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Landfall Review Online: Aotearoa New Zealand books in review

Grenades Shaped Like Cans of Coke

August 1, 2023 Leave a Comment

Andrew Paul Wood

Ithaca by Alie Benge (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 264pp, $35.00

I have a love-hate relationship with personal essays. More often than not, they would be better as short fiction without the pretence of being autobiographical. As a rule of thumb, the personal essay should be avoided unless you have something exceptional to say or you can say it in an exceptional way. But as the poet Paul Valéry once said in a lecture: ‘Sometimes something wants to express itself, sometimes a means of expression wants something to say.’ It sounds better in French. [Read more…]

Filed Under: essays, memoir

Lasting the Distance  

June 1, 2023 Leave a Comment

Alan Roddick

A Month at the Back of My Brain: A third memoir by Kevin Ireland (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2022), 174pp, $39.99

Kevin Ireland died in May 2023, just a few weeks short of his ninetieth birthday. By my count, A Month at the Back of My Brain was Ireland’s forty-first book in sixty years as a writer—all of them hard copy, paper-and-ink books: what I still think of as real books. [Read more…]

Filed Under: memoir

Extraordinary Lives

June 1, 2023 Leave a Comment

Nod Ghosh

Tales from the Wood’s Edge: A memoir by Wilma Laryn (Wilma Laryn, 2022), 378pp, $36; So Far, For Now by Fiona Kidman (Penguin Random House, 2022), 272pp, $38

These memoirs are by two exceptional Aotearoa women. Wilma Laryn’s Tales from the Wood’s Edge is her first book. Fiona Kidman’s So Far, For Now joins a catalogue of over thirty publications that includes non-fiction, novels, short story and poetry collections. Both books cover events from the authors’ lives connected by underlying themes. Laryn’s book explores the process of making a new place become home. Kidman’s essays are underpinned by a major life change: the loss of her husband of almost six decades. [Read more…]

Filed Under: memoir

When the Sun is Being a Bastard

May 1, 2023 Leave a Comment

Lawrence Patchett 

Under a Big Sky: Facing the elements on a New Zealand farm by Tim Saunders (Allen & Unwin, 2022), 288pp, $34.99

Early in Under a Big Sky: Facing the elements on a New Zealand farm, Tim Saunders signals the twin issues that will preoccupy his narrative. The first relates to the elements. ‘Take any decision on the farm,’ the narrator says, ‘strip it back and you will find the weather’. The rain gauge is among the most discussed tools on the Glen Oroua farm, and in 2020 a searing drought makes it more important than ever. When the sun is ‘being a bastard’ day after day, and the seasons no longer behave the way they used to, it’s even more inevitable that your thoughts circle on the elements. Thus Under a Big Sky takes its structure from them, moving through sections themed on fire, air, water and earth.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: environment, memoir

Haunted by Home

March 1, 2023 Leave a Comment

Shana Chandra

Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles (Canongate Books, 2022), 272pp, $25; Sign Language for the Death of Reason by Linda Collins (Moth Paper Press, 2021), 141pp, $37.99; Island Notes: Finding my place on Aotea Great Barrier Island by Tim Highman (Cuba Press, 2021), 156pp, $38

The notion of home is both fragile and tenacious. It is an indication of our need for stability throughout the constant change that is life. We think of homes as solid: a house sturdy on the ground, our parents immortal, our country never changing. But all is eroded slowly by ravages of time or in an instant. A house is never as big as it was in our childhood eyes; our parents fade with age until they disappear. Our countries become smaller, too, as we travel away from them and look back; shores are washed-away; earthquake fault lines bring down towns; a war declares that a country is no longer ours. We often think of home as outside ourselves, not within us, despite it being something we hold precious in our mind—which may be why the notion of home seems so elusive. Each of the Aotearoa authors in this review either directly references or subtly hints at different notions of what home might be: they search for it, commemorate it, comment on it, or try to remember it, sometimes all at once. [Read more…]

Filed Under: fiction, memoir, Uncategorized

Parade of Humanity

February 1, 2023 Leave a Comment

Helen Watson White

To Be Fair: Confessions of a District Court Judge by Rosemary Riddell (Upstart Press, 2021), 229pp, $39.99

‘What if we could be honest about our pain?’ asks film/theatre director and lawyer Rosemary Riddell in her memoir To Be Fair: Confessions of a District Court Judge. Not perhaps the question you’d expect from a judge, considering the usual preconceptions of the role.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: law, memoir

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