Blog Archives

Fresh frames, Lawrence Jones

Posted on September 1, 2012 by NZ Books

Gorse is Not People: New and Uncollected Stories Janet Frame Penguin, $40.00, ISBN 9780143567707 The title story of this posthumous collection touches a memory almost 30 years old: in 1984 reading An Angel at My Table, the second volume…

Tagged with: Issue 99, Janet Frame, Lawrence Jones, Penguin, Spring 2012
Posted in Autobiography, Literature, Non-fiction, Review, Short stories

Life in the bush, by the bay, Dougal McNeill

Posted on June 1, 2012 by NZ Books

Speaking Frankly: The Frank Sargeson Memorial Lectures 2003-2010 Sarah Shieff (ed) Cape Catley, $31.99, ISBN 9781877340277 Celebrating Katherine Mansfield: A Centenary Volume of Essays Gerri Kimber and Janet Wilson (eds) Palgrave Macmillan, $162.00, ISBN 9780230277731 It was a…

Tagged with: C K Stead, Cape Catley, Christine Cole Catley, Dougal McNeill, Frank Sargeson, Gerri Kimber, Issue 98, Janet Wilson, Katherine Mansfield, Lawrence Jones, Michael King, Owen Marshall, Palgrave Macmillan, Peter Wells, Sarah Shieff, Vincent O’Sullivan, Winter 2012
Posted in Essays, Lecture, Literature, Non-fiction, Review

Time capsule stories, Julian Novitz

Posted on March 1, 2009 by NZ Books

Beyond the Breakwater: Stories 1948-1998 O E Middleton (ed Lawrence Jones) Otago University Press, $49.95, ISBN 9781877372568 This large collection of O E Middleton’s short fiction spans 50 years of the author’s career and yet, on the surface, the style…

Tagged with: Autumn 2009, Issue 85, Julian Novitz, Lawrence Jones, O E Middleton, Otago University Press
Posted in Literature, Review, Short stories

Ironic projections, Lawrence Jones

Posted on December 1, 2007 by NZ Books

Small Holes in the Silence: Short Stories Patricia Grace Penguin, $34.99, ISBN 0143020994 Patricia Grace’s new collection, Small Holes in the Silence: Short Stories (her fifth), appeared last year. This was 31 years after Waiariki burst on the scene to…

Tagged with: Issue 80, Lawrence Jones, Patricia Grace, Penguin, Summer 2007
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Short stories

Telling moments, Lawrence Jones

Posted on June 1, 2006 by NZ Books

Collected Stories Barbara Anderson Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0864734980 In the “Author’s Note” prefacing her The Peacocks and Other Stories, Barbara Anderson said that she found “writing short stories requires a completely different technique from writing novels”, and that…

Tagged with: Barbara Anderson, Issue 74, Lawrence Jones, Victoria University Press, Winter 2006
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Short stories

Woman alone, Lawrence Jones

Posted on June 1, 2005 by NZ Books

The Captive Wife Fiona Kidman Vintage, $27.95, ISBN 1869416864 The title of The Captive Wife and the setting, New Zealand and Australia of the 1930s, lead us to expect a colonial captivity narrative, and it is present in Betty…

Tagged with: Fiona Kidman, Issue 70, Lawrence Jones, Vintage, Winter 2005
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Local and special, Stuart Murray

Posted on September 1, 2003 by NZ Books

Picking Up the Traces: The Making of a New Zealand Literary Culture 1932-1945 Lawrence Jones Victoria University Press, $49.94, ISBN 0864734557 Nationalism, and especially cultural nationalism, inhabits a position in contemporary culture that seems peculiarly complex. Easy to identify, yet…

Tagged with: Issue 63, Lawrence Jones, Spring 2003, Stuart Murray, Victoria University Press
Posted in History, Literature, Non-fiction, Review

Fingerprints over everything, Lawrence Jones

Posted on March 1, 2003 by NZ Books

Red Shoes Elizabeth Smither Godwit, $29.95, ISBN 18569621034 The Sea Between Us Elizabeth Smither Penguin, $27.95, ISBN 0143018590 Reviewing You’re Very Seductive William Carlos Williams 25 years ago, Lauris Edmond complained that in the poems we did not “feel that…

Tagged with: Autumn 2003, Elizabeth Smither, Godwit, Issue 61, Lawrence Jones, Penguin
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Poetry, Review

Variations on the familiar, Lawrence Jones

Posted on August 1, 2001 by NZ Books

Ellie and the Shadow Man Maurice Gee Penguin Books, $34.95, ISBN 0141004177 Responses to Maurice Gee’s Ellie and the Shadow Man, his fourteenth adult novel and his twenty-sixth book, will probably vary between the extremes marked by two of my…

Tagged with: August 2001, Autumn 2001, Issue 49, Lawrence Jones, Maurice Gee, Penguin Books
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Four to tango, Lawrence Jones

Posted on June 1, 2001 by NZ Books

Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance Lloyd Jones Penguin Books, $34.95, ISBN 014308183 No reader of Lloyd Jones’s last novel, The Book of Fame, Winner of the Deutz medal in 2001, would have been able…

Tagged with: Issue 54, Lawrence Jones, Lloyd Jones, Penguin Books, Winter 2001
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review