Helen Watson White A Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington 1888–1903 by Redmer Yska (Otago University Press, 2017), 271 pp., $39.95 In his prologue to A Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington 1888–1903, Redmer Yska recalls Graham Greene’s idea that childhood is ‘the fiction writer’s credit balance’. In this regard, he says, Mansfield as daughter […]
With But Half a Soul
Elizabeth Smither Heloise by Mandy Hager (Penguin Random House, 2017), 382 pp., $38 Hilary Mantel, in her second of five Reith Lectures, commented on the tendency of women writers to falsely empower female characters in history, in rather the same way we might attribute power and influence over her father to Ivanka Trump. She talks […]
The History on Paper and the History in People’s Mouths
Michael O’Leary The Stolen Island: Searching for `Ata by Scott Hamilton (BWB Texts/Bridget Williams Books, 2016), 112 pp., $14.99 The term ‘blackbirding’ has usually been associated with the capture and enslavement of people in Africa to be transported to the United States for enforced labour and abuse in the southern states. However, The Oxford English […]
Hammer and Sickle, Yeah!
Max Oettli Seen in China 1956 by Tom Hutchins, edited by John B. Turner (Turner Photo Books in collaboration with Photo Forum as Photoforum issue 86, 2016), 124 pp., $25; The Shops by Steve Braunias and Peter Black (Luncheon Sausage Press Books/Photo Forum, 2016), 62 pp., $40 What did I know about China in 1956? […]
Private Admissions Between Friends
David Herkt Jay To Bee: Janet Frame’s letters to William Theophilus Brown, edited by Denis Harold (Counterpoint, Berkley, California, 2016), 464 pp., $45.20 All letters are performances. There is a writer and there is an audience. The relationship between the two is never static, but it turns in line with time and circumstance. Jay to […]
The Great Depression and Collective Memory
Cybèle Locke The Broken Decade: Prosperity, depression and recovery in New Zealand, 1928–39, by Malcolm McKinnon (Otago University Press, 2016), 556 pp., $49.95 In this magisterial account of the 1930s Depression, Malcolm McKinnon aims to disturb the historical orthodoxy which depicts a conflict between the powerless and powerful – ‘We and They’ – ‘in which […]
The Beginnings of Provincial Identities
Jane McCabe Acknowledge No Frontier: The creation and demise of New Zealand’s provinces, 1853–76, by André Brett (Otago University Press, 2016), 346pp, $45 The provincial system is undoubtedly an aspect of New Zealand history that was overdue for scholarly attention. The lack of close historical treatment to the semi-federal system that divided the colony into […]
Crime Stories
Nicholas Reid Overcast Sunday by Christodoulos Moisa (One Eyed Press, 2016), 306 pp., $24; The Agency by Ian Austin (published by Ian Austin, 2016), 424 pp., $29.99 I like very much what Whanganui artist and writer Christodoulos Moisa has attempted to do in Overcast Sunday. He has attempted to write a brisk and simple little […]
Tracing One Iwi’s Carving Style
Andrew Paul Wood A Whakapapa of Tradition: One hundred years of Ngāti Porou carving, 1830–1930 by Ngarino Ellis with new photography by Natalie Robertson (Auckland University Press, 2016), 304 pp., $69.99 The arrival of Pākehā in Aotearoa was not a good thing for Māori whakairo taonga; vide the denuded whare of Ngāpuhi, their carved ancestors […]
Invitations to a Fantastic Voyage
David Eggleton Coral Route: Tasman Empire Airways Ltd, flying boats and the South Pacific by Gerry Barton and Philip Heath (Steele Roberts, 2015) 209 pp., $45; Real Modern: Everyday New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s by Bronwyn Labrum (Te Papa Press, 2015), 429 pp., $75 Skywatchers in Auckland in the early 1950s would have […]
Ask that Mountain
Gerry Te Kapa Coates Te Whiti O Rongomai and the Resistance of Parihaka by Danny Keenan (Huia Publishers, 2015), 275 pp., $45 It is some time since I read Dick Scott’s Ask That Mountain, so Danny Keenan’s book is a welcome refresher, informed as it is by his ancestry, contacts and biography of Te Whiti […]
A Post-Quake City
Andrew Paul Wood The Villa at the Edge of the Empire: One hundred ways to read a city, by Fiona Farrell (Vintage, 2015), 363 pp., $40 Fiona Farrell’s The Villa at the Edge of the Empire comes from a place of anger, though that doesn’t really become apparent until quite some way into the book. […]
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