Peter Entwisle The Meeting Place: Maori and Pakeha Encounters, 1642-1840, Vincent O’Malley (Auckland University Press, 2012), 284 pp., $45. Vincent O’Malley’s meeting place is a common ground where members of different societies can find ways of interacting which bridge their cultural differences. He has borrowed the notion from an American historian Richard White whose […]
Tuku Whenua
Richard Reeve A Simple Nullity: The Wi Parata Case in New Zealand Law and History, by David V. Williams (Auckland University Press, 2011), 288 pp., $49.99. Grossly misunderstood in both its legal context and factual matrix, Wi Parata v The Bishop of Wellington (1877) is the single most infamous case in New Zealand legal […]
Shaky Isles Writing
Andrew Paul Wood Treasures of the University of Canterbury Library, edited by Chris Jones, Bronwyn Matthews and Dr Jennifer Clement (University of Canterbury, 2012), 256 pp., $30; Chur Chur: Stories from the Christchurch Earthquake, edited by Gina Moss (Project Freerange, 2011), 44 pp., $16.99; Shaken Down 6.3, by Jeffery Paparoa Holman (Canterbury University Press, 2012), 56 pp., $20. […]
A World of Songs
Vaughan Rapatahana Ngā Mōteatea: He Kupu Arataki (An Introduction), by Jane McRae (Māori translation by Hēni Jacob) (Auckland University Press, 2011), 158 pp., $34.99. Kia mau koe ki ngā kupu o ou tupuna Hold fast to the words of your ancestors ‘Ngā Mōteatea … is unique in the corpus of New Zealand literature, […]
Atomisation and Cohesion
Michael Findlay Jewish Lives in New Zealand: A History, edited by Leonard Bell and Dianna Morrow, (Godwit, 2012), 439 pp., $55.00. Leonard Bell and Dianna Morrow’s book Jewish Lives in New Zealand: A History,opens up many connections to the life stories of the local Jewish community, while leaving room for more. It is a […]
Difficult, Passionate, Flawed Outsider
Philip Temple The Hungry Heart: Journeys with William Colenso, by Peter Wells (Vintage, 2011), 467 pp. $49.99; Give Your Thoughts Life: William Colenso’s Letters to the Editor, compiled by Ian St George, (Otago University Press, 2011) 497 pp. $65. A question lingers throughout a reading of Peter Wells’s The Hungry Heart — what exactly is this book? There are no […]
Son of Captain Cook
Helen Watson White Bligh: William Bligh in the South Seas, by Anne Salmond (Penguin/Viking, 2011), 528 pp., $65. Anne Salmond’s Bligh is not just about the legendary British naval commander of the Bounty, who in 1789 lost his ship to mutineers. It is about the fabled ‘South Seas’ through which they were sailing, and about […]
Packaging the Land
Philippa Jamieson Wild Heart: The Possibility of Wilderness in Aotearoa New Zealand, edited by Mick Abbott and Richard Reeve (Otago University Press) 224 pp. $45; Making Our Place: Exploring Land-use Tensions in Aotearoa New Zealand, edited by Jacinta Ruru, Janet Stephenson and Mick Abbott, (Otago University Press), 243 pp. $45. Although we are becoming […]
Buried Prophets of the Future
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman Coal and the Coast: a Reflection on the Pike River Disaster, by Paul Maunder (Canterbury University Press, 2012), 112 pp., $25. It might be uncomfortable to consider, but pressing in on me as I write this — and on whoever reads it — are the ghosts of hundreds of Chinese coal […]
Victoriana
David Eggleton Early New Zealand Photography: Images and Essays, edited by Angela Wanhalla and Erika Wolf (Otago University Press, 2011), 208 pp., $50. Susan Sontag characterised photographs as ‘invitations to deduction, speculation and fantasy’, while Roland Barthes asserted that the photograph was ‘a transparent envelope’ — that is, a paradoxical object at once visible […]
Against Fear of the New
Nick Laird New Zealand by Design: a History of New Zealand Product Design, by Michael Smythe (Godwit, 2011), 511 pp., $65. ‘Design’ is a mercurial, not to say deceptive, term. Used as a verb to refer to a process, and used as a noun to the product of that process, it has become amongst […]
Vile Crime in Cathedral Town
Anna Rogers So Brilliantly Clever: Parker, Hulme and the Murder that Shocked the World, by Peter Graham (Awa Press, Wellington, 2011), 341 pp., $42.00. Even now, my sister and I, who grew up in Christchurch in the 1950s and 1960s, have an ambiguous attitude towards Victoria Park, high on the hills above the city. […]