Obituary Peter Wells (1950-2019) Siobhan Harvey Into the apparent silence of diverse voices in Aotearoa New Zealand literature, award-winning novelist, essayist, historian, anthologist, filmmaker and playwright, Peter Wells spoke. His was an articulation which, in life, was strong, uncompromising, inquisitive,…
Dear Oliver: Uncovering a Pākehā History
Peter Wells
Massey University Press, $40.00,
ISBN 9780994143
Peter Wells is a wonderful writer, and this is almost a wonderful book.
Writing a family memoir (or, as the author calls this particular memoir, Uncovering a Pākehā History) is a risky business at the best of times, because no matter how extraordinary your family is – and Wells makes no claims for his to be other than what they are, unsung heroes of “ordinary” life – what will make or break the book is the quality of the mind interrogating those lives. Fortunately, what we have in Dear Oliver is a mind both well-informed – one of the many hats the author wears is that of historian – about the world he is imagining, sensitive to the inner lives of its citizens, and skilled at finding words that lift his tale out of the study into the bright light of lived experience.
Journey to a Hanging: The Events that Set New Zealand Race Relations Back by a Century Peter Wells Vintage, $45.00 ISBN 9781775533900 As a child, I owned a Webster’s Illustrated Dictionary. My brother had bought it in mail-order instalments over…
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…
The Hungry Heart: Journeys with William Colenso Peter Wells Vintage, $49.99, ISBN 9781869794743 Give Your Thoughts Life: William Colenso’s Letters to the Editor Ian St George (ed) Otago University Press, $60.00, ISBN 9781877578144 The Greek word historia, from…
Lucky Bastard Peter Wells Vintage, $27.99, ISBN 9781869419431 At a recent funeral for a friend’s father many of us were surprised – and surprisingly moved – when a uniformed soldier played The Last Post. It struck a sombre note during…
The Kindness of Strangers: Kitchen Memoirs Shonagh Koea (illustrations by Peter Wells) Vintage, $34.99, ISBN 9781869419189 It wasn’t in her own mother’s kitchen that the young Shonagh found out food could make her happy. Things at home were a bit…
Bovver boys
What they wrote A taste of contributor comments over our first 20 years On New Zealand Books My hope is that New Zealand Books will provide a forum for frank discussion that dares to rise above the suffocating confines…
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