Blog Archives

With the seams showing, Vivienne Shakespear

After Robert Sarah Quigley Penguin, $24.95, ISBN 0 14 028437 0 Halley and Claudia, 20-year-olds living on opposite sides of the planet but “born under the same astrological influence” are stars set to collide in Sarah Quigley’s upbeat first novel,

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Auto-archaeology, Martyn Sanderson

Work in progress What am I doing in New Zealand Books? It’s intimidatingly illustrious company, especially for someone who’s never written a book. So let me just try to describe as simply and accurately as possible what I am in

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Posted in Extract

Letters – Issue 41

Glover glitches My attention has been drawn to C K Stead’s review (June issue) of Denis Glover: His Life and to Mark Pirie’s letter of the following issue (August) in which he notes Stead’s lapse over Louis Johnson’s “Magpie and

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Posted in Letters

Cracking it, Jane Westaway

Jane Westaway interviews Barbara Else Some time in the early 90s, six Wellingtonians met for dinner. The only one who earned an honest living was left to study the wallpaper while the other five – all writers past the first

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Posted in Comment

Open and closed research Peter Munz

Decolonizing Methodologies. Research and Indigenous Peoples Linda Tuhiwai Smith University of Otago Press, $39.95, ISBN 1 877133 67 1 This book is likely to obfuscate politico-social debates in New Zealand because it maintains that acquiring knowledge about indigenous peoples, as

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Posted in Non-fiction, Sociology

The archaeology of childhood, Jack Lasenby

Desert Shorts Norman Bilbrough Canterbury University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0 908812 81 7 The first paragraphs of Norman Bilbrough’s title story catch the moment when the boy-child’s uncritical admiration of the parent turns to youthful embarrassment – so like and

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Short stories

Poem – James Brown

Discourse / Counter-Discourse In the garden, the washing line fell into disuse. First the women forgot how to remove stains, then they forgot cloth altogether. They danced in celebration – blood and chocolate everywhere. Gradually, they forgot a lot of

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Posted in Poem

Number-8-wire memoirs, Nicholas Reid

Don’t Let It Get You John O’Shea Victoria University Press, $39.95, ISBN 0 86473 356 9 First the photos. One hundred and sixty-four of them by my count. Not including the cover illustrations, but including every shot (and the complete

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Posted in Media, Non-fiction, Review

Editorial – Issue 41

Happy New Millennium By the time this issue appears, a new government will have been elected; most New Zealanders will have begun to recover from the humiliations of the World Cup; a much smaller number (we suspect) will be looking

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Our very own “Queen of Hearts”, Jane Bowron

Holmes Paul Holmes Hodder Moa Beckett, $44.95, ISBN 1 86958 758 8 There is something to be said for writing your autobiography at the end of your innings. A life recorded by those who have lived to the fullness of

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Posted in Autobiography, Non-fiction, Review
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