Blog Archives

Can you believe what they say? New novels and recent history, John Needham:

Besides Myself Russell Haley Penguin, Auckland, 1990, $19.95 Night at the Embassy Elizabeth Smither Auckland University Press, 1990, $24.95 Newlands Gary Langford Penguin, Auckland, 1990, $19.95 Like a lot of middle-aged men, Midge, the out-of-work hero-narrator of Russell Haley’s latest novel,

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Understated revelations, Doreen D’Cruz

Girls High Barbara Anderson Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1990, $24.95 Barbara Anderson willingly allowed her mettle as a storyteller to be tested when she located her stories in the familiar physical environment of a Girls’ High School. This is a

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Scorching scrutiny, Roger Robinson

The Burning Boy Maurice Gee Viking, Auckland, 1990, $39.95 The Burning Boy does for Nelson what Bonfire of the Vanities did for New York. It submits, that is, a community to scorching scrutiny. It constructs a narrative form exactly appropriate to embody and

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Posted in Literature

Double lives, Sarah Sandley

Double Lives Heather Murray University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 1990, $29.95 Heather Murray wonders why Katherine Mansfield does not allow her fictional characters to lead the kind of ‘modern’, independent and rebellious life that Mansfield herself is supposed to have

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Myth-busting, Harry Ricketts

The Penguin History of New Zealand Literature Penguin Books Auckland, 1990, $24.95 ‘The story of New Zealand literature is a chapter of accidents,’ declares Patrick Evans in the introduction to his History of New Zealand Literature. ‘It is the provisional nature of

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Posted in Literature, Review

On the road, Kevin Ireland

The Car in New Zealand Graham Hawkes G P Books, Wellington, 1990, $49.95 Cars in particular, and machinery in general, have not featured in New Zealand novels in the way that they have so importantly served American, Australian and English

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review

Waves and ripples, Melanie Nolan

The Oxford Illustrated History of New Zealand Keith Sinclair (ed), Oxford University Press, 1990, $59.95 The People and The Land. Te Tangata Me Te Whenua Judith Bassett, Judith Binney, Erik Olssen Allen and Unwin/ Port Nicholson Press, Wellington, 1990, $59.95 History publishers

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Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Review

What about the workers? A historical view, John Roberts

The Forgotten Worker: The Rural Wage Worker in Nineteenth Century New Zealand  John E Martin, Allen and Unwin/Trade Union History Project, Wellington, 1990, $35.95 New Zealand Working People 1890-1990 Stevan Eldred-Grigg Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, 1990, $34.95   Nuclear Free:

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review, Sociology

Editorial – Issue 1

J M Thomson: Books in society   Over the past decade New Zealand books have increasingly won international renown. Books are one of our chief cultural assets however undervalued they may be by economic policy makers. This publication appears at

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Issue 1 | April 1991

  Volume 1 | Number 1 | Issue 1 | April 1991  Editorial, J M Thomson: “Books in society” John Roberts: John E Martin, The Forgotten Worker – The Rural Wage Worker in Nineteenth Century New Zealand; Stevan Eldred-Grigg, New

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