Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

#I am not a virus

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Mira Harrison 

The Dark Island by Benjamin Kingsbury (Bridget Williams Books, 2019), 208pp., $39.99

As I read the final chapter of Benjamin Kingsbury’s history of Quail Island, New Zealand’s leprosy colony, news of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic began to break. Leafing back through the pages to Chapter 1, where Kingsbury describes the first suspicious case of leprosy in New Zealand in 1903, similar themes between these past and present stories of illness, suffering and infection control began to emerge. This prompted consideration of how we – as individuals, as health professionals and in our wider communities – respond to people infected with a contagious disease, and the possible consequences of our reactions for the health and wellbeing of societies across the world.  [Read more…]

Mate atu he toa, ara mai ra he toa! When one warrior dies, another arises to take his place!

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Vaughan Rapatahana

Whitiki! Whiti! Whiti! E!: Māori in the First World War by Monty Soutar (Bateman Books, 2019), 576 pp., $69.99 

He pukapuka tino nui tēnei. This is a very big book. Nearly 600 pages, a weight of 3kg and measurements of 286 x 210mm. You would need a lectern to hold it up for sustained periods of reading! The rest of the time it relaxes well on any coffee table.

He pukapuka tino pai tēnei. This is a very good book. Well presented, with dozens of maps and diagrams and hundreds of photographs, including many of the servicemen involved, a generous quotient of whom were Pasifika volunteers. It is also important to note that several toa wāhine volunteered to fight and were not happy about being declined. As Soutar says, ‘Given the Māori tradition that women accompanied their men to war, it was not surprising that women showed disdain for the military’s enlistment criteria’ (47).  [Read more…]

Quite a Ride

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Helen Watson White

Making History: A New Zealand story by Jock Phillips (Auckland University Press, 2019), 373pp., $45

In 1973 it was considered newsworthy that a couple of young postgrads, Phillida Bunkle and Jock Phillips (then called John), had come to teach at Victoria University of Wellington, sharing a four-course lectureship in the field of American history. Since few, if any, academics with ‘identical’ qualifications had occupied the same job before, in a small way they were making history, and on 16 June the Dominion made a note (and photo) of it. The couple’s motivations were a reflection of the times. Phillips is quoted as saying that in the US, where they had been living, the counter-culture had ‘launched an attack on American middle-class ambition and the emphasis on men “getting ahead”. Men are beginning to feel now that the job is not everything.’  [Read more…]

Hear Our Voices

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Giovanni Tiso 

The Broken Estate by Mel Bunce (Bridget Williams Books, 2019), 224pp., $14.99; Student Political Action in New Zealand by Sylvia Nissen (Bridget Williams Books, 2019), 168pp., $14.99

To receive reliable information about the world; and to be able to act on this information to change how society works. These basic conditions for democracy are the subject of two new books in Bridget Williams’ Texts series. Mel Bunce’s The Broken Estate explores the state of contemporary journalism, asking whether it is still (or ever was) equipped to fulfil its dual role of informing the public and helping to produce imagined communities. Sylvia Nissen’s Student Political Action in New Zealand examines the realities faced by young people undertaking university education and how these shape or constrain their political expression.  [Read more…]

Witness Marks

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Jodie Dalgleish 

Kaitiaki o te Pō by John-Paul Powley (Seraph Press, 2018), 165 pp, $35

In his book of essays, Kaitiaki o te Pō, historian and teacher John-Paul Powley ruminates on self and a broader culture through the flow of his life, which eddies around the jut of histories and events that break a country’s current into caesurae. Each one is a stopping point full of personal refusals and tentative potentialities, poignant and sometimes rousing. [Read more…]