Blog Archives

How misleading it all is, K R Howe

The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific Paul Theroux, Hamish Hamilton, $34.95 The barrage of criticism that greeted this book in New Zealand needs to be ignored. The exception taken to Paul Theroux’s acerbic comments about New Zealanders and…
Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Non-fiction, Pacific, Review

The self-loathing of a Stead novel, Damien Wilkins

The End of the Century at the End of the World C K Stead, Harvill/ HarperCollins, $39.95 C K Stead has always suffered from a surfeit of lucidity. This may seem like a wrong-headed thing to say. Surely those values…
Tagged with: , , , , ,
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

True to principle, David Young

Peace People Elsie Locke, Hazard Press, $34.95 At the age of 80, Elsie Locke can look back on a life as a sometime communist (till 1956), environmentalist, peace campaigner, feminist and writer, and, contemplating a world so different from the…
Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology, War

Finding a solid footing here, Bernadette Hall

The Skinny Louie Book Fiona Farrell, Penguin, $24.95 Female morality is described by Marilyn French as being a web of relations, not a hierarchy of rules. It takes its strength from recognising connections and taking responsibility for them. It is…
Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Yes, but who let it become so? Colin James

New Zealand’s Constitution in Crisis: Reforming Our Political System Geoffrey Palmer, John McIndoe, $34.95 Electoral Behaviour In New Zealand Martin Holland (ed), Oxford University Press, $29.95 New Zealand Politics in Perspective (3rd Edition) Hyam Gold (ed), Longman Paul, $49.95 Sir…
Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

Jane Austen’s unlikely sister, Elizabeth Caffin

Cousins Patricia Grace, Penguin, $24.95 We now have the good fortune in New Zealand that a number of fiction writers can be relied on to produce a good book time after time – Jane Frame, Owen Marshall, Maurice Gee, and…
Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Pragmatists with principles, Shelagh Duckham Cox

Undeveloping Nation: New Zealand’s Twenty Year Fall Towards the Third World David McLoughlin, Penguin, $24.95 The Decent Society: Essays In Response to National’s Economic and Social Policies Jonathan Boston and Paul Dalziel (eds) Oxford University Press, $29.95 Controlling Interests: Business,…
Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review, Sociology

Be a festival, Keri Hulme

The Shark that Ate the Sun (Ko a Mago ne Kal a fa) John Puhiatau Pule, Penguin Books, $24.95 Can you adequately review a 294-page book – which is rich, allusive, poetic, partly epistolary, partly story‑chants from last century, partly…
Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Dinosaurs, doctors and daredevils, Dale Williams

Valley of the Dinosaurs: The Story of New Zealand’s Dinosaur Woman Joan Wiffen, Random Century, $19.95 (128 pp) When Joan Wiffen’s husband Pont became too ill to attend his geology night classes, this Hawke’s Bay housewife went in his place…
Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Autobiography, Biography, Memoir, Non-fiction, Review

Letters – Issue 7

Who loses? Dear Madam Editor, If what you say in your September Editorial about John Thomson is true, you ought to have fallen over backwards to retain his services. If what you say is untrue, you ought not to have…
Tagged with: ,
Posted in Letters
Search the archive
Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
Filter by Categories
Architecture
Art
Autobiography
Awards
Biography
Byline
Children
Comment
Contents
ebooks
Economics
Editorial
Education
Essays
Extract
Fiction
Gender
Graphic novel
Health
History
Imprints
Language
Lecture
Letters
Letters
Literature
Māori
Media
Memoir
Music
Natural History
Non-fiction
Obituaries
Opinion
Pacific
Photography
Plays
Poem
Poetry
Politics & Law
Psychology
Religion
Review
Science
Short stories
Sociology
Sport
War
YA Reviewers
Young adults
Recent issues: subscriber-only access

    Subscribe to NZ Books to access the issues above

    Search by category