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Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

The Outrageous and the Everyday

April 1, 2022 Leave a Comment

Kerry Lane

The Pink Jumpsuit: Short fictions, tall truths by Emma Neale (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2021), 134pp, $35 

The Pink Jumpsuit is the latest book by Emma Neale, one of the best-known writers working in Aotearoa today. Neale’s previous work includes six novels and six collections of poetry, and too many awards and honours to list here. Her flash and short fiction has also been widely published and acclaimed, but this is the first time these small pieces—short fictions and tall truths, as the subtitle describes them—have been gathered into a collection.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: fiction, literature, short stories

Between the Long and the Short of It

April 1, 2022 Leave a Comment

Sally Blundell 

Middle Distance: Long Stories of Aotearoa New Zealand, ed. Craig Gamble (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2021), 478pp, $35

‘Maybe I could sew my legs together,’ Loretta muses, wishing for a tail. Penned-on lines or her own rashy, eczematic skin could pass for scales. Sniffing, dripping, allergy-ridden Jeremy is a likely candidate for the required slimy hagfish; a sickening Mrs Wilberforce (a nod to Maurice Gee’s Under the Mountain) is Loretta’s longed-for mermaid kindred spirit. This is the alarming, yet vividly drawn cast of ‘Scales, Tails and Hagfish’, Octavia Cade’s story of an insistent, angry, self-proclaimed mermaid that sets the pace for this collection of fourteen long short stories with unflagging brio.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: fiction, literature, sci fi fantasy, short stories

At the Edge of Storytelling

December 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Vaughan Rapatahana

I Wish, I Wish by Zirk van den Berg (Cuba Press Novella Series, 2020), 173pp, $25; Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson, and other very short stories by Jack Remiel Cottrell (Canterbury University Press, 2021), 136pp, $29.99

Two interesting and arresting books. The first is a short novel, a work of fantastic fiction; the second is a series of short, short genre-benders, a work of sometimes frightening fabulousness. Both are very well written, compact in construction and content, and compelling.

I Wish, I Wish is a cleverly written novella which is bodacious reading—swift to complete, simple to solve. The kaupapa or theme is rather unusual. A nondescript nonentity of an undertaker, Seb, earns himself three wishes because of his own kind act towards a fading yet angelic child, Gabriel, who visits the bankrupting mortuary where Seb performs the brunt of the work, and who somewhat miraculously reconstructs a seemingly unsalvageable Rubik’s Cube. [Read more…]

Filed Under: fiction, short stories

Variations on a Theme

November 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Wendy Parkins

The Piano Girls by Elizabeth Smither (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2021), 246pp, $35

Elizabeth Smither’s collection of short stories, The Piano Girls, is the latest addition to a list of publications any writer might envy that includes six novels and eighteen collections of poetry, as well as glittering prizes like the 2002 Te Mata Poet Laureate, the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry in 2008 and the Ockham’s Poetry Award in 2018. This collection suggests that Smither is not done yet. Its twenty stories examine the lives of girls and women, from adolescent angst and ambition to the renegotiations and relinquishments of later life. [Read more…]

Filed Under: short stories

Voices of Aotearoa

October 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Rachel Smith

Strong Words #2: The best of the Landfall Essay Competition, selected by Emma Neale (Otago University Press, 2021), 184pp, $35; Te Kinakina: E Ngara i te Ngari. Remember where you come from. Stories from Cook Islanders in Tokoroa, edited by Vaughan Rapatahana (Read NZ Te Pou Muramura, 2021), 182pp, $50

We tell stories to understand and to share who we are. Two new anthologies, Strong Words #2. The best of the Landfall Essay Competition, selected by Emma Neale, and Te Kinakina: E Ngara i te Ngari, edited by Vaughan Rapatahana, add to the breadth of stories being told—the many shades and forms and opinions of contemporary writing in Aotearoa. [Read more…]

Filed Under: poetry, short stories

Finding Our Light 

August 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Renee Liang

A Clear Dawn: New Asian voices from Aotearoa New Zealand, edited by Paula Morris and Alison Wong (Auckland University Press, 2021), 340pp., $49.99

The first thing I notice is the weight. This anthology of 75 Asian writers, the first significant assembly of our voices in Aotearoa, is a hefty tome. In my wondering hand it feels like a statement: we have arrived. The book is covered in a glorious silky matte fabric designed by Keely O’Shannessy, its depiction of sunlight falling on waves reminiscent of a Japanese woodblock print. Later I discover that the fabric wipes clean easily. Practicality and beauty in one: how very Asian.

But even the concept of ‘Asian’ and who is defined by this label is fraught. As the editors note in their introduction, it’s an imprecise term that doesn’t communicate the diversity and political complexity of the countries making up ‘Asia’ and yet, it’s a term that can be embraced by people of many backgrounds precisely because it is so waffly. Writers of East Asian, South Asian and Southeast Asian descent are included, as are Pacific, European and North American writers of Asian ancestry; missing are voices from Middle Eastern countries. It is clear that editors Paula Morris and Alison Wong set themselves a difficult task. As they note, all anthologies must have limits.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: asian writers, fiction, short stories

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