The Honourable Maggie Barry, Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, addresses the state of the literary nation and looks to its future.
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Blog Archives
Putting the Treaty in a discursive context, Jim McAloon
Before Hobson
Tony Simpson
Blythswood Press, $38.00,
ISBN 9780473312848
Tony Simpson has been writing history for a general, rather than academic, readership for a long time and to good effect. His aim in this book is to situate the Treaty of Waitangi in a long-run context. Most studies of the Treaty deal with the first four decades of the 19th century as a prelude, to be got through as quickly as possible; conversely, many studies of New Zealand in the Tasman/Pacific context after 1769 or 1788 have the Treaty as a postscript. Simpson explores the period in considerable, and sometimes discursive, detail and his perspective is welcome.
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Tagged with: Blythswood Press, Issue 111, Jim McAloon, Spring 2015, Tony Simpson
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review
Issue 111 | Spring 2015
The place where stories begin, Paula Morris
Chappy
Patricia Grace
Penguin, $38.00,
ISBN 9780143572398
It’s over a decade since Patricia Grace’s last novel, the moving, cinematic Tu – an ambitious book about war and its temptations, adventures and devastations for the men who went and the families left behind. Sparked by the wartime diary of Grace’s father, a member of the Māori Battalion, Tu should be a major nation-defining motion picture by now (Grace has already adapted it for the theatre).
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Tagged with: Issue 111, Patricia Grace, Paula Morris, Penguin, Spring 2015
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
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 aims to entertain and to comfort above all, then Robertson has a foot on either side. Her previous three novels fall firmly in the popular fiction camp, but The Hiding Places is a compelling hybrid, a novel that attempts to hold a mirror up to the world, at the same time as delighting in eccentric English characters and mock-Tudor mansions.
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Tagged with: Black Swan, Catherine Robertson, Issue 111, Sarah Laing, Spring 2015
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review