Volume 20 | Number 1 | Issue 90 | Winter 2010 Letters Obituary: J C Sturm Martin Edmond: Gordon Brown, Towards a Promised Land: On the Life and Art of Colin McCahon Linley Boniface: “Frind of All Animals” (Imprints)…
Looking For Answers: A Life of Elsie Locke Maureen Birchfield Canterbury University Press, $69.95, ISBN 9781877257803 Writing a biography of someone with broad interests and a long and well-documented life is a real challenge. Lives are messy and sprawl without…
The Victims of Lightning Bill Manhire Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 0780864736222 When this commission came, I’d recently re-read Manhire’s poetry from Malady to Lifted and his prose – the clever fables of The New Land, somehow redolent of Diderot’s…
Collision Joanna Orwin HarperCollins, $36.99, ISBN 9781869507787 Banquo’s Son T K Roxborogh Penguin Books, $37.00, ISBN 9780143202493 The historical novel worldwide has possibly never enjoyed such a golden age as at present, with such remarkably diverse writers of quality as…
The Invention of New Zealand: Art and National Identity 1930-1970 Francis Pound Auckland University Press, $75.00, ISBN 1869404149 Francis Pound’s The Invention of New Zealand is an uneven and often quirky work but one with which anyone interested in the…
Marti Friedlander Leonard Bell Auckland University Press, $45.00, ISBN 9781869404444 What makes Marti Friedlander’s work such compelling viewing? Her work, even she herself, has taken on an iconic presence in the comfortable confines of our islands. And the photographs she…
The Wonky Donkey Craig Smith, music Craig Smith, illustrations Katz Cowley Scholastic, $24.99, ISBN 9781869439262 Old Hu-hu/Huhu Koroheke Kyle Mewburn, illustrations Rachel Driscoll Maori text Katerina Te Heikoko Mataira Scholastic, $18.99, ISBN 9781869435189 / 9781869438975 Piggity-Wiggity Jiggity Jig Goes to…
Copper Top Coral Atkinson Dancing Tuatara, $20.00, ISBN 9781877192388 Real Life Ella West Longacre Press, $19.99, ISBN 9781877460395 Brother Sister Soldier Cousin Phyllis Johnston Longacre Press, $17.99, ISBN 9781877460319 Three novels about teenage girls disconnected from their families and trying…