Blog Archives
Wine, wisdom and so on: Four founders look back at the beginnings of New Zealand Books
Retrospective Shelagh Duckham Cox We met first in Lauris Edmond’s house at 22 Grass St in the middle of 1990 and the six of us – Lauris, John Mansfield Thomson, Pat Hawthorne, Vincent O’Sullivan, Martin Bond and Shelagh Duckham…
Tagged with: Issue 50, Martin Bond, October 2001, Pat Hawthorne, Shelagh Duckham Cox, Vincent O’Sullivan
Posted in Opinion
Posted in Opinion
Poem – W H Oliver
Blue Irises for Lauris Edmond After, appropriately, several false turnings and twice overshooting the mark I was there, on the shorn grass looking around at the hills uncertain, suitably too, which of the freshly turned patches of dirt embraced…
Bent on purgation, Laurence Jenkins
Long Loop Home: A Memoir Peter Wells Vintage, $27.95, ISBN 1869414683 The body language in the photograph forecasts much about the story between the covers of Peter Wells’s Long Loop Home. A Memoir. Three figures pose on a deserted beach,…
Tagged with: Issue 50, Laurence Jenkins, October 2001, Peter Wells, Vintage
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
“Considerate autocrats”, Bill Sewell and Harry Ricketts
Editing Writers can get paranoid about editors. We know; we’re writers ourselves. Like many others, we’ve imagined editors to whom we’ve submitted work flicking through it in a spirit somewhere between malice and mischief. A number of masochistic scenarios spring…
Rubble and trouble, Philip Temple
Kaput! Stevan Eldred-Grigg 1stBooks Library, $50 approx, ISBN 1587215543 Before me I have a postcard of a 1952 poster published by the Office of Information of the German Democratic Republic. A Berlin working woman stands behind a pile of bricks,…
Tagged with: 1stBooks Library, Issue 50, October 2001, Philip Temple, Stevan Eldred-Grigg
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Lyetening up, Mark Amery
Len Lye: A Biography Roger Horrocks Auckland University Press, $49.95, ISBN 1869402472 Len Lye himself ensures his biography is a ripper of a read. While biographer Roger Horrocks studiously clocks and chronicles the events and years of a long, ever-colourful…
Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Issue 50, Len Lye, Mark Amery, October 2001, Roger Horrocks
Posted in Art, Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Art, Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Desperate Dan, W H Oliver
Intimate Stranger: reminiscences of Dan Davin ed Janet Wilson Steele Roberts, $29.95, ISBN 1877228249 Before I start on the book, I will allow myself a grumble about the cover. This shows in the foreground a highlighted profile of Dan, characteristically…
Tagged with: Dan Davin, Issue 50, Janet Wilson, October 2001, Steele Roberts, W H Oliver
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Risky business, Alison Kirkman
Whistle Blower: Abuse of Power in the Church: A New Zealand Story Louise Deans Tandem Press, $24.95, ISBN 1877178780 How dangerous men think and how to stay safe for life Brent Sanders Random House Australia, $24.95, ISBN 0091842093 Touchy Subject:…
Tagged with: Alison Jones, Alison Kirkman, Brent Sanders, Issue 50, Louise Deans, October 2001, Otago University Press, Random House Australia, Tandem Press
Posted in Education, Gender, Health, Non-fiction, Psychology, Review, Sociology
Posted in Education, Gender, Health, Non-fiction, Psychology, Review, Sociology
Hard Knox, Robert Onopa
Black Oxen Elizabeth Knox Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0864734093 From the first paragraph of Elizabeth Knox’s previous novel, Vintner’s Luck, the reader enters as complete and rich an alternative world as exists in contemporary fiction. It is a world…
Tagged with: Elizabeth Knox, Issue 50, October 2001, Robert Onopa, Victoria University Press
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review