Dead People’s Music Sarah Laing Vintage, $29.99, ISBN 9781869791087 Footnotes to Sex Mia Farlane Viking, $37.00, ISBN 9780670917938 Mother’s Day Laurence Fearnley Penguin, $28.00, ISBN 9780143011255 I am male, middle-aged, heterosexual and monogamous. The first two terms make me different…
The Crocus Hour Charlotte Randall Penguin Books, $28.00, ISBN 9780143008927 Whatever criticism you make of Charlotte Randall’s novels, you cannot say that she has no sense of place. In The Crocus Hour, as in her four earlier novels, she ventures…
Secret City Vivienne Plumb Cape Catley, $24.99, ISBN 090856189X Shot Sarah Quigley Virago, $34.95, ISBN 1860499635 What country am I in here? Characters get ideas from watching “5.30 With Jude”, there’s a reference to “old Maori guys”, and one of…
A Sort of Conscience – The Wakefields Philip Temple Auckland University Press, $69.95, ISBN 1869402766 Myth one about the Wakefields (enshrined in colonial textbooks of long ago). The Wakefields were a great founding family of New Zealand, and Edward Gibbon…
A Fair and Just Solution – a History of the Integration of Private Schools in New Zealand Rory Sweetman Dunmore Press, $34.95, ISBN 0864694148 Once upon a time there were, theoretically, two school systems in New Zealand. There were state…