A Dangerous Vine Barbara Ewing Penguin, $29.95, ISBN 0 316 64691 1 In expatriate innocence Barbara Ewing has done what Pakeha writers in this country have learnt they must not do. A novel about race relations, full of colourful Maori…
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Blog Archives
Sidelong reflections, Norman Bilbrough
All Done With Mirrors Russell Haley Hazard Press, $24.95, ISBN 1 877161 68 3 This is the sort of novel you could search through – in vain – for a narrative skeleton: the firm coat-hanger from which the story is…
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Tagged with: Hazard Press, Issue 43, Norman Bilbrough, Russell Haley
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
“The muddled dailiness of things”, Stuart Murray
Doubtful Sounds: Essays and Interviews Bill Manhire Victoria University Press, $34.95, ISBN 0 86473 370 4 The Canadian poet Douglas Barbour once wrote that Bill Manhire’s poetry displays a “duplicitous unwillingness to guarantee anything”, a feature he felt to be…
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Tagged with: Bill Manhire, Issue 43, Stuart Murray, Victoria University Press
Posted in Essays, Literature
Posted in Essays, Literature
Derrida Downunder, Michael Peters
Our very own grande dame, Ginette MacDonald
Davina: An Acting Life Davina Whitehouse Reed, $34.95, ISBN 0 7900 0706 1 That much bandied-about word “Icon” is used rather too often in New Zealand to deify anyone who has stuck their head over the punga pallisade, who in…
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Tagged with: Davina Whitehouse, Ginette MacDonald, Issue 43, Reed
Posted in Autobiography, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Autobiography, Non-fiction, Review
Collier reclaimed, Jane Clendon
Edith Collier: Her Life and Work 1885-1964 Joanne Drayton, Canterbury University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0 908812 90 6 Edith Collier left New Zealand in 1913 in order to study art in London. (Ironically, she arrived there just in time to…
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Tagged with: Canterbury University Press, Edith Collier, Issue 43, Jane Clendon, Joanne Drayton
Posted in Art, Biography, History, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Art, Biography, History, Non-fiction, Review
Erebus in the frame, Lydia Wevers
Printer’s ink in the veins, Vincent O’Sullivan
Eyewitness: A Memoir of Europe in the 1930s Geoffrey Cox University of Otago Press, $39.95, ISBN 1 877133 70 1 Sir Geoffrey Cox turns 91 this year, the last of that remarkable roll-call of New Zealanders whose only way out…
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Tagged with: Geoffrey Cox, Issue 43, University of Otago Press, Vincent O’Sullivan
Posted in Autobiography, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Autobiography, Non-fiction, Review
Flagship for conservation, Neville Peat
Kapiti Chris Maclean Whitcombe Press, $49.95, ISBN 0 473 06166 X A hilly chip off the old block, Kapiti Island lies alluringly close to the mainland – a Kapiti Coast landmark with a reputation considerably out of proportion to its…
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Tagged with: Chris Maclean, Issue 43, Neville Peat, Whitcombe Press
Posted in History, Natural History, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in History, Natural History, Non-fiction, Review
“Aha – data reduction!” James Brown
James Brown interviews Bill Manhire James Brown (JB): Accessible but elusive. A lot of people seem to like your poetry, but find it difficult. How conscious are you, when you write, of an audience? In other words, do you ever…
Posted in Comment