Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

Leave a Comment

Sally Blundell 

A Good Winter by Gigi Fenster (Text Publishing, 2021), 272 pp, $38

By the end of the first paragraph of Gigi Fenster’s gripping novel, we know something is amiss. ‘It was a good winter’, her narrator, Olga, tells us. ‘For me it was a good winter. For Lara even. I don’t care what anyone says. The facts spoke for themselves.’ But as with Dickens, after the memorable opening of A Tale of Two Cities, the spring of hope turns into a winter of, if not despair, then foolishness and darkness. Relentlessly, inexorably, the tension implicit in this first defensive statement builds into a portrait of obsessive neediness (‘I’m not needy’, Olga says repeatedly) that drives the plot to its horrific ending on the very last page. That Fenster never slackens the pace or signposts exactly who will pay the price for her narrator’s deranged thinking is a credit to the author’s hold on the storyline and an indication of her unflagging allegiance to the manipulative, delusional and utterly awful nature of her main character.  [Read more…]

On Not Judging Books by Their Covers

Leave a Comment

Vaughan Rapatahana

Goddess Muscle by Karlo Mila (Huia Publishers, 2020), 220pp, $35; The Surgeon’s Brain by Oscar Upperton (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2022), 96pp, $25; Home Base by Keith Westwater (The Cuba Press, 2021), 184pp, $25

On first inspection, including reading the cover blurbs, I saw that these were three very different books. Indeed, the only common thread seemed that all were published by separate Wellington-based publishers. Each one is particular in its own way. Two are poetry collections, while the third—Westwater’s—has more prose and realia than poetry crammed regimentally inside and deals solely with his army cadet years of 1964–1966. Upperton’s intriguing rich runnel of poetry never touches on Aotearoa New Zealand, contemporary or otherwise. Mila’s longer collection spans her mahi internationally from over a decade, across a variety of sectioned topoi.  [Read more…]

Telling His Story

Leave a Comment

Alan Roddick

James Courage Diaries, edited by Chris Brickell (Otago University Press, 2021), 416pp, $45

James Courage’s name may be little known to younger generations today, but in 1955 he was hailed as ‘the best living New Zealand novelist’. Seven years later, the importation of his novel about a homosexual love affair, A Way of Love, was notoriously banned by New Zealand Customs.

Courage kept a diary for some forty-three years, starting in 1920 when he was sixteen, and in this book, editor Chris Brickell reproduces almost a quarter of his diaries’ estimated 400,000 words. In his very useful Introduction, Brickell states that he has excluded ‘some long transcriptions of other authors’ writing—pieces of novels and poetry—which Courage often copied into his own diaries’. [Read more…]

Moments More

Leave a Comment

Melanie Dixon

Breach of all Size: Small stories on Ulysses, love and Venice, edited by Michelle Elvy and Marco Sonzogni (The Cuba Press, 2022), 98pp, $30 

Thirty-six writers, thirty-six stories, 421 words each. This anthology attempts to bridge two worlds—that of Joyce and his modernist epic Ulysses, published 100 years ago, and the foundation of ancient Venice in the year 421. It seems a slightly odd premise for a modern collection of flash fiction, but the joining of themes from Joyce’s classic novel and the city of Venice has produced an astounding anthology featuring some of the best flash fiction writers in New Zealand. Between the covers of this slim edition there is an abundance of bridges, a whole cast of characters called Antonio, a healthy dose of Vivaldi and chamber music, numerous battered copies of Joyce’s novels, glimpses of Ireland and a few cameo appearances by Captain James Cook. With central themes of love, loss and time—and the slow sinking of a city beneath the pressure of the ever-encroaching sea—change is at the heart of this collection. [Read more…]

The Timeline is Elusive

Leave a Comment

Jordan Hamel

Whai by Nicole Titihuia Hawkins (We Are Babies Press, 2021), 84pp, $25; Tōku Pāpā by Ruby Solly (Te Herenga Waka Press, 2021), 80pp, $24.99; AUP New Poets 8 by Lily Holloway, Tru Paraha and Modi Deng, ed. Anna Jackson (Auckland University Press, 2021), 120pp, $29.99

Nicole Titihuia Hawkins’ debut collection Whai is not only the winner of the 2022 Jessie Mackay Prize for a best first book of poetry at this year’s Ockham awards but also the first offering from new indie publisher, We Are Babies Press. It is not difficult to see why they chose Whai as their gateway into the world. It is a multidimensional collection that was clearly years in the making. It demonstrates a poet who has used time and space to build her world on the page through poetry—a world filled with whānau, friends, warmth, absurdity, sharp edges, uncertainty, things that can’t be forgotten, things that can; all the things that have made this poet who she is today. [Read more…]

What a Human Muddle

Leave a Comment

This review was originally published in Landfall 242 and is republished here in memory of Stephen Stratford (1953–2021). A fine editor and reviewer, Stratford made an invaluable contribution to Aotearoa literature over many years.

Life as a Novel: A biography of Maurice Shadbolt, Volume 2 1973–2004 by Philip Temple (David Ling Publishing Limited, 2021), 352pp, $44.99

Another marvellous performance from Philip Temple with multiple plots and time-lines expertly interwoven. As with Volume 1, it is a triumph of research and narrative skill. But what is missing is a subtitle. Perhaps this quote from Shadbolt: ‘What a human muddle I leave in my wake.’

God, this book is grim reading. Not the author’s fault—it is entirely the subject’s. There are many upsetting passages but none more so than when Shadbolt’s daughter Tui came up from Wellington by train, on her own, and he refused to see her. She was twelve. [Read more…]