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Issue 56 | December 2002

  Volume 12 | Number 5 | Issue 56 | December 2002 Tony Simpson: Damien Wilkins, When Famous People Come to Town; Kate Camp, On Kissing; Vincent O’Sullivan, On Longing Editorial Letters Harry Ricketts: Angus Gillies, Adam Parore: The Wicked

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Posted in Contents

The French defection, Owen Marshall

Son of France  Geoff Cush Vintage, $26.95, ISBN 1869415027 An intellectual comic novel needs a good idea, and Geoff Cush had one for Son of France. What if the French, instead of being thwarted at Akaroa, had succeeded in making

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Gloves off, Harry Ricketts

Adam Parore: The Wicked Keeper Angus Gillies Penguin, $34.95, ISBN 014301837X A friend and I used to have a favourite game. The game had several different permutations, but in its simplest form it involved imagining writers as cricketers and selecting

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Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review, Sport

From the dark room, Michael Grimshaw

Snapshots on the Journey: through death & remembrance: an anthology of poems ed Rod MacLeod Steele Roberts, $29.95, ISBN 1877228672 Anthologies of poetry serve different purposes; the intent can be as important as the content. Michael Roberts’ Faber Book of

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Awestruck at Otira, Neville Bennett

At Home on the Road Jill Malcolm New Holland, $24.95, ISBN 1877246658 Southern Journeys: South Island People and Places Roy Sinclair Random House, $34.95, ISBN 186941439X There is a kea in my garden. When I hang out the washing, a

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Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review

The one that got away, Russell Haley

Royce, Royce, the People’s Choice Peter Hawes Random House, $26.95, ISBN 1869414985 Peter Hawes’s new novel is a big, jocular and elaborate fishing yarn. The tale-telling is strenuously masculine, prodding, very physical. As you read, you feel as though you’re

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Love and other cheeses, Susan Budd

Blessed Are Sarah-Kate Lynch Black Swan, $26.95, ISBN 1869414977 Aromantic comedy with the WOW factor, Blessed Are makes you laugh, makes you cry and tells you everything you ever wanted to know, and more, about cheese-making. Coolarney House, where Joseph

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Rhythm and voice, R Carl Shuker interviews Damien Wilkins

R Carl Shuker interviews Damien Wilkins   R Carl Shuker (RCS): Do you remember the initial spark of Chemistry? Damien Wilkins (DW): Yes, I do. I was down in Timaru, where the novel is set. I was hanging out at

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Art of survival, Ross Calman

Carved Histories: Rotorua Ngati Tarawhai Woodcarving Roger Neich Auckland University Press, $89.95, ISBN 186940257X It would not be a gross overstatement to say that we have got Ngati Tarawhai, a tribe originally from Lake Okataina (east of Rotorua), to thank

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Posted in Art, History, Māori, Non-fiction, Review

Paradise preserved? Simon Upton

Pavlova Paradise Revisited Austin Mitchell Penguin, $27.95, ISBN 0143018264 For those old enough to remember it, The Half-Gallon Quarter-Acre Pavlova Paradise was a funny, disrespectful but good-natured account of what it felt like to be a clever, progressive Left Brit

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Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Sociology
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