Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

The Challenge and Taste of Who We Are

Leave a Comment

Siobhan Harvey 

The Savage Coloniser Book by Tusiata Avia (Victoria University Press, 2021), 96pp, $25; Magnolia 木蘭 by Nina Mingya Powles (Seraph Press, 2021), 82pp, $30

Now that the glitz, commotion and hype of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are over for another year, readers are left to the books themselves. By now we know those that made the longlist, those that made the shortlist and, undoubtedly meritorious also, those that didn’t. In this last category one might whisper—or, post-literary appraisal, can one say roar?—authors and titles such as Kay McKenzie Cooke’s uplifting third collection Upturned (The Cuba Press), Rata Gordon’s Second Person (Victoria University Press) and Oscar Upperton’s tremendous New Transgender Blockbusters (Victoria University Press). This, of course, is the nature of any prize-giving beast—subjectivity. It is also the nature of the review and the reviewer. The celebrations and commiserations roundly completed, it falls to me to bring my subjectivity to two books that made the illustrious shortlist category in the aforementioned awards: The Savage Coloniser Book by Tusiata Avia and Nina Mingya Powles’ much heralded (both nationally and internationally) Magnolia 木蘭.  [Read more…]

The Secret Life of Everyone

Leave a Comment

Rachel O’Connor

Bug Week & Other Stories by Airini Beautrais, (Victoria University Press, 2020), 184pp, $30

The cover of Bug Week is a soft coral pink, faintly reminiscent of one’s grandmother’s fully unrestored bathroom. The hand-painted bugs that crawl among the letters of its title are similarly benign, referencing a gentler time when entomology was as much about fine art as science. Between the covers of the collection, however, lies a darker, more dangerous place, implicitly familiar in its mundane settings and populations, but made noxious by the insidious contaminants of human weakness, disillusionment and betrayal. In these thirteen short stories by Airini Beautrais, we are all subject to scrutiny under the microscope, and no one emerges looking good.  [Read more…]

Cartography for the Soul

Leave a Comment

Tim Saunders

Map for the Heart: Ida Valley essays by Jillian Sullivan (Otago University Press, 2020), 280pp., $35

The last time I visited the Ida Valley in Central Otago I stopped on the road beside the Idaburn, the river that cuts diagonally across the plains between mountain ranges. The sun was slung low in the sky and the moon was already rising, as if caught in some cosmic game of chase across the heavens. It would soon be dark, and I still had an hour’s drive to where I wanted to be.

I watched a hawk slice the thick evening air as water flowed over river-smooth stones, its dark shape flicking over sheep scattered across brown grass. Magpies sat upright in trees, turning their backs to the sun to catch the last of the warmth. As I looked at these creatures that had made a home here, among the tussock and in the shadows of hills, I had the sudden desire to stay just where I was. There was something there in that limitless landscape that beckoned me to put down roots. [Read more…]

Dandelions Flung Together Learning to Grow 

Leave a Comment

Erik Kennedy

National Anthem by Mohamed Hassan (Dead Bird Books, 2020), 68pp., $35; Childwood by Denis Welch (Steele Roberts, 2019), 64pp., $20; The Sets by Victor Billot (Otago University Press, 2021), 118pp., $27.50

The ‘national anthem’ of Mohamed Hassan’s second book of poems, National Anthem, is built on a clever contradiction: it is not actually meant to be a national anthem at all, as it is sceptical of the very idea of nation states. As the title poem puts it:

I pledge myself to

no flag

no border

no house of trees

no fairy tale past

no charismatic king

no industry of false profits

burying their dead in the sand [Read more…]

Gardens for the People! 

Leave a Comment

James Beattie 

Common Ground: Garden histories of Aotearoa by Matt Morris (Otago University Press, 2020), 284 pp., $45

In Common Ground: Garden histories of Aotearoa, Matt Morris writes affectionately of our love affair with gardens through time. In it, expect to find stories of your uncle and aunty digging spuds or planting kūmara in the back garden, rather than details of the wealthy real estate developer and her husband quaffing cocktails on their mansion’s manicured lawn. Morris draws from wide-ranging archival and published sources, as well as interviews. The result is a fine-grained and touching history of our relationship with gardens. [Read more…]