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Women past and present, Kim Worthington

Women Equality Power: Helen Clark: Selected Speeches from a Life of Leadership
Allen and Unwin, $45.00,
ISBN 9781988547053

Women Now: The Legacy of Female Suffrage
Bronwyn Labrum (ed)
Te Papa Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9780994146007

If there was ever a year in which to publish a collection of Helen Clark’s speeches, 2018 was it. This was, after all, the year in which New Zealand celebrated the 125th anniversary of the granting of female suffrage, the first nation in the world to do so. This not only gave women the right to vote, but ultimately led to women being able to enter parliament (although this took a further 30-odd years) – and finally become leaders of the nation. It was also the year in which one of Clark’s Labour Party mentees, Jacinda Ardern, became our third female New Zealand prime minister, gave birth while in office and, after a very short period of maternity leave, resumed her professional role. This is not irrelevant to both books under review – Ardern writes the foreword to Clark’s collected speeches, is mentioned more than once in Clark’s later speeches, and in Women Now. 2018 was also the year in which the #MeToo movement gained its most traction worldwide, something that is referred to several times in both books under review.

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Posted in Essays, Gender, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Plotting outside the rules, Kim Worthington

The Bright Side of my Condition Charlotte Randall Penguin, $30.00, ISBN 9780143570660 Charlotte Randall’s many strengths don’t, in general, extend to the provision of compelling plots. Tellingly, in an interview, she states, “I don’t really believe in ‘stories’ ”, and has

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Framing herself, Kim Worthington

Towards Another Summer Janet Frame Vintage, $30.00, ISBN 1869418689 In the months leading up to last year’s posthumous release of Towards Another Summer, a novel written almost 45 years earlier, we learned only that Janet Frame deemed it “too embarrassingly

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Outside the shadow, Kim Worthington

Janet Frame The extensive media attention given to Janet Frame’s death in January is utterly fitting for one who may well be our country’s greatest writer and is certainly our most distinguished, having been seriously considered for the Nobel Prize

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Posted in Comment

Forerunner or footnote? Kim Worthington

Mason: The Life of R A K Mason Rachel Barrowman Victoria University Press, $49.95, ISBN 0864734638 Many people will be familiar with the broad outline of the life of the man Allen Curnow called New Zealand’s “first wholly original, unmistakably

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Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review

Making light of it, Kim Worthington

Light Readings Fiona Farrell Vintage, $24.95, ISBN 1869414578 It is perhaps a commonplace to note that at no point in history have we relied so heavily on the written word, or been such avid readers: of e-mail, junk mail, the

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Posted in Literature, Review, Short stories

Domesticating Derrida, Kim Worthington

Derrida Downunder ed Laurence Simmons and Heather Worth Dunmore Press, $39.95, ISBN 0864693745 Jacques Derrida’s visit to New Zealand, for the Derrida Downunder Conference organised by Auckland University in 1999, was certainly an event worthy of commemoration in print. This was

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Posted in Literature, Non-fiction, Review

Seeing through words, Kim Worthington

The Inhabited Initial Fiona Farrell Auckland University Press, $27.95, ISBN 1 86940 215 4 as far as I can see Michele Leggott Auckland University Press, $19.95, ISBN 1 86940 217 0 The Inhabited Initial, Fiona Farrell’s second collection of poetry

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Mixing memory and desire, Kim Worthington

Dismemberment Kapka Kassabova Auckland University Press, $19.95, ISBN 1 86940 207 3 Reconnaissance Kapka Kassabova Penguin, $24.95, ISBN 0 14 028343 0 Marked as a new talent to watch, Kapka Kassabova has received extensive media attention in the past two

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Poetry, Review

Familiar contours, Kim Worthington

The Snowball Waltz Renée Penguin, $24.95, ISBN 0 140 26885 5 A Tale of Spite and Rancour Josie Mune Penguin, $24.95, ISBN 0 140 26714 X Gingerbread Husbands Barbara Else Godwit, $24.95, ISBN 1 86962 016 X Dreams of America

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
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