Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

A Hydra-headed Problem

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Emma Gattey

Fishing for Māui by Isa Pearl Ritchie (Te Rā Aroha Press, 2018), 366pp., $34.99

Fishing for Māui opens with an inconsequential death on the first page – or rather, the belated realisation that something once vital (here, a plum tree) has been dead for some time. This moribund motif reverberates throughout Isa Pearl Ritchie’s novel: the sense that something is broken, dead or dying, along with an accompanying sense of futility. Drawing upon her doctoral thesis on food sovereignty and her experience growing up in a bicultural family, Ritchie has written a multi-perspective novel about food, whānau and mental illness in Aotearoa New Zealand. Although the conduits differ for each character – kai, indigenous culture, adultery, drugs, activism – there is a real hunger in this book for wellness, freedom, self-acceptance and a better life. Through various Kiwi voices, Ritchie addresses some of our most pressing domestic issues: family discord, mental illness, physical health and racism. Unfortunately, this multivocal work never quite harmonises or achieves momentum. [Read more…]

Messing with our expectations

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Lynley Edmeades

The Ice Shelf by Anne Kennedy (Victoria University Press, 2018), 320pp., $30; The Bed-Making Competition by Anna Jackson (Brio Books, 2018), 112 pp., $17.99

Anne Kennedy is a household name in New Zealand letters. She’s been publishing compelling work since the late 80s and doesn’t show any sign of letting up. Her poetry, screenplays, novels and short stories have fetched various awards on these shores and beyond, and her movement between and across genres shows her dexterity and proclivity towards experimentation. [Read more…]

The workings of memory

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Denis Harold

Memory Pieces by Maurice Gee (Victoria University Press, 2018), 336pp., $35

The title Memory Pieces in its starkness is ambiguous, suggesting both an offering of autobiographical fragments and an active process of piecing (or being pieced) together. Gee states on the first page: ‘In writing these pieces I’ve relied on memory, mine and other people’s, rather than research. Where the two conflict I’ve usually gone with memory.’ Memories can be raw and unchanging, but mostly are evolving and unreliable, necessary material for the stories that individuals and families feel compelled to make of their lives.  [Read more…]

How to ease the realm of pain?

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Gerry Te Kapa Coates

Ko Taranaki te Maunga by Rachel Buchanan (BWB Texts, 2018) 152 pp., $14.99

In keeping with the concept of Bridget Williams Books (BWB) Texts as ‘short books on big subjects’, this book does not intend to be a comprehensive revisiting of the shameful – for Pākehā – Parihaka saga. Instead, Rachel Buchanan tells her deeply personal story of the effects on her family – and in particular her father – of the events leading up to the colonial government’s actions and subsequent denial of justice that was the Parihaka story. The book is both memoir and personal history – highlighting that the saying ‘the personal is political’ applies to decolonisation as well as feminism – sitting alongside factual information and analysis of the events and fallout from the Parihaka invasions, eventual Crown Treaty settlements and the many apologies to Taranaki iwi. I was reminded of Moana Jackson’s brilliant essay titled ‘Globalisation and the Colonising State of Mind’, in which he says, ‘Destroying the world-view and culture of indigenous peoples has always been as important as taking their lives, because the actual process of disempowerment, the key purpose of any colonisation, has to function at the spiritual and psychic level, as well as the physical and political.’1 [Read more…]

Taking risks

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Ruth Brown

The Life of De’Ath by Majella Cullinane (Steele Roberts Aotearoa, 2018), 242pp., $34.99

If Mephistopheles has been making a comeback, it’s in new guises appropriate for societies that don’t believe in hell: in London’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse production of Doctor Faustus, she was a mischievously jolly best friend rather than the embodiment of evil. In Majella Cullinane’s multi-layered debut novel, he’s an amiable and reliable narrator, and somewhat dissatisfied with his other-worldly status: there’s a clever twist at the end to explain his real identity and motivation. [Read more…]