson

Disraeli’s Daughter Catherine Styles Steele Roberts, $30.00, ISBN 9781877577963 Catherine Styles’s grandmother, Kate, was the illegitimate daughter of Benjamin Disraeli. Under his instructions, she was married off and banished to the colonies in order to avoid any stain on his…
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Posted in History, Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
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