Michael Morrissey How Does it Hurt? by Stephanie de Montalk (Victoria University Press, 2014), 360 pp., $40 Intractable pain is hardly the most glamorous of topics to write about, but the literature of the world would be significantly impoverished if writers only chose obviously ‘uplifting’ subject matter. Themes that seem, on the face of it, […]
Sailor
Rick Bryant Gutter Black: A Memoir, by Dave McArtney, (Harper Collins, 2014), 320 pp., $44.99 On the giant speaker cabinet perched precariously on the mezzanine level amidst the debris of Bruce Moose’s renovations was painted ‘Goodbye Dove’. The other one, at the entrance to the party floor of Mandrax mansion, read ‘Hello Sailor’. It was […]
Cautiously Searching for Ancestors
Chris Else Migrations, by Rod Edmond, (Bridget Williams Books, 2013), 248 pp., $39.99 History begins where memory ends, although the line between the two is blurred: other people’s memories – parents’ and grandparents’, for example – are as much our personal experiences as our own; and the artificial construction of the past from the historical […]
Found Under a Cabbage Leaf
Brian Clearkin A History of Silence, by Lloyd Jones (Penguin, 2013), 273 pp., $38 From the first lines of the first page, Jones draws you into his finely sketched world. Scattered throughout the present are links and clues to his past. His apartment occupies the old shoe factory, which manufactured his childhood shoes. A book, […]
Woman with a Rolleiflex Camera
Sally Blundell Self-Portrait, by Marti Friedlander with Hugo Manson, (Auckland University Press, 2013) 264 pp., $59.99 ‘I don’t mind explaining [my work],’ writes Marti Friedlander at the end of her autobiography Self-Portrait. ‘But I also don’t want people to know too much. Even now, writing this book, I wonder if I’m giving too much away. […]
Thread Caught on the Thorn of a Minute
Paula Morris Your Unselfish Kindness: Robin Hyde’s Autobiographical Writings, edited by Mary Edmond-Paul, (Otago University Press, 2012) 327 pp., $40. The Lodge, a big wooden house on the edge of Mt Albert, Auckland is a landmark I’ve passed hundreds of times; my sister lives nearby. It was once part of the mental hospital that, […]
A Kind of Belonging
Denis Harold Touchstones: Memories of People and Place, by James McNeish (Random House, 2012), 295 pp., $30. The publicity material and preliminaries of James McNeish’s recent book Touchstones hedge about its origins and purpose. He is the reluctant author, according to an interview in the New Zealand Herald (August 1, 2012). The book is the […]
Brandishing a Paintbrush
Raewyn Alexander Before I Forget, by Jacqueline Fahey (Auckland University Press, 2012), 192 pp, $45 . Venturing into often extremely private territory with honesty and insight, this memoir’s a remarkable read. Fahey’s stunning cover is a painting that suggests the older artist looking back: her younger self’s presented in a little black dress with high […]
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