Gerry Te Kapa Coates on Ko Taranaki te Maunga by Rachel Buchanan
Rootful Cosmopolitans
Lucy Sussex The Expatriate Myth: New Zealand writers and the colonial world by Helen Bones (Otago University Press, 2018), 248pp., $35 In New Zealand it is common to talk about ‘OE’: Overseas Experience. Living in what is termed the antipodes, far from the centres of finance, population and power, fosters an attitude where travel is […]
The Importance of Rivers
Graeme Wynn The Waikato: A history of New Zealand’s greatest river by Paul Moon (Atuanui Press, 2018), 456 pp., $69.99; New Zealand’s Rivers: An environmental history by Catherine Knight (Canterbury University Press, 2016), 324 pp., $49.99 ‘Rivers compel attention and invite stories.’ These words open an intriguing doctoral dissertation completed in 1999 in the Department of […]
Float, Float On …
David Geary Floating Islanders: Pasifika theatre in Aotearoa by Lisa Warrington and David O’Donnell (Otago University Press, 2017), 284 pp. $39.95 Our quest should not to be for a revival of our past cultures but for the creation of new cultures which are free of the taint of colonialism and based firmly on our own […]
A Superb Scrutiny
Briar Wood Tuai: A traveller in two worlds by Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins (Bridget Williams Books, 2017), 288 pp., $39.99 James Barry’s fine 1818 portrait, Tooi, a New Zealand Chief, on the cover of this book, gives an indication of why the authors must have chosen to set out on this voyage of research about […]
The Godwit Guys
Nelson Wattie The Expatriates by Martin Edmond (Bridget Williams Books, 2017), 328 pp., $49.99 People – such as the four men discussed in this book – get passionate about many different things, but what matters most to everyone is life itself – our own lives and those of others – and that’s where biography comes […]
Something in the Cells that Can’t Be Unlearned
Helen Watson White Driving to Treblinka: A long search for a lost father by Diana Wichtel (Awa Press, 2017), 288 pp., $45 ‘I was always looking for my father, even when he was still there,’ writes Diana Wichtel of her Polish-born father, Benjamin Wichtel (on his first gravestone, ‘Witchell’). This father’s absence from his daughter’s […]
A Previously Unsung Life
Jane Westaway Polly Plum: A firm and earnest woman’s advocate: Mary Ann Colclough 1836–1885 by Jenny Coleman (Otago University Press, 2017), 296 pp., $39.95 Polly Plum was the nom de plume of Mary Ann Colclough – née Barnes – who lived and worked in Auckland and Melbourne during the period of first-wave feminism. Author Jenny […]
‘Most Dismal is our Doom’
Lucy Sussex Cleansing the Colony: Transporting convicts from New Zealand to Van Diemen’s Land by Kristyn Harman (Otago University Press, 2017) 247 pp., $35 Borders, even if marked by walls, such as those in China, Berlin and the increasingly unlikely US–Mexico fence, are seldom impermeable. Certainly, upon close examination, national myths of containment or purity […]
Embracing Complexity
Alison Wong You Do Not Travel in China at the Full Moon: Agnes Moncrieff’s letters from China 1930–1945 edited by Barbara Francis (Victoria University Press, 2017), 295 pp., $50; Old Asian, New Asian by K. Emma Ng (Bridget Williams Books, 2017), 104 pp., $14.99 When we consider New Zealanders who have lived in China and […]
Serious in Intent, Playful in Manner
Simone Oettli-van Delden Sleeps Standing Moetū by Witi Ihimaera with Hēmi Kelly (Vintage, 2017), 221 pp., $35 This book defies simple definition. Its inputs are multiple. Primarily it is a book about the Battle of Ōrākau, the final and decisive onslaught of the Waikato land wars, in which 300 Māori men, women and children are […]
Admirable Navigational Skills
Max Oettli Fletcher of the Bounty by Graeme Lay (HarperCollins, 2017), 304 pp., $36.99 Arr I like a good sea yarn. In my tender youth I took the bus on a weekly basis to the Hamilton Public Library (Young Adults Section) and took out a novel to read for the week. I coasted through Arthur […]
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