The Day She Cradled Me Sacha de Bazin Black Swan, $38.00, ISBN 9781869797744 The Day She Cradled Me is about Minnie Dean, the Southland “baby-farmer” hanged for infanticide in 1895. Therefore it has the problem of any such novel…
The Day She Cradled Me Sacha de Bazin Black Swan, $38.00, ISBN 9781869797744 The Day She Cradled Me is about Minnie Dean, the Southland “baby-farmer” hanged for infanticide in 1895. Therefore it has the problem of any such novel…
World Music is Where We Found it: Essays by and for Allan Thomas Wendy Pond and Paul Wolffram (eds) Victoria University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9780864736949 World Music is Where We Found it is not a collection of essays in…
The Open World Stephanie Johnson Vintage, $38.00, ISBN 9781869797836 The Open World was my introduction to Stephanie Johnson’s substantial body of work. This is a complex novel, not easy to consider as a whole, or to sum up…
Tuhituhi: William Hodges, Cook’s Painter in the South Pacific Laurence Simmons Otago University Press, $60.00, ISBN 9781877578175 In the last decades of the 20th century, with political correctness at its zenith, you could scarcely mention the British Empire in…
Your Unselfish Kindness: Robin Hyde’s Autobiographical Writings Mary Edmond-Paul (ed) Otago University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9781877578212 It’s natural in a densely-packed book to look at the photographs first. Robin Hyde was intensely interested in houses and rooms and their…
Ruling Passions: Essays on Just About Everything Nick Perry Otago University Press, $45.00, ISBN 9781877372896 One of the main functions of a book review is to give readers an idea as to whether or to what extent the title…
The Silence Beyond: Selected Writings Michael King (introduction by Rachael King) Penguin, $42.00, ISBN 9780143565567 The Passionless People Revisited Gordon McLauchlan David Bateman, $30.00, ISBN 9781869537906 The Silence Beyond is a new and posthumous selection of rare and…
Graft Helen Heath Victoria University Press, $28.00, ISBN 9780864737762 Beauties of the Octagonal Pool Gregory O’Brien Auckland University Press, $28.00, ISBN 9781869405793 Just Then Harry Ricketts Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9780864738226 To graft is “to fix…
Defuzzification, Helen Sword
Helen Sword takes a stand against horrible academic prose. When I tell people I have recently published a book called Stylish Academic Writing (Harvard University Press, 2012), they usually crack a smile. Like military and intelligence or jumbo and shrimp,…
Posted in Comment