Gina Cole

The Stone Wētā by Octavia Cade (Paper Road Press, 2020), 174pp., $25

The Stone Wētā by Octavia Cade tells the story of ten motivated, determined and brave women scientists, members of a global underground network of ‘operatives’ engaged in a cold war against government deniers of climate change. We follow the women who work in isolation in their various disciplines as the Earth moves towards environmental collapse. The women function as a network of resistance to governments who are suppressing, editing and massaging climate data and pandering to a quest for power and financial profit at the expense of the environment. When I think of what is happening to island nations and the natural environment in the Pacific today, there is a disturbingly familiar ring to this theme of the abuse of knowledge and the environment in exchange for capitalist goals. It is no surprise, then, that preservation is a central theme of the book. The scientists’ collective goal is to preserve climate data in an unadulterated form. It is a future scenario that Cade, a scientist herself, has clearly created from the current mess we’ve got ourselves into on planet Earth. [Read more…]

Breton Dukes

Aspiring by Damian Wilkins (Massey University Press, 2020), 200 pp., $22

During the winter school holidays I was with my infant son at the main playground in Alexandra. Fresh snow made a duvet on the Hawkduns as trucks, Wanaka and Queenstown bound, rolled by. Teens scrimmaged under the pines. One boy—short pastel shorts, a T-shirt, a tea-cosy-type woollen hat—broke to leap onto a picnic table.

‘Hey kids,’ he shouted, aiming his face at the playground, ‘we’re leaving!’

People looked, but nobody moved except a teenage girl who got up behind him and snatched his hat. He laughed like the Count on Sesame Street and jumped off. Who was he? Was he leading some sort of holiday programme? Wasn’t he freezing? [Read more…]

Cushla McKinney

Necessary Secrets by Greg McGee (Upstart Press, 2019), 298 pp., $37.99

As much as we might like to believe that our relationships are built on truth, in reality life abounds with secrets: those we tell others and those we tell ourselves; those we forget and those we choose not to know. Secrets can bind people in trust or complicity or be used as a weapon or a shield. But whether necessary or contingent, we all have knowledge we must hide for the sake of others and ourselves. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more true than within families, where the random assortment of genetics means that we may have more in common with our friends than our relations, and the conflicts and allegiances across and between generations are amplified by competition for limited material or emotional resources.  [Read more…]