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Outstanding biography, John Goodliffe

Vladimir Nabokov: the American years Brian Boyd, Chatto and Windus, London, 1992, $59.95 The first volume of Brian Boyd’s monumental biography of Vladimir Nabokov (Vladimir Nabokov: the Russian Years, 1990) was accorded very high critical acclaim. This second volume, covering the period

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Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review

Agile metaphors, Lawrence Bourke

Selected Poems Vincent O’Sullivan, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1992, $24.95 Vincent O’Sullivan’s Selected Poems provides a timely conspectus on the poetry department of this one-man literary industry. It prints twenty-four new poems with a ruthless selection of the early work – from

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

A reader tease, Paola Bilbrough

Treasure Elizabeth Knox, Victoria University Press, 1992, $24.95 ‘I have come that you might have life and have it in fullness’ is a biblical quotation repeated twice in Elizabeth Knox’s latest creation, Treasure. It relates most obviously to the sheer

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Research guide, Gavin McLean

A Guide to Art Galleries and Museums In New Zealand Keith W Thomson, Reed Books, Auckland, 1991, $14.95 This snappy little paperback wins out over Thomson’s earlier book in that it is cheap and portable enough to be bought and

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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review

Rampant Monetarism, Gillian Boddy

Feral City Rosie Scott, Reed, 1991, $24.95 Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/ The blood‑dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned; (W B Yeats, The Second Coming) The

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

An elegant and serious survey, Jonathan Else

Pleasures and Dangers: Artists of the 90s Trish Clark and Wystan Curnow (eds), Longman Paul, $34.95 This volume is a refreshing challenge to several assumptions that have become the dead wood of art theory and scholarship in New Zealand, and,

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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review

Rich repertoire, Lawrence Jones

Tomorrow We Save the Orphans Owen Marshall, John McIndoe, Dunedin, 1992, $24.95 Last year as I was working through a huge box of anonymous entries to the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award competition, I came across an ill‑typed,

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
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