Blog Archives
The man who wished to be other, C K Stead
No Fretful Sleeper – A Life of Bill Pearson Paul Millar Auckland University Press, $59.99, ISBN 97818690404192 It must have been 40 years ago that Bill Pearson told me an anecdote about his first days at school. When he reached…
Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Bill Pearson, C K Stead, Issue 90, Paul Millar, Winter 2010
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Public work, private life, Grace Millar
Looking For Answers: A Life of Elsie Locke Maureen Birchfield Canterbury University Press, $69.95, ISBN 9781877257803 Writing a biography of someone with broad interests and a long and well-documented life is a real challenge. Lives are messy and sprawl without…
Tagged with: Canterbury University Press, Elsie Locke, Grace Millar, Issue 90, Maureen Birchfield, Winter 2010
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Subtle conversation, Michael Sharkey
The Victims of Lightning Bill Manhire Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 0780864736222 When this commission came, I’d recently re-read Manhire’s poetry from Malady to Lifted and his prose – the clever fables of The New Land, somehow redolent of Diderot’s…
Tagged with: Bill Manhire, Issue 90, Michael Sharkey, Victoria University Press, Winter 2010
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Stirring times, Edmund Bohan
Collision Joanna Orwin HarperCollins, $36.99, ISBN 9781869507787 Banquo’s Son T K Roxborogh Penguin Books, $37.00, ISBN 9780143202493 The historical novel worldwide has possibly never enjoyed such a golden age as at present, with such remarkably diverse writers of quality as…
Tagged with: Edmund Bohan, HarperCollins, Issue 90, Joanna Orwin, Penguin Books, T K Roxborogh, Winter 2010
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Knocking the Nationalists, Hugh Roberts
The Invention of New Zealand: Art and National Identity 1930-1970 Francis Pound Auckland University Press, $75.00, ISBN 1869404149 Francis Pound’s The Invention of New Zealand is an uneven and often quirky work but one with which anyone interested in the…
Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Francis Pound, Hugh Roberts, Issue 90, Winter 2010
Posted in Art, History, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Art, History, Non-fiction, Review
Beneath what we see, Max Oettli
Marti Friedlander Leonard Bell Auckland University Press, $45.00, ISBN 9781869404444 What makes Marti Friedlander’s work such compelling viewing? Her work, even she herself, has taken on an iconic presence in the comfortable confines of our islands. And the photographs she…
Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Issue 90, Leonard Bell, Marti Friedlander, Max Oettli, Winter 2010
Posted in Non-fiction, Photography, Review
Posted in Non-fiction, Photography, Review
Poem – Leonard Lambert
Riders to the Shore Surf I never saw as merely what happens to ocean when it meets the shallows – waves to me were always more akin to living things, a kind of water-beast, the sea’s attempt at entity. Summer…