Blog Archives
Gipsy: A Fictional Sequence of Poems Kathleen Gallagher, Nag’s Head Press, $22.50 This is an unusual book, not least because it is so handsome an artefact. Hardbound, beautifully produced, illustrated with evocative linocuts by David Nepia, Gipsy is not the…
Massacre Bay: A 19th Century Saga of Colonial Life Ken Gunn, The Book Guild, $39.95 Ken Gunn’s handsomely produced hardback historical novel, Massacre Bay, takes us back to the early days of Pakeha settlement in Nelson province. It tells the…
Margot Roth reviews a major suffrage year publication, and briefly comments on the difficulties of book reviewing in New Zealand. Women Together: A History of Women’s Organisations in New Zealand ‑ Nga Ropu Wahine o te Motu Anne Else…
Johnny Whistler and the Royal Ruby Circus and Johnny Whistler and the Whizzbang Tandem Race Tom Bradley, HarperCollins (Tui), each $10.95 The Tom Bradley who enters our sitting rooms as a television newsreader is also a writer of some productivity.…
Best Friends Elspeth Sandys, David Ling Publishing, $19.95 Dunedin Shena Mackay, Penguin, $19.95 Both of these books deal with distance – within relationships and across time and space – and with dislocation, of various and at times particularly Antipodean kinds.…
Moa: The Story of a Fabulous Bird PhilipTemple and Chris Gaskin, Hodder & Stoughton, $11.95 Old Blue: The Rarest Bird in the World Mary Taylor, Ashton Scholastic, $19.95 The South Island ‘sightings’ of the elusive moa provide a timely context…
The Iron Mouth Beryl Fletcher, Daphne Brasell Associates Press, $32.95 The Iron Mouth, Beryl Fletcher’s second story in a trilogy of feminist novels, is written on two levels. On one level, it is a simple novel about a crowd of…
Deepwater Landing Ken Catran, Harper Collins (Tui), $14.95 Ken Catran is the unsung artisan of young adult writing in this country. He has been writing television scripts (Children of the Dog Star), novels (Steel riders) and film scripts (Alex) for…
Seeing Red Marilyn Duckworth, Vintage, $19.95 Fifteen Rubies by Candlelight Shonagh Koea, Vintage, $19.95 Reading Shonagh Koea’s stories in Fifteen Rubies by Candlelight is like sampling a box of good, rich chocolates. Read (or eat) too many at once and…
Swag and Tucker Margaret Hall, McIndoe Publishers, $18.95 The Runaway Settlers Elsie Locke, Hazard Press, $16.95 These delightful books, set in New Zealand’s colonial days, bring to life the harsh and tender experiences of families in the New Zealand of…