Education is Change: Twenty Viewpoints Harvey McQueen (ed.) Bridget Williams Books, $34.95 Over the past few months large numbers of Swedish bureaucrats, politicians and educators have been visiting us to observe our education system as it works through the massive…
Christina Stead: A Biography Hazel Rowley Heinemann Australia, $A49.95 Riffs Dennis Lee Brick Books, Box 38 Station B, London Ontario Canada N6A 4V3 The only way for an Australian writer to make an impression in New Zealand is to come…
State Ward Alan Duff Random House, $17.95 I realise that almost everyone is bone-weary by now of the wrangling over the Faber Book of Contemporary South Pacific Stories and its shameful “Note on Absences”. All the same, I cannot resist…
Pomare Elizabeth Knox Victoria University Press, 1994, $19.95 What is it about Elizabeth Knox’s writing that divides readers into devotees or detractors, into those who do and those who don’t enjoy her work? Her first novel, After Z‑Hour (1987), which…
Three sea stories Jean Watson Daphne Brasell Associates, 1994, $29.95 Also by Jean Watson: Stand in the rain, Pegasus Press, 1965, reprinted A&U/ Port Nicholson Press, 1986; The balloon watchers, Dunmore 1975; The world is an orange and the sun,…
Trophy Trout Bob South Viking Press, $34.95 Some years ago huge untapped resources of crayfish were discovered in the Chathams. A rush developed and the resource was raped. It was merely another rush, in a national history which has seen…
Breath Becomes the Wind Simon Rae University of Otago Press, $39.95 Islands of the Dawn Robert S Ellwood University of Hawaii Press, $32.00 Permit me to remind you of two inane stereotypes, which lurk in the minds of secular liberals…
Politics in New Zealand Richard Mulgan Auckland University Press, 1994, $34.95 The mid‑1990s is proving to be an exciting time for students of New Zealand politics. The change to the mixed‑member proportional (MMP) electoral system has in effect turned New…