Flaxroots Productions

Meticulous research

7/17/2017

New Zealand Rugby Country – How the game shaped our nation
by Desmond Wood

This is a meticulously researched and carefully written book, which examines New Zealand’s national game from all possible angles. It contains a detailed history of the sport and draws parallels with the condition of New Zealand society at the same time that rugby events take place. It is impressive in the way it unfolds and links the two strains.
Particular attention is paid to the way that the struggle against apartheid came to a head with the 1981 Springbok tour to New Zealand. It is clear that the tour shaped this country socially as well as it shaped rugby, ensuring that never again would a team selected on race represent New Zealand.
Some space is spent discussing how the changing demographics of New Zealand have been reflected in the makeup of rugby teams, in particular the rise to prominence of players from the Pacific Islands.
Chapters are devoted to Maori rugby, detailing its history and achievements, also the rise of rugby sevens and its inclusion in the summer Olympics. Women’s rugby gets a special mention, detailing the New Zealand domination of that sport, but decrying the lack of women in rugby management.
A lot of space is devoted to the rise of professionalism in the game and the increased prestige of the Rugby World Cup.
The book highlights the journey rugby has travelled from being a totally amateur sport played in clubs, which were often quite social in makeup, to a professional game where a young person can go straight from high school to playing for a super rugby team, and earning vast amounts of money. The incredible amounts of money poured into the game by sponsors and by television have no parallel in any other New Zealand sport, and surprised me, even though I have been a follower of the game most of my life.
The influence that New Zealand rugby has had on the rest of the world can be seen in the number of overseas national teams that are being coached by New Zealanders. When rugby became a professional sport the selection and culture of the All Blacks needed to become much more professional as well, and this change is well detailed in the book, even down to the history of the haka, and the all black jersey.
This is a book that could be read many times, with the reader gaining greater insight into the details of the national game each time. However, the reviewer cannot help but think that perhaps it was the changing New Zealand society that changed rugby, rather than the author’s view that rugby changed the nation.

Review by Harold Bernard

Title: New Zealand Rugby Country: How the Game Shaped Our Nation
Author: Desmond Wood
Publisher: Bateman, $39.99
ISBN: 9781869539276
RRP: $39.99
Available: bookshops

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Amazing Story

7/10/2017

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The Wild Side
by Janet Balcombe

Balcombe rips straight into it! And she's transparently raw.
Immediately, we are immersed in the seedy, alcohol and drug-fuelled 60s.
It's good, with frightening intensity, and there's no gratuitous writing here – it's authentic from start to finish.
An exceptional and fast read. Both historic and current, and scarily vivid. From drama to drama, she doesn't miss a beat.
I cried. Yes, I cried for the girl who lost her way amidst the drug and money scene, for the baby born into this kind of life, and for the unfolding of hope amidst total desperation. There are parts that mirror my life. Experiences that I can vouch for as true. And a faith that survives throughout.
If you read it fast enough, you will be swept along in this other life, the one we so often choose to ignore and condemn.
If you read it fast enough, you will skim over the typos and editorial bits and pieces, and the cliches, and get to the heart of a young woman trying to make sense out of no sense at all.
What a tale of survival! Amazing story.

Review by Poppy

Title: The Wild Side
Author: Janet Balcombe
Publisher: Wild Side Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-473-36621-6
RRP: $29.99
Available: all good bookstores

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Vivid descriptions show depth of research

7/4/2017

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Through the Lonesome Dark
by Paddy Richardson

When I’ve finished reading the book I take another look at the cover. A photograph of what seems to be the main street of a small town, and the face of a young girl.
     The story’s opening chapter, as does a photo credit, confirms the setting is Blackball, West Coast mining town. The period, early twentieth century.
     The conversational style of the opening chapter, by way of a genderless narrator, drew me right into the social atmosphere, though it also impeded reading in places when I had to go over a sentence more than once to be sure of the intention.
     We are introduced to three families and, in particular, to one child from each – Pansy, Clem, and Otto – a tight group of friends in spite of differences between the families. Pansy’s Catholic, Clem’s Presbyterian, Otto’s German, and religious and racial prejudices aren’t left behind even in such a small place where one might hope there’d be more to bind people than separate them.
     Of the three, the focus is on Pansy who, although she qualifies for a scholarship that would give her secondary school education, must instead work as a maid at a boarding house.
…first Daddy stole Pansy’s chance from her and now Mrs Smithson steals Pansy’s time with her I want and I expect, and worst of all, she steals Pansy’s own thoughts away from her with all those words she flings at her, words that hover about her so she can scarcely breathe for them, words so sharp they stab into her skin, words that sit on Pansy’s head, pressing and pressing.
     For the girl from Blackball things can hardly get worse, you think. Yes, they can.
From Part 2, the divisions become more marked as World War l breaks out, and Otto’s family become referred to as “Krauts”. From then on it’s Pansy and Clem, as Otto is not in the picture, for a reason we have to wait to learn.
     The miners of Blackball are exempt from military service, but Clem goes against the town’s feelings and volunteers for the New Zealand Tunnelling Company. Now it is he who becomes the central character. The rest of the story is his, and through Clem we learn of this aspect of our military history.
If them at home knew what he did. Their dead lads lying down there, passed by without a second look, trampled by the boots walking over them, gnawed on by the rats. Lads that should have been back home working and building things up, wedding their girls and looking to have little lads and girls of their own.
     Vivid descriptions of the situation, the conditions and the work of these men show a depth of research by the author.
     At the end, however, I feel less than satisfied – let down by the structure of the novel. The tone of the opening chapter is never repeated; no more is said of Otto, though there’s a pressing reason we want to know more; and the six parts the story is divided into seem arbitrary. Which is why I go back to re-examine the cover for clues. The story starts and ends in Blackball, right enough. The girl is still there, though her place as central character is usurped and she has become incidental. The title doesn’t really help me. Somehow I’m left thinking that along the way the story was undermined, something slipped and slid away from underneath me as two seams fractured and moved apart.
     That said, the quality of the writing throughout is very good, and details of the story overall will remain.

Review by Norma D. Plum

Title: Through the Lonesome Dark
Author: Paddy Richardson
Publisher: Upstart Press
ISBN: 978-1-927262-98-6
RRP: $34.99
Available: bookshops

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Absorbing contribution to a topical issue

6/27/2017

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The Journeys of Besieged Languages
Delyn Day, Poia Rewi, Rawinia Higgins (eds)

This is a collection of papers by people, mostly academics, who have a strong interest in the reclamation and revival of endangered languages.
Written in a variety of styles, from the recounting of personal experiences through to highly technical analyses, the overall result is a fascinating picture of the major concerns surrounding threatened languages, and includes compelling arguments for continuing and expanding the efforts to rejuvenate them, ways of assessing the dangers they face, and suggestions and illustrations of what has succeeded and what hasn’t.
   In a short review it is impossible to do full justice to all of the contributions, which collectively cover Swampy Cree and Anishinaabe (languages of the First Nation peoples of North America), Hawaiian, Tahitian, Māori, Barngarla (Eyre Peninsula in South Australia), Hebrew, Piedmontese, Romani, Kashubian (Poland), Kernewek (Cornish), Welsh, Gaelic and Kalaallisut (Greenland); but underlying all the papers is the assumption that language is an integral part of the world view of the various cultures as well as being essential to the proper functioning of human relationships within them. The survival of these languages, therefore, is deemed vital to the well-being of individuals, groups, nations and humanity as a whole.
  There are examples of astonishing successes, such as that achieved through Whatarangi Winiata’s Whakatupuranga Rua Mano, Generation 2000 plan in Otaki, related by Mereana Selby, and of painful difficulties, such as Kaiwipunikauikawēkiu Lipe’s personal struggles to continue using Hawaiian with her children in the face of the relentlessly pervasive and privileged influence of English. Bernard Spolsky demonstrates how much can be achieved with the full backing of the State, when he explains how Hebrew was successfully established as the everyday language of Israel, to the point where it is now fully revived from the centuries when it had been used only in religious ceremonies and as the language of religious texts.
     To select just one other of the many thought-provoking issues raised: a distinction is made between a society in which there are two main languages one of which is privileged while the other is treated as being of lower status, and a society in which both main languages are given equal value and where bilingualism is actively encouraged. The former situation is termed here ‘diglossia’. An excellent exposition of the importance of avoiding diglossia is given in Jeremy Evas’s contribution on the Welsh language situation.
     This also relates directly to the question of whether or not those from outside should be encouraged, or even permitted, to learn the language of the group. In his article on Romani, Ian Hancock points out that the speakers of this language have long been reluctant to allow others to learn and use it. This same reluctance is sometimes also to be found amongst other language groups, but it is obvious that some degree of bi- or multilingualism is the only way that true understanding between different language/cultural groups can be attained, and the benefits of different world views shared. As Jeremy Evas writes, quoting a European Commission communiquė of 2008, “Multilingual people are a precious asset because they act as the glue between different cultures.” Even the most irredeemably monoglot English speaker in Aotearoa-New Zealand should at least sincerely wish he or she could speak Māori, as Māori culture is a major part of what defines us and makes us unique.
The design and production of the book does not quite match the quality of the contributions. The maps are not always as clear as they might be. Then there is the confusing use of the em-dash without spacing. This reviewer kept seeing hyphenated words rather than punctuation marks. But much more irritating were the large blank spaces where two of the explanatory charts should have been.
     Setting that aside, this book is an accessible and absorbing contribution to a very topical issue, and it should be of considerable interest to both the general reader and the specialist.

Review by Tony Chapelle

Title: The Journeys of Besieged Languages
Editors: Delyn Day, Poia Rewi, Rawinia Higgins
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1-4438-9943-7
RRP: £68.99
Available: via www.cambridgescholars.com, Amazon, and other retailers

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Gift for Grandad’s birthday

6/19/2017

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A Book of Kiwi Limericks
by Peter Low

It is usually clear when an author has enjoyed writing a book and this collection of 134 limericks speaks of many hours of amusement as Peter Low came up with ideas, worked them into word form, and then produced this book.
The verses are ordered into four thematic sections, though some content does overlap.
Kiwi Blokes includes poems on such icons as Maui, Sir Edmund Hillary, Sir Ernest Rutherford, several All Blacks, and a few names from history far and recent – Abel Tasman to Kim Dotcom if you can call them Kiwi blokes.
          Young Rutherford shone by his wit.
          When sent to the timber pit
to chop up a log,
he said: “Dad that’s hard slog.
          Ain’t there anything smaller to split?”
The limericks in the next section, Kiwi Gals, show the author is more confident writing about his own gender. Fewer real women feature as subjects, and that also makes a comment on Kiwi society. One of the best in this section –
            A good Kiwi farm-girl called Briar
            got pinned by a huge tractor tyre,
so she sawed off one foot
which she managed to put
            back on later with number 8 wire.
The verses in Kiwi Nature, particularly those on a variety of native birds, show the author’s creativity with rhyming. It’s clear the amount of fun Peter Low had finding rhymes for korimako, ruru, Korora, and more.
            The talons and beak of Haast’s Eagle
            were murderous, monstrous and regal.
Fate made it extinct
on the theory (we think)
            it was too bloody big to be legal.
Then comes Kiwi Places with more pokes at cities, towns, and people along the highways from Invercargill to Cape Reinga.
Overall the author works in references to icons of Kiwiana such as the bach, jandals, Buzzy Bee, rugby (of course), and brands such as Hubbards, Weetbix, Marmite, Skellerup, Fisher and Paykel though you’ll have to interpret the last one.
Puns pop into a lot of the verses, and the poet plays with the form in some cases – altering the rhyming pattern and the number of lines. What holds the collection together is the Kiwi identity.
A good gift for Grandad’s birthday.

Review by Al Fabet

Title: A Book of Kiwi Limericks
Author: Peter Low
Publisher: Rangitawa Publishing
ISBN: 9780994138262
RRP: $18 + postage
Available: print book from www.rangitawapublishing.com
or from peteralanlow@gmail.com e-book via Amazon

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An important story

6/13/2017

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Orphanage Boys
by A.N. Arthur

I have often wondered why we have such a high rate of child abuse in this country and I am sure stories like Orphanage Boys provide part of the answer.
While our country is over 700 years old our histories largely record the last 250. This focuses us on settlement by Europeans and how those early settlers adjusted to an unfamiliar environment. Now that the stories are coming out we are discovering that it was pretty tough going. Orphanage Boys is just one example of how tough it must have been. The events are disturbing but if we are never told about them we will never know the true nature of this country and its people.
Orphanage Boys had me absorbed from the moment I read the first paragraph. We immediately knew there was something going on that was about to change Jimmy and Samuel’s lives. As the circumstances unfolded these suspicions were tragically confirmed. These events led to big changes for the two boys.
     As a reader, I experienced a sense of impending doom when Fraser, unable to care for the two boys, put them into care at Stoke Orphanage. Then he went off to find work and never returned, not entirely due to his own fault, although one wonders why he did not make more of an effort to connect with the boys.
There have been many accounts of what went on in orphanages run by the Catholic Church. As soon as we knew where Fraser was leaving them we knew life was going to be challenging.
     My lasting memory of that first terrible night at the orphanage was of a maggot in a boy’s food. That night Samuel and Jimmy did not eat. However, one can assume they eventually joined the group of ill-treated, hapless boys who ate whatever was put in front of them, maggots and all. There were moments when I wanted to get into the skin of the boys just a little bit more, without it becoming morbid and depressing.
     There is no question terrible things happened. But Samuel and Jimmy were the story’s redemption. Jimmy remained gentle, likable, hopeful and kind throughout the story. Samuel aggressively toughened, which was not surprising when he was victimised as he was.
     There were moments of levity – such as building the dam, and the escapades at night. These were moments that reminded me of how irrepressible a young person’s spirit can be.
Jimmy was someone to whom we warmed from the outset. He was young and vulnerable. His older brother, shouldered the responsibility of caring for them both and this formed a different kind of character. The unwanted attention from Father Donatus only adds to his smouldering anger. Just how that finally expresses itself is for the reader to find out
     Sometimes I felt the dialogue did not quite fit the speaker. For example, Samuel says, “That Brother Donatus…He’s a piece of work…” (39) Although it is explained as being something his father might have said, I was not convinced that this is how a young boy would speak. I would expect both boys to have a distinct vernacular.
     I did feel that there would have been more of an aftermath to Brother Donatus’ attacks and a relating of the psychological impact on the boys as they became men. This was their story and I wanted to follow those stories on the landscape without it intruding.
     I learnt more about my country and that was worthwhile.
This is an important story and I hope many people read it because it records the forming of our post settlement nation. Understanding our past helps to explain the present and perhaps heal the future.

Review by: Suraya Dewing
The Story Mint www.thestorymint.com

Title: Orphanage Boys
Author: A.N. Arthur
Publisher: Rangitawa Publishing
ISBN: 9780994138217
RRP: Amazon $38 incl. postage: $30 via facebook
Available: Amazon; or via AN Arthur https://www.anarthur.com/ or Facebook www.facebook.com/an.arthur.3

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Wide range of poetry styles

6/7/2017

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Selected Poems
by Ian Wedde

This handsome collection represents a very small part of Ian Wedde’s poetry career, a career which began in 1971. He doesn’t say exactly what prompted this collection at this time, but his remarks in the introduction give us a good idea:
  “Not a few poems have been written about the passing of time and it’s good that they can make sense of that craziness, but often it’s better when they refuse to. I like it when language messes up the orderly sequentiality of time passing, the trustworthiness of grammar’s timetables, the reliability of rational thought – and especially the self as centred meaning-maker.” He continues: “I enjoy the ways in which language can be our co-conspirator in subverting the too-predictable meeting of the sign with its meaning or referent – can encourage our scepticism of the over-confident mot juste and its denial of the carnivalesque.” [p x]
     Given this for starters, it’s no surprise that the collection ranges over many poetic styles and registers. The long “Letter to Peter McLeavey” cites Basho for style and plays with labels, as might well be appropriate for an art gallery mindset:
‘Suddenly
   the
     lake.’
   The ‘Sahara’, the ‘Oasis’,
   the ‘Chateau Suisse’
   and the ‘Tasty Thai’. [p 235]
Earlier, the “Commonplace Odes” sequence greets the muse, absent friends, dogs, and the poet’s own mirror in a distant hotel room – Horace channelling Allen Ginsberg [sic, since time is weird]:
   How gravely my weight wants to go to earth,
   Tagged down by good living, by love,
   And by spiteful tiredness brought on by the knuckle-
   Cracking Cotton Mathers of cultural bureaucracy.   [p 189]
This series of odes is the centre of the book. It calls upon a range of people, inspirations, episodes in the poet’s life – and, above all, the classical tradition which influences so many of the poems included here.
Poems published in his 2013 collection “The Lifeguard” seem to celebrate individuals, personalities, who have made a difference to Wedde, people who matter(ed). He begins the sequence “You have to start somewhere/in these morose times,” (p 278). Then he invokes Theocritus, Ovid, “my great-grandfather Heinrich August”, Helen Schofield, veterinarian, Geoff Park, ecologist, Bill Culbert, artist – all building up to the final “Shadow stands up”. The earlier poems mention individuals, but I get the feeling they are there to serve a purpose, not to be celebrated in their own right.
The collection has a wide range of styles and formats – no limericks or terza rima epics, but just about everything in between. It’s a fine introduction to the poetry of a New Zealand writer.

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: Selected Poems
Author: Ian Wedde
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 978 1 86940 859 6
RRP: $39.99
Available: bookshops

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Tribute to a dog

6/1/2017

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Jem
by Barry Johns

Most people will have memories of a much-loved pet that shared their life for some years, and which seems to them to be worthy of wider ongoing appreciation. All such readers will understand the reason behind the publication of this small book.
Jem, of mixed-breed, might have had potential as a hunting dog. That didn’t eventuate. Perhaps as a pig-hunter then, but that trial didn’t work out either. It’s not that she couldn’t hunt - rabbits no problem, and cat-owners will be happier avoiding her story. It was as a companion, and meeter-and-greeter at the owner’s vineyard property, that Jem found her forte.
To those who didn’t know her, Jem may seem no more special than any other well-remembered animal companion. But not many pet owners go to the trouble of publishing a book in their honour. It’s small - 40 pages, about 3500 words - and very well presented.
Jem is a memorial to a dog who was “loyal, friendly, loving and the best company”, and tribute to the love that exists between humans and animals.

Review by Al Fabet

Title: Jem
Author: Barry Johns
Publisher: BJ Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-473-37823-3
RRP: $20
Available: selected retail shops in Christchurch, Christchurch Libraries, via www.oogywawa.co.nz at $22.99 (incl. postage ) within NZ.

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Murder in the future

5/26/2017

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Notice of Death (Book 3 in the Ryxin trilogy)
by Genesis Cotterell

Revenge is the underlying theme of this third murder mystery, set in New Zealand some time in the future.
Since there are different laws for different ethnic groups – Humans and Ryxins – private Ryxin investigators Curtis McCoy and Janux Lennan have the task of finding the dead Ryxin woman’s killer. Janux is close to completing her PI training – an achievement which will make her Curtis’s partner in the agency and will allow them to legitimise their own relationship as a couple. During this investigation, we see Janux finally realising her own worth as an investigator and sticking up for herself in her work and personal relationships with Curtis.
Once again, as in the first two books in the trilogy, in Notice of Death, Cotterell’s low-key writing style can lull the reader into thinking that this is an easy read. And once again, there is much more lurking between the lines. As well as the question of revenge versus forgiveness, and whether or not revenge brings satisfaction and peace, Cotterell deals with issues such as adult bullying and the trilogy’s recurring theme of first and second-class citizenship.
Although Curtis and Janux drink an alarming amount of whisky in this book, they do manage to solve the latest mystery along with an overlapping cold case, so that the trilogy is brought to a fairly satisfying conclusion.
Janux has matured greatly since we first met her as the widow of a recent murder victim in Murder on Muritai (Book 1 in the trilogy) and as most of the main figures in Notice of Death are women, this book unfolds largely from her point of view.
I would have liked to see Curtis become a warmer, more sensitive man, but without other Ryxin men to compare him with, it is impossible to know whether he could ever share any of the positive traits of modern human men as we know them. Because he remains cool and distant, I found the way he resolves his personal quandary at the close of the book rather superficial, hasty and disappointing.
Readers coming to the Ryxin world of Muritai Island without having read Books 1 and 2 in the trilogy will be wondering who on earth the Ryxins are. I feel a brief overview of Ryxin lore, at the beginning of the book, would be useful to new readers and a helpful reminder to those of us who have already enjoyed Murder on Muritai and The Forbidden Gene.

Review by Carolyn McKenzie
Writer, freelance proofreader, copy editor, and translator from Italian to English.
Carolyn kindly offers accommodation at reasonable rates for FlaxFlower writers
in Thames (Waikato) and Ventimiglia Alta (Liguria, Italy ). carolynmckenzie@libero.it

ED NOTE: Murder on Muritai, Book 1 in the Ryxin Trilogy, was reviewed on this site on 13 July 2016, and Book 2 on 15 November 2016. Access the reviews via Archives on right sidebar. They are both available, RRP print $30, from the author’s website, Wheelers Books; Beattie & Forbes Bookseller, Napier; Onekawa Books & Gifts, Napier. Digital: Amazon.

Title: Notice of Death — Book 3 of The Ryxin Trilogy
Author: Genesis Cotterell
Publisher: P Hayes
ISBN: 978-0-473-39638-1 (Print); ASIN: B01NH9U4AZ (Amazon Kindle)
RRP: $30 Print Copy
Available: Print: From author’s website: genesiscotterell.com (contact form); and Wheelers Books. Digital: Amazon

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A challenging experience

5/18/2017

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The Roaring Silence: A compendium of interviews, essays, poetry, art and prose about suicide

This book is a compendium about suicide. And that makes it hard to review. I can say that Amelia Harris and Julia West have done a good job in the editing and design of the book. Certainly the design is impressive, both in the cover and the page layout.
     The Roaring Silence is a mixture of text and art, with some interviews in the first section. Then comes some poetry, followed by the art and cartoon work on higher quality paper. This is followed by a section called ‘Raw’, a title which conveys the kind of writing by the authors, and then there’s another prose section at the end.
While the reader will expect to read about some really ‘raw’ and painful experiences, these are mainly the stories of survivors. Most of them are by locals trying to exist in communities, and cope with personal issues and their role in families. There is also some writing from professional authors living overseas. This adds to the mix but I wondered whether the underlying theme, how New Zealanders deal with this issue, was somewhat diluted. But mostly I wondered whether any amount of writing could actually change – if not minds, then perhaps – perceptions. Apart from the more factual subject matter in some of the interviews, everything seems so subjective.
     Due to the very personal experiences being shared it is difficult to refer to the specific pieces of writing in The Roaring Silence. Though I did find Natasha Lay’s piece very effective, ‘Death and Taxes’, which has also been performed as a play. The writing refers to the experience of a friend, named Sylvia, who begins to regain control of her own situation through her perseverance in filling out her tax return. The interaction with a phoneline staffer adds perspective, but the tale is designed to show how to de-stigmatise the conversation about suicide. As Lay writes, people usually don’t want anything to do with discussing the suicide option, which is a way of demonising it.
As the reviewer should I state a personal position as well? I’m squeamish about suicide because my cousin killed herself, and the family did get some warning about her state from a friend. Confronting the subject matter in The Roaring Silence has not really changed my mind on this, or the assumed link with a depressive illness being a cause. In this case it turned out to be a history of partner control and abuse, rather than an assessment of individual psychological illness, that was causative. I think this kind of situation has not been highlighted in the book, i.e. reactions to bad relationships.
     Anyway, I was impressed with the artwork in the book, and thought there could have been more. In fact, I think it would be easier to read the book if the artwork and cartoons were interspersed with the text, rather than being in a separate section. But, overall, The Roaring Silence is a challenging experience and worthy of consideration.

Review by S A Boyce

Title: The Roaring Silence: A compendium of interviews, essays, poetry, art and prose about suicide
Editor: Amelia Harris
RRP: $30.00
Publisher: The Depot Press
ISBN: 978 0473 377458
RRP: $30.00 + post
Available: Email: margaux.wong@depotartspace.co.nz

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Meticulous research

Amazing Story

Vivid descriptions show depth of research

Absorbing contribution to a topical issue

Gift for Grandad’s birthday

An important story

Wide range of poetry styles

Tribute to a dog

Murder in the future

A challenging experience

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