Wendy Parkins

Raiment: A Memoir by Jan Kemp (Massey University Press, 2022), 255 pp, $35; Things I Learned at Art School by Megan Dunn (Penguin, 2021), 352 pp, $35

In 1971, the Canadian author Alice Munro wrote: ‘There is a change coming in the lives of girls and women … All women have had up till now has been their connection with men.’ Two years later, the US Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Roe v Wade—a decision that has recently been reversed. It is difficult, sometimes, not to feel that Munro’s optimism was misplaced, that women’s connection with men is still too often the defining condition of their existence. 

These memoirs by Jan Kemp and Megan Dunn provide an opportunity to reflect on the changing lives of girls and women during the past fifty years in Aotearoa. Though wildly different in tone and style, as well as the time frames on which they focus—the counter-culture of the late 60s and early 70s in Kemp’s Raiment; 1990s postmodernism in Dunn’s Things I Learned At Art School—both memoirs recount their author’s quest for self-expression and independence within creative sub-cultures in Auckland. [Read more…]

Rachel O’Connor

The Birds Began to Sing: A memoir of a New Zealand composer by Dorothy Buchanan (Cuba Press, 2021), 240pp, $40; Unposted, Autumn Leaves: A memoir in essays by Stephen Oliver (Greywacke Press, 2021), 340pp, $30

Reflections on our own past are unavoidably narcissistic, and the motivations and justifications for writing a memoir are always complicated. As Jesse Mulligan pointed out on Radio NZ earlier this year, when discussing Charlotte Grimshaw’s explosive memoir, The Mirror Book, we don’t want to read about just anyone’s life. To make your life story worth paying for and perusing by strangers, it needs to be remarkable.

Christchurch-born Dorothy Buchanan’s life certainly qualifies. Her long career as a musician and composer has been exceptionally productive and has left an indelible mark on New Zealand’s musical development and canon. Her compositions and their recordings are numerous and celebrated (though Peace Song perhaps remains most widely loved and known), and a string of awards is testimony to the professional regard in which she is held. In 2001, she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for a lifetime’s involvement in music.  [Read more…]

Wendy Parkins

Grand: Becoming my mother’s daughter by Noelle McCarthy (Penguin, 2022), 269pp, $35

‘When I was very small, I loved wolves, she told me.’ The broadcaster Noelle McCarthy begins her memoir with a recollection of early childhood that alludes to an almost fairy-tale world. But look again at that deceptively simple opening sentence: ‘When I was very small, I loved wolves, she told me.’ From the beginning, the past is mediated through the mother. She is the one who—for good or ill—first tells our story, tells us who we are. Grand: Becoming my mother’s daughter presents a moving story of beginnings and endings, frankly detailing a childhood damaged by a mother’s alcoholism and McCarthy’s own journey of recovery from the same addiction.  [Read more…]

Kerry Lane

Come Back to Mona Vale: Life and death in a Christchurch mansion, by Alexander McKinnon (Otago University Press, 2021), 335pp, $40 

In film, one of the most effective ways to build tension is to frame a shot around something that is not there. In a two-shot with only one person, the eye is drawn relentlessly to the yawning space next to them, which cries out for balance. The root of horror is in this absence, in the certainty that there should be something with no further explanation. The more developed the structure in which the absence is embedded, the more viscerally it will be felt. 

Come Back to Mona Vale is a story about absence, told in absences. It is the first book by Alexander McKinnon, winner of the 2020 Landfall essay competition. The book relates the author’s journey to assemble a narrative of his own family, beginning with his great-grandfather, the last private owner of the Christchurch estate Mona Vale. Written over seven years, it charts the author’s exploration of his mother’s family history, from the legal and financial complexities left behind by his great-grandfather, to the personal lives of multiple generations now dead. [Read more…]