Somebody Loves Us All Damien Wilkins Victoria University Press, $38.00, ISBN 9780864736161 The title of Damien Wilkins’ sixth novel, Somebody Loves Us All, comes from a line by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. The poem is called “Filling Station”…
Ned and Katina: A True Love Story Patricia Grace Penguin Books, $40.00, ISBN 9780143007401 Who could resist a love story set on Crete in 1945? Obviously Patricia Grace couldn’t. The celebrated author was approached by Ned’s and Katina’s family with…
Letters on the Go: The Correspondence of Suzanne Aubert Jessie Munro (ed) Bridget Williams Books, $69.99, ISBN 9781877242427 In 1922, 87-year-old Suzanne Aubert wrote to a Raetihi farmer: Dear Mr Punch Your valuable present of another truck-load of firewood arrived…
Plume of Bees: A Literary Biography of C K Stead Judith Dell Panny Cape Catley, $39.99, ISBN 9781877340239 Modernism, born in the era of wars and revolutions, grew on contradiction. Centred in London, none of its greatest writers were English.…
The Trowenna Sea Witi Ihimaera Penguin Books, $37.00, ISBN 9780143202455 First, let’s deal with the distractions. Unless you were living under a rock in the latter part of 2009, you will be aware that Witi Ihimaera found himself in a…
The voice on the page, Jocelyn Harris
Was Jane Austen a plagiarist? Jocelyn Harris investigates. Creative writers present their texts as singularly their own. Readers, in return for what Coleridge called the willing suspension of disbelief, expect to be delighted and surprised by their freshness. But if…
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