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Landfall Review Online: Aotearoa New Zealand books in review

Sunburnt Grass, Light as Nothing

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Kay McKenzie Cooke

Pet by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 342pp, $38

In her novel Pet Catherine Chidgey introduces readers to a world where a sense of distress lurks and tugs, and where seeds of suspense planted in the opening pages continue to grow. There is a fascination in the way the storyline is spun that draws you in and keeps you enthralled, even as the ground shifts, threatening to undermine progress towards a denouement. Pet has all the hallmarks of a slow reveal as the narrator, Justine Crieve, looks back in order to forecast a way ahead. The truth will need to be extracted from the weight of a mass of confusion and doubt that has burdened her from the age of twelve: ‘Though I’ve had thirty years to think about it, thirty years to go over every detail. The great dark hulk of it always adrift in me.’ [Read more…]

Wherever I Am I’m in the Wrong Place

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Murray Edmond

Robert Lord Diaries edited by Chris Brickell, Vanessa Manhire and Nonnita Rees (Otago University Press, 2023), 356pp, $45

These selections from Robert Lord’s diaries do not provide a continuous life narrative. The editors have given us eight sections, greatly varied in length, between August 1974 and March 1991. Nonnita Rees, one of the editors, told Kim Hill on Saturday morning Radio New Zealand that they had omitted about half of the diaries, principally sections of detailed commentary about the in-process composition of his plays, which would require readers to have a text of said plays alongside. I presume, as with all diaries, some omissions were for privacy reasons. [Read more…]

Someone to Love, Somewhere to Live, Somewhere to Work, Something to Hope For

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Helen Watson White

We Need to Talk About Norman: New Zealand’s lost leader by Denis Welch (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2023), 168pp, $39.99

In 1972, a general election ushered in the Third Labour Government headed by Norman Kirk, a leader Denis Welch claims is still worth talking about fifty years on. Once in office, he relates, Kirk announced that a navy frigate would be sent to protest French nuclear testing in the Pacific; his deputy Hugh Watt confirmed that Lake Manapouri would not be raised to make hydro-electricity; a rent-appeal board was set up; communist China was recognised; our troops were finally pulled out of Vietnam, and compulsory military training abolished—all in the first six months of Kirk’s incumbency. His single term, though action-packed, was abruptly shortened by his death in 1974 at the age of 51. [Read more…]

This Is Often Where the Trouble Starts

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Piet Nieuwland 

Garments of the Dead: Old and new work by Koenraad Kuiper (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2023), 192pp, $37.50; Saga by Hannah Mettner (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 88pp, $25; Liveability by Claire Orchard (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 80pp, $25

Garments of the Dead: Old and new work by Koenraad Kuiper, a collation of poem sequences, reveals him to be a poet possessed of a playful, precise wit. A former professor of linguistics at the University of Canterbury, Kuiper is someone who pays close attention to the way information is presented by language registers and tonal shifts. His poems convey a strong sense of his wide background knowledge of the worlds of arts and literature, as well as his viewpoint as a post-war migrant, coming out with his family from Europe to New Zealand. With my own Dutch ancestry, I could see my deceased father and uncle really enjoying these poems, which portray experiences similar to theirs and their families during World War II and later as immigrants. They will also appeal to later generations of those with Dutch ancestry, curious about their elders’ formative origins. [Read more…]

In Love and Kindness, In Aroha, In Atawhai

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Siobhan Harvey

Āria by Jessica Hinerangi (Auckland University Press, 2023), 76pp, $30; As the Trees Have Grown by Stephanie de Montalk (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 104pp, $25; Middle Youth by Morgan Bach (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 96pp, $25

It always disappoints me to encounter contemporary poets who, in their verses or in their readings of their work, inform the world that it contains so much poetry that really there’s no room or need for any more. It’s disappointing because such poets have only reached this determination after they’ve added their work to the poetry catalogue. Collectively and individually, three recent collections by New Zealand authors, Āria by Jessica Hinerangi, As the Trees Have Grown by Stephanie de Montalk, and Middle Youth by Morgan Bach, offer evidence that there must always be space in the poetry world for new work to speak to readers and their concerns. Now, more than ever, we need the emotional nourishment poems can provide, and we need receptive audiences for them. [Read more…]

He Put His Chisel Right Through It

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David Eggleton

Ki Mua, Ki Muri: 25 years of Toioho ki Āpiti edited by Cassandra Barnett and Kura Te Waru-Rewiri (Massey University Press, 2023), 344pp, $70; Artists in Antarctica edited by Patrick Shepherd (Massey University Press, 2023), 240pp, $80

We carry the genes and culture of our ancestors, and what we think about them shapes what we think of ourselves and how we make sense of our time and place. Two new illustrated books from Massey University Press consider ancestral mythologies of time and place, one in the form of the Māori Imaginary and the other in the form of the Antarctic Imaginary. Of course both of these cultural formations are also lived realities, but these books show how artists respond to them as aesthetic concepts. [Read more…]