Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

Creatures of the Mind

Leave a Comment

Elizabeth Morton

Craven by Jane Arthur (Victoria University Press, 2019), 88 pp., $25; The Track by Paula Green (Seraph Press, 2019), 64 pp, $25; At This Distance by Dunstan Ward (Cold Hub Press, 2019 ), 88 pp., $27.50

Craven by Jane Arthur feels effortless, unfiltered – it displays the raw motions of the limbic system, untroubled by social mores or poetic constraints. It is the over-sharer at the party – but one who is artful, engaging. It is the deep-and-meaningful quasi-confessional anecdote told over a punch bowl that commits you to feeling more flawed but also as if you are more of a participant in the human race. Eileen Myles, American poet and judge of the 2018 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize (which Arthur won), said of Arthur’s poems, ‘they don’t have to try so hard’. There is an ease to their pared back conversational honesty. [Read more…]

A Quiet Pooled Intelligence 

Leave a Comment

Michelle Elvy

Selected Stories by Vincent O’Sullivan (Victoria University Press, 2019), 592 pp., $40

Grove’s face wasn’t injured, as far as you could tell, but it curved in on one side, so that his left temple and jaw were at least an inch further out than his left cheek. Whether he talked or smiled, his lips on that side stayed straight and together, and the right side of his face moved by itself. And there were two deep lines that ran from beside his nostrils almost to the end of his chin. He wasn’t scarred or hideous or funny. You didn’t want to laugh at his face and you didn’t want to say you felt sorry for him. But I can’t remember being in any company with him when people didn’t tend to look at him rather than at anyone else. They wouldn’t let on, but they were absorbed by his dent.

It’s the best possible opening for this collection, and perhaps the best way to frame a review of Vincent O’Sullivan’s Selected Stories. The opening paragraph of ‘Grove’ – a story taken from O’Sullivan’s 1978 collection, The Boy, The Bridge, The River – sets the tone and progression of this collection, which spans nearly forty years of short stories. It also tells us to pay attention to the obvious and not-so-obvious details of the characters we encounter – that each individual deserves a second, or third, or many-times-more look. Finally, this opening paragraph suggests that looking at characters might mean, also, looking closely at how they look at each other, how they are viewed by other characters. The art of observation highlights our flaws, our idiosyncrasies – also our connections, our warmth. We’re all in this story together, O’Sullivan seems to say.  [Read more…]

A Slow Entanglement

Leave a Comment

Arihia Latham

Auē by Becky Manawatu (Mākaro Press, 2019), 323 pp., $35

This is a story of whānau and the ties that bind us beyond life; that hold tight through our whakapapa. It is a story of the sea, of its life-giving and life-taking ability, which spans from a baby rocking in salty water in the belly of his māmā on a boat, to the ocean stealing away what’s left, spitting out reluctant shapes, offering isolation and comfort in its crash and lull. This is Auē.

This novel didn’t initially pull me in, perhaps because the trope of the orphaned boy felt too familiar; or perhaps because of the title, warning me that it could be a difficult read. The suggestion of gangs and violence felt like dangerous territory when telling Māori history. But as I persevered, the characters hooked me in the puku and wouldn’t let go. [Read more…]

Quite a Ride

Leave a Comment

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…]

‘I Am Talking of a Being’

Leave a Comment

Michael Steven

Dandy Bogan by Nick Ascroft (Boatwhistle Books, 2018), 82pp., $21.99; Islander by Lynn Davidson (Victoria University Press, 2019), 80pp., $25

Where I grew up, in the small East Auckland suburb of Bucklands Beach, bogans were both a source of envy and terror to me and my impressionable mates. We envied them for their wild girlfriends, their outlaw status, their flagrant disregard for the conservatism practised by our parents. They sold us smoking dope, did burnouts in their souped-up eight-cylinder rides outside our school during class time, and arrived at our parties in hordes to start fights. They were a mongrel cabal. A scruffy aristocracy, unaccountable to anyone. Dandies they were not.  [Read more…]