Landfall

Landfall Review Online: Aotearoa New Zealand books in review

Sealed-Up Doors, Boarded-Up Buildings

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Robert McLean

Walking with Rocks, Dreaming with Rivers: My year in the Waikato by Richard von Sturmer (Titus Books, 2023), 150pp, $38

The islands that would become Aotearoa New Zealand were the last habitable land masses to be settled by humans. And this newness of land remains palpable. In coastal Waikato you can almost feel the birth pangs squeezing the roiling damp life out of the earth as the reclaiming ocean seethes nearby. It is almost unbearably intense.

Inland are the towns Richard von Sturmer visited over the course of a year, and that he writes about in his travelogue Walking With Rocks, Dreaming With Rivers—Beeville, Morrinsville, Kihikihi, Taupiri, Putaruru, Kakepuku, Tokanui, Maniapoto, Tokahaere, Te Kūiti, Huntly and more. [Read more…]

When the Sun is Being a Bastard

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Lawrence Patchett 

Under a Big Sky: Facing the elements on a New Zealand farm by Tim Saunders (Allen & Unwin, 2022), 288pp, $34.99

Early in Under a Big Sky: Facing the elements on a New Zealand farm, Tim Saunders signals the twin issues that will preoccupy his narrative. The first relates to the elements. ‘Take any decision on the farm,’ the narrator says, ‘strip it back and you will find the weather’. The rain gauge is among the most discussed tools on the Glen Oroua farm, and in 2020 a searing drought makes it more important than ever. When the sun is ‘being a bastard’ day after day, and the seasons no longer behave the way they used to, it’s even more inevitable that your thoughts circle on the elements. Thus Under a Big Sky takes its structure from them, moving through sections themed on fire, air, water and earth.  [Read more…]

To Re-remember and Re-learn

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Rachel Smith

The Forgotten Coast by Richard Shaw (Massey University Press, 2021), 256 pp, $35; Wai Pasifika: Indigenous ways in a changing climate by David Young (Otago University Press, 2021), 288pp, $60

Two very different books, one memoir and one non-fiction, The Forgotten Coast and Wai Pasifika: Indigenous ways in a changing climate offer an invitation to look closely at the world we live in—to listen and learn, to understand and re-remember. 

The Forgotten Coast by Richard Shaw is a new addition to Massey University Press’ short memoir series. Shaw is Professor of Politics at Massey University, and his memoir looks to fill in the gaps of his own forgotten story. In part, it is an attempt to personally respond to Rachel Buchanan’s The Parihaka Album: Lest We Forget, in which she asks:

What stories do your dead tell you? How do you see your past? [Read more…]

Immersive Learning

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Emma Gattey

Where We Swim by Ingrid Horrocks (Victoria University Press, 2021), 224pp., $35

A textual act of immersion—or rather, repeated languid textual acts of immersion—Ingrid Horrocks’ Where We Swim submerges us in glorious and inglorious waters across the globe, albeit in a thin (which is to say, privileged) cross-section of human swimming sites. From Days Bay and Waiheke, whale-bonding in Wellington Harbour and contracting UTIs in the Mōkau estuary, to the gilded pools of gated communities in Medellín, Columbia, the artificially azure waters of Hilton hotel pools, the brisk North Sea and even a closed-off, piranha-less section of the Amazon River, these swimming holes are largely for the global elite. This watery stratification does not, however, lessen the impact of the writing, the project (‘to remember why we swam in the first place’) or Horrocks’ voice, which is ever-alert to her family’s privilege: a pleasurable burr in her side that Horrocks is constantly questioning, grappling with—sometimes even squirming in discomfort. [Read more…]

Cartography for the Soul

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Tim Saunders

Map for the Heart: Ida Valley essays by Jillian Sullivan (Otago University Press, 2020), 280pp., $35

The last time I visited the Ida Valley in Central Otago I stopped on the road beside the Idaburn, the river that cuts diagonally across the plains between mountain ranges. The sun was slung low in the sky and the moon was already rising, as if caught in some cosmic game of chase across the heavens. It would soon be dark, and I still had an hour’s drive to where I wanted to be.

I watched a hawk slice the thick evening air as water flowed over river-smooth stones, its dark shape flicking over sheep scattered across brown grass. Magpies sat upright in trees, turning their backs to the sun to catch the last of the warmth. As I looked at these creatures that had made a home here, among the tussock and in the shadows of hills, I had the sudden desire to stay just where I was. There was something there in that limitless landscape that beckoned me to put down roots. [Read more…]

Gardens for the People! 

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James Beattie 

Common Ground: Garden histories of Aotearoa by Matt Morris (Otago University Press, 2020), 284 pp., $45

In Common Ground: Garden histories of Aotearoa, Matt Morris writes affectionately of our love affair with gardens through time. In it, expect to find stories of your uncle and aunty digging spuds or planting kūmara in the back garden, rather than details of the wealthy real estate developer and her husband quaffing cocktails on their mansion’s manicured lawn. Morris draws from wide-ranging archival and published sources, as well as interviews. The result is a fine-grained and touching history of our relationship with gardens. [Read more…]