Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

At the Edge of Storytelling

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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…]

Variations on a Theme

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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…]

Voices of Aotearoa

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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…]

Finding Our Light 

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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…]

The Treachery of Words (and Images)

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Robyn Maree Pickens

This Is Not a Pipe by Tara Black (Victoria University Press, 2020), 160pp., $28; Timelights by Martin Edmond (Lasavia Publishing, 2020), 196pp., $37.86

Before I read This Is Not a Pipe by Pōneke-based comic-maker Tara Black and Timelights by Aotearoa-born, Sydney-based writer Martin Edmond, I was reading literary criticism/affect theory on how to ‘read’ texts. ‘Read’ in this context is best described as reading with the intent to critique, to interpret, to analyse. These texts on reading debate different methodological approaches to criticism, interpretation and analysis, such as suspicious or paranoid reading and reparative reading elaborated by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (2003). In highly simplified terms, suspicious reading assumes a position of mastery, and reparative reading one of pleasure. The apparent binary between the two approaches, which Sedgwick nuanced to hold ambiguity, has nevertheless obtained in subsequent theoretical discussions as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ positions, or has been the subject of a recuperative oscillation between the two.  [Read more…]

The Secret Life of Everyone

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Rachel O’Connor

Bug Week & Other Stories by Airini Beautrais, (Victoria University Press, 2020), 184pp, $30

The cover of Bug Week is a soft coral pink, faintly reminiscent of one’s grandmother’s fully unrestored bathroom. The hand-painted bugs that crawl among the letters of its title are similarly benign, referencing a gentler time when entomology was as much about fine art as science. Between the covers of the collection, however, lies a darker, more dangerous place, implicitly familiar in its mundane settings and populations, but made noxious by the insidious contaminants of human weakness, disillusionment and betrayal. In these thirteen short stories by Airini Beautrais, we are all subject to scrutiny under the microscope, and no one emerges looking good.  [Read more…]