Landfall

Landfall Review Online: Aotearoa New Zealand books in review

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Airini Beautrais

Ruin and Other Stories by Emma Hislop (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 192pp, $30

I sometimes wonder why short story collections do not have the popularity of novels. As a writer of short fiction, I have had a number of people say to me, completely unsolicited, ‘I don’t really like short stories.’ I think one of the reasons for the disinterest, or in some cases, discomfort, with this form is that it doesn’t offer an ‘escape’ in the same way as a novel. The period of immersion in the fictional world is shorter. And, often, it involves a lot of psychological or emotional work. Rather than a way to get lost, the short story offers a way to probe a situation or idea. Reading a collection of stories can therefore be challenging and difficult. Instead of a slow burn, rising tension, it is conflict after conflict after conflict.  [Read more…]

Proof Positive

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Michael O’Leary

Kāwai: For such a time as this by Monty Soutar (Bateman Books, 2022), 372pp, $49.99

Takina ou kāwai, kia mohiotia ai ou tupuna—E kimi ana I ngā kāwai i toro ki tawhiti (‘Of a man looking up relatives at a distance’). I begin with a quotation from William Williams’ 1844 Māori-language dictionary definition of the term ‘kāwai’ to emphasise the layered meaningfulness and the aptness of this title for Monty Soutar’s novel, his first. Beginning this way also parallels the author’s approach of using phrases and words in te reo Māori, followed by their English translation.  [Read more…]

Manipulation, Madness and Marijuana 

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Gina Cole

Aljce in Therapy Land by Alice Tawhai (Lawrence & Gibson, 2022), 282pp, $25

Aljce In Therapy Land is a funny take on the dark and upsetting subject of workplace bullying. It is dedicated to everyone who has ever been bullied at work or bullied and controlled in any way by anyone. There is also a mad neighbour, an online romance and many marijuana-fuelled existential conversations.  [Read more…]

Malicious Compliance

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Erik Kennedy

Always Italicise: How to write while colonised by Alice Te Punga Somerville (Auckland University Press, 2022), 88pp, $24.99; We Enter The by Piet Nieuwland (Cyberwit, 2022), 68pp, US$15; Dirge Bucolic by Jasmine Gallagher (Compound Press, 2022), 92pp, $25

Alice Te Punga Somerville’s potent debut Always Italicise stakes out its ambition in its subtitle: How to write while colonised. At first glance, if you focus on the ‘how to write’ part, it might be a sort of craft book, a manual for generating words and ideas and practices. But if you focus on the ‘while colonised’ part, it’s a survival guide, an emergency companion for Indigenous artists in Aotearoa. And it’s both, of course. Te Punga Somerville (Te Āti Awa, Taranaki), who teaches critical Indigenous studies at the University of British Columbia, has what I would describe as an uncommon gift: a gift for writing poetry that lays out convincing arguments. You could say that she brings scholarship to her art, but it would be just as accurate to say that she brings art to her scholarship. [Read more…]

When the Sun is Being a Bastard

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Lawrence Patchett 

Under a Big Sky: Facing the elements on a New Zealand farm by Tim Saunders (Allen & Unwin, 2022), 288pp, $34.99

Early in Under a Big Sky: Facing the elements on a New Zealand farm, Tim Saunders signals the twin issues that will preoccupy his narrative. The first relates to the elements. ‘Take any decision on the farm,’ the narrator says, ‘strip it back and you will find the weather’. The rain gauge is among the most discussed tools on the Glen Oroua farm, and in 2020 a searing drought makes it more important than ever. When the sun is ‘being a bastard’ day after day, and the seasons no longer behave the way they used to, it’s even more inevitable that your thoughts circle on the elements. Thus Under a Big Sky takes its structure from them, moving through sections themed on fire, air, water and earth.  [Read more…]

The Tilted Playing Field

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David Eggleton

Towards a Grammar of Race in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Arcia Tecun, Lana Lopesi and Anisha Sankar (Bridget Williams Books, 2022), 256pp, $39.99

Behind the facade of ‘nice New Zealand’ racial discrimination festers away at every level of society, though often in subtle, circuitous, complex ways, and despite so-called affirmative action. One in every three complaints to the Human Rights Commission currently concerns racial discrimination. In November 2022, after his defeat at the polling booths, Auckland Mayoral candidate Efeso Collins, who is of Sāmoan and Tokelauan descent, and was for a time the front-runner, said polling research showed that ‘the race factor’ was a key reason for his loss to Wayne Brown, who implicitly played ‘the race card’. [Read more…]