• Home
  • About
  • Landfall
  • Subscribe
  • Essay competition
  • Kathleen Grattan Award

Landfall

Landfall Review Online: Aotearoa New Zealand books in review

To Re-remember and Re-learn

May 1, 2022 Leave a Comment

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…]

Filed Under: art and photography, environment, memoir, natural history, social sciences

Immersive Learning

November 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

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…]

Filed Under: environment

Cartography for the Soul

May 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

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…]

Filed Under: environment, memoir, poetry, reviews and essays

Gardens for the People! 

May 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

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…]

Filed Under: environment, history, maori and pacific

Memoir as Eco-Farming Manifesto

December 1, 2020 Leave a Comment

Janet Newman

This Farming Life: Five generations on a New Zealand farm by Tim Saunders (Allen & Unwin, 2020), 272pp, $36.99

Early each morning Tim Saunders magpies words and phrases from the notebook he carries around the farm for his poems, short stories and now a memoir, he told a Manawatū Writers’ Festival session at Feilding Library in September this year. Audience members seemed more interested in his farming than his writing process, however. ‘Is lambing over now?’ asked one. Ditto on Saunders’ August Radio New Zealand interview with Kim Hill. ‘Bollocks!’ responded one listener to his explanation that lambing starts in cold weather so that lambs are weaned onto spring grass to improve their health later on: ‘They lamb now so that we can have spring lamb on our table for Christmas.’ ‘Well,’ replied Saunders, ‘I think that might be one of the reasons for some people, but for me, I think more in terms of animal health myself.’ [Read more…]

Filed Under: environment, memoir

Recent reviews

  • Hug Your Mother, Hold Her
    Vincent O’Sullivan on What Fire by Alice Miller; Unseasoned Campaigner by Janet Newman
  • The Killer Gene 
    Erik Kennedy on A Riderless Horse by Tim Upperton; Naming the Beasts by Elizabeth Morton; Surrender by Michaela Keeble
  • Matrix of Shape-Shifting
    David Eggleton on Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori art edited by Nigel Borell
  • Parade of Humanity
    Helen Watson White on To Be Fair: Confessions of a District Court Judge by Rosemary Riddell
  • Writing Ourselves into Existence
    Laura Toailoa on Sweat and Salt Water: Selected works by Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa edited and compiled by Katerina Teaiwa, April K. Henderson and Terence Wesley-Smith

Subscribe to Landfall Review Online via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to Landfall Review Online and receive notifications of new reviews by email.

Review archive

Reviews by genre

© 2018 Otago University Press. All Rights Reserved. Website by Arts Net

 

Loading Comments...