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Maurice Shadbolt

Maurice Shadbolt 1932-2004 Writer Maurice Shadbolt died in Taumaranui in October after a long illness. He worked as a journalist and a scriptwriter before going to Europe in the late 50s. Two years later he published his first book, a

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Posted in Obituaries

Full lives and f words, William Taylor

Malcolm and Juliet Bernard Beckett Longacre Press, $18.95, ISBN 1877135941 Out of Tune Joanna Orwin Longacre Press, $18.95, ISBN 1877135909 Coming Back  David Hill Mallinson Rendel, $16.95, ISBN 0908783868 Dark Penelope Todd Longacre Press, $18.95, ISBN 1877135968 On a Good

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Young adults

Letters – Issue 66

One of the Porlock people Patrick Evans makes a convincing argument in the most recent Journal of New Zealand Literature (“Dr Clutha’s Book of the World: Janet Patterson Frame, 1924-2004”) that “taking control of her own life-story” was a significant

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Posted in Letters

Life in detail, Lydia Wevers

Letters from the Bay of Islands: The Story of Marianne Williams ed Caroline Fitzgerald Penguin, $39.95, ISBN 0143019295 It is always the detail of the past that brings it most sharply to mind. William Colenso’s observation in the 1880s that

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Posted in History, Letters, Non-fiction, Review

Moments of triumph, Joan Rosier-Jones

Transit of Venus Rowan Metcalfe Huia, $31.95, ISBN 1869690834 Love in Shades of Grey Glynne MacLean Penguin, $28.00, ISBN 0143019309 Like Small Bones Ruth Pettis Hazard Press, $24.99, ISBN 1877270784 A first novel does not just appear. It is usually the

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Remorse in the stands, Susan Bartel

Jonah: My Story Warren Adler Hodder Moa Beckett, $35.50, ISBN 1869589793 How to Watch a Game of Rugby Spiro Zavos Awa Press, $19.00, ISBN 0958250936 First sentence: “The booing and the jeering of the Wellington crowd rang in my ears.”

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Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review, Sport

Poem – Tim Jones

The Translator   Shutting out the torment and the fear deep into the night’s cold morning hours I work on my translation. Improbable, that in another tongue such lines as these were born, set down, are vivid on his page

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Posted in Poem

JMT rules, ok, Laurence Jenkins

John Mansfield Thomson: Notes towards a Biography ed Margaret Clark with Jim Collinge and Martin Lodge Steele Roberts, $39.95, ISBN 1877228923 Those of us who crossed paths with John Mansfield Thomson, and there are legions, inevitably came away from any

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Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review

For God, King and country, Chris Else

Tu  Patricia Grace Penguin, $35, ISBN 0143019201 Certain battles mark themselves on the popular imagination. The most evocative are often not great victories but failed assaults, especially those with a touch of futility about them: the Charge of the Light

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Kiwi footprints, Duncan Campbell

Embracing the Dragon: A Woman’s Journey Along the Great Wall of China Polly Greeks Awa Press, $29.95, ISBN 095825091X Kidnapped in Yemen Mary Quin Random House, $29.95, ISBN 1869416228 Travel elsewhere, we’ve long been told, broadens the mind through an

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Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
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