Landfall Review Online

Impure First

July 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Robyn Maree Pickens

Gretchen Albrecht: Between gesture and geometry by Luke Smythe (Massey University Press, 2019), 303pp., $80

Gretchen Albrecht: Between gesture and geometry has the heft and appearance of a monograph accompanying a major retrospective exhibition by an important senior artist. If such a retrospective at one of the country’s major public galleries is not in the planning stages, then this publication surely serves as a timely reminder of Albrecht’s significance as a New Zealand artist. [Read more…]

A Salmagundi of Sonnets, Songs and Sinewy Syntax

July 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Briar Wood

Time to Sing Before the Dark by Helen Bascand (Caxton Press, 2018), 94 pp., $24.95; Voodoo by Peter Bland (Steele Roberts, 2018), 63 pp., $20; Remembering a Place I’ve Never Been: The past in three voices by Heather Bauchop (Cold Hub Press, 2018), 104 pp., $30; There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime by Erik Kennedy (Victoria University Press, 2018), 80 pp., $25

It is no easy task to summarise a life, but literary executor Joanna Preston’s selection achieves a balance in this volume of Helen Bascand’s writing, Time to Sing Before the Dark. It shows the steady growth of moments into words and lines, a filtering of time, reading, conversations and personal events, to the point where they become commonplace in a positive way.

There’s a spiritual dimension to the collection, a Christian history turned over and examined beside Graeco-Roman stories, balanced and polished, so that the poems reflect difficult and unhappy experiences while making the most of the opportunity to live them. [Read more…]

The Apotheosis of Theo Schoon

June 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Laurence Simmons

Theo Schoon: A biography by Damian Skinner (Massey University Press, 2018), 336 pp., $59.99

Émigré artist Theo Schoon, whose life intersected with important cultural moments in New Zealand’s art history, made occasionally impressive, dominantly weird and sometimes godawful art. Vainglory and vanity, the hokey and the profound, independence and jealousy combined in Schoon’s character in such unexpected ways that one despairs of sorting them out. In his new biography Damian Skinner has valiantly attempted to do so and has drawn extensively on a rich resource of interviews and archival materials from here and elsewhere. But reading Skinner’s tale of Schoon’s tale of himself, you feel that Skinner has never been able to warm to his subject and there is a certain perversity involved in the undertaking. It is as if Skinner gritted his teeth and said to himself ‘I just have to finish this despite …’ [Read more…]

The Right Stuff

June 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Charlotte Grimshaw

A Mistake by Carl Shuker (Victoria University Press, 2019), 184 pp., $30

In a 2007 article in the New Yorker, surgeon and health researcher Atul Gawande wrote an account of the medical profession’s evolving approach to mistakes. During surgery and afterwards in ICU, a typical patient will require hundreds of procedures, all of which can result in life-threatening complications if not implemented correctly. As medicine advances and the methods for saving patients become more elaborate and numerous, the risks mount up. Avoiding mistakes is an important issue, given that one relatively small error can lead to potentially fatal consequences. [Read more…]

Chance Would Be a Fine Thing

June 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Ray Grover

All This By Chance by Vincent O’Sullivan (Victoria University Press, 2018), 335pp., $35

Readers do not need to finish the first paragraph of this novel before they find themselves succumbing to the authority of an accomplished storyteller. Sinking into Vincent O’Sullivan’s prose is like sliding into a Rotorua pool; once enveloped you become more a participant than a reader, soaking up details rather than heeding them. It is only afterwards, when you begin reflecting, that you wonder what actually happened. Like when life has delivered you an event that you realise is more than the sum of its parts, and you look back to try to discover the nature of those parts and their connections – as, from time to time, O’Sullivan’s characters themselves are compelled to do. This ability to lead readers to involve themselves in the story almost as deeply as the characters contributes immensely towards Vincent O’Sullivan’s achievement. [Read more…]