Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

Earth’s Last Great Wilderness

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Neville Peat

Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica by Rebecca Priestley (Victoria University Press, 2019), 384pp., $40

Despite an inhospitable nature, or maybe simply because it’s a frozen desert, Antarctica attracts an array of superlatives – coldest, windiest, highest, driest, remotest and last-discovered of the planet’s seven continents. Yet another set of descriptors derives from the human activity of recent decades – most pristine, most peaceful, most collaborative.

Yes, collaboration, internationally. As New Zealand’s most famous Antarctic explorer, Sir Edmund Hillary, once said, Antarctica’s extreme environment ‘drives people together’. [Read more…]

Two Rooms in the House of Poetry

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Lynn Jenner

Working the Tang by Nicola Easthope (The Cuba Press, 2018), 86pp, $25; How I Get Ready by Ashleigh Young (Victoria University Press, 2019), 96pp, $25

Nicola Easthope’s poetry collection Working the Tang comes seven years after her first collection, leaving my arms free to fly around you (Steele Roberts, 2011). The first impression of the book is that it is an object of beauty. The cover image by Kimbra Taylor shows two women harvesting seaweed, or ‘wirkin the tang’. The women stand on dark broody seaweed green and behind them is a pea-green sea. Wind blows the seaweed and one woman’s dress. The book is printed on a matt cream paper that is soft to the touch and the design and typeface are pleasing. [Read more…]

Daring to Take the Leap into Clarity

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Bill Direen

Karl Wolfskehl: A poet in exile by Friedrich Voit (Cold Hub Press, 2019), 232pp, $40

To start at the end, the Epilogue tells us about the growth of international interest in Karl Wolfskehl over recent decades, and the handling, by his companion Margot Ruben, of his literary estate up until her death in 1980. Throughout the biography, Friedrich Voit gives us enough facts, without building her up unduly, to get a fair picture of the importance of Ruben in Wolfskehl’s work, and the intricacies of their relationship. The Wolfskehl–Ruben story is only one of many fascinating threads. [Read more…]

A Go-To Library of Images

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Mary Cresswell

Everything’s Something in Place by John Geraets (Titus Books, 2019), 326 pp., $42; Contents Under Pressure by Gail Ingram (Pūkeko Publications, 2019),86 pp., $25; Lay Studies by Steven Toussaint (Victoria University Press, 2019), 108 pp., $25

John Geraets’ Everything’s Something in Place: Writings 1980–2015 is in many ways a celebration of the survivor’s right to write history. He gives us what he would like to be professionally remembered by: literary criticism, poems, general essays, anecdotes that are part of New Zealand literary history.

It is not a scholarly biography, however. Geraets revises essays published over a period of some years, to the extent that much of the material floats unattached to any identifiable date. This is fine – he alerts us in informative introductions that may well be the most recently written content, though he doesn’t specify. He reveals his journey from being a ‘lapsing Catholic’ (sounds continuous) to a ‘direct engagement in Vipassana and Buddhist life principles’ (sounds staunch). His first encounter with Zen is written as a travel diary, doubly attractive to me for not mentioning Alan Watts. [Read more…]

The Biggest Raupatu

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Hannah Mettner

Attraction by Ruby Porter (Text Publishing, 2019), 288 pp., $37

When I saw Ruby Porter’s debut novel Attraction on the ‘recommended reads’ shelf at Unity, and browsed the blurb on the back, it appealed immediately. The idea of a plot based around three women who may be friends, lovers, or a bit of both, and are trying to figure that out, has the potential for the kind of sticky emotional writing that I’m always seeking out. But set and setting are everything; when I finally got around to the reading the book, the protests over the stolen land at Ihumātao had become a national news item, I’d flown home to Gisborne to say goodbye to my dying uncle, Jacinda had announced that New Zealand history would be taught in all New Zealand schools, and I was deep into a year-long te reo course. [Read more…]