Michalia Arathimos Out of the Vaipe, the Deadwater: A writer’s early life by Albert Wendt (BWB Texts/Bridget Williams Books, 2015), 144 pp., $14.99 Unbearable sorrow, unbearable dislocation, unbearable beauty; these emerge as themes of this intimate memoir about Albert Wendt’s early life. They are also the prevailing themes in Wendt’s formidable body of work. But […]

Maggie Rainey-Smith Being Chinese: A New Zealander’s story by Helene Wong (Bridget Williams Books, 2016), 182 pp., $39.99 Being Chinese is a memoir. But it’s also much more than that. It is an important slice of social history, both Kiwi and Chinese. It might well have been two books. It could have been a history […]

Nicholas Reid Going South: A road trip through life by Colin Hogg (Harper-Collins, 2016), 272 pp., $34.99 Why, when I look at the cover and start to read this book, do I think of that old advert that used to be on TV about thirty years ago? ‘Life’s a whole long journey, so before you […]

Michelle Elvy  52 Men, by Louise Wareham Leonard (Red Hen Press, 2015), 125 pp., $36 Louise Wareham Leonard has a way with men. I mean, she has a way of capturing men, of seeing them, of seeing through them. In her latest book, 52 Men, she pulls together a series of portraits – 52 – […]

Lindsay Rabbitt The Dreaming Land by Martin Edmond (Bridget Williams Books, 2015), 164 pp., $39.99 ‘The Dreaming Land,’ said Martin Edmond at the launch of this memoir at Wellington’s Unity Books, ‘had its genesis in a failed manuscript.’ He’d set out to write a book about his parents’ early years together, ‘But it hadn’t worked […]

Denis Harold The Mermaid Boy by John Summers (Hue & Cry Press, 2015), 158 pp., $30 The Mermaid Boy is a story collection that purports to be non-fiction but reads like fiction. John, a not very roguish young man, writes of youthful adventures in New Zealand and Asia. While he fitfully travels, he gradually matures. […]