City of Reeds Tina Shaw Penguin Books, $24.95, ISBN 014029791X City of Reeds, Tina Shaw’s third novel, is a large and accomplished work. It’s an example of a relatively new departure in New Zealand fiction: the story-telling novel. This sort…
The Better Part Meg Campbell Hazard Press, $21.95, ISBN 1877161276 Postscripts J C Sturm Steele Roberts, $19.95, ISBN 1877228354 It would be remiss of this reviewer not to note that these two women poets, who have their own growing reputations,…
The Beetle in the Box: a love story Chris Else Vintage, $24.95, ISBN 1869414527 Anyone who has sat on the selection panel for a writer’s fellowship knows that the worst thing applicants can do is include a bald précis of…
Talking Pictures: Selected Poems Riemke Ensing HeadworX, $26.95, ISBN 0473068044 The cover of Riemke Ensing’s latest collection sends mixed typographic signals. You read Selected Poems first, at the top; but it’s in italic, and grey, so it defers to the…
Magnitude Eight Plus: New Zealand’s Biggest Earthquake Rodney Grapes Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0864733400 Poor Baron Von Alzdorf, owner of Wellington’s largest brick building, a hotel, was the township’s only casualty in the earthquake which struck at 9.17 pm…
Love in the Land of Midas Kapka Kassabova Penguin, $29.95, ISBN 0140298797 I have to say, at the outset, that I enjoyed reading Kapka Kassabova’s second novel. It’s a good story, told in such a way as to keep the…
Left Turn: The New Zealand General Election of 1999 ed Jonathan Boston, Stephen Church, Stephen Levine, Elizabeth McLeay & Nigel S Roberts Victoria University Press, $39.95, ISBN 0864734042 Up the hill from Parliament, a clutch of Victoria University’s political scientists…