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Hauntingly heartbreaking

27/9/2024

Iconoclasm
by David Coyle

Don’t be deceived by Iconoclasm’s slimness. Yes, it is only 122 pages and yes, you can read it in one sitting and will probably want to, but it is no inconsequential read. Long after I had put it down, Thomas stayed with me, along with the story’s enduring backdrop of snow falling in Wellington.
It’s an October evening and uncharacteristically snowing when Thomas “pushes back tears” and leaves his office in Lambton Quay. In a pub in Cuba Street, we learn that he earns little more than the minimum wage – a stout costs “about half an hour’s work, after tax”. So begins a kaleidoscopic night that will take Thomas from Cuba Street’s bright lights and night people to a filthy flat in Newton “in dire need of being torn down”, Oriental Bay and finally home to Island Bay.
Along the way, we learn that Thomas is kind, a young man who comforts Kate, a tearful older woman in the pub, but we don’t yet know why their conversation unduly saddens him. An unwelcome encounter with Baz, an alcoholic, P-wrecked busker leads Thomas reluctantly back to the Newton flat of his student days – anything it seems is an excuse for not hurrying home tonight. Ten years on, it is still home to his university flatmates, wallowing in their failed lives, dealing drugs or permanently wasted: he is the only one who didn’t drop out after the first year.
Why then is Thomas so unhappy? It’s page 105 before we find out, and that’s as it should be. However, knowing why means that a second reading of Iconoclasm sharpens the reader’s awareness. Kate’s comments about ecology and extinction, “We create, we destroy; we make, we unmake” is, on second reading, not just conservationist-speak, but also a stab into the heart of Thomas’s sorrow. And there are more clues, twisting the knife, but they would be spoilers.
Having visited his website I wasn’t surprised to learn that Coyle is also a poet. Tightly written and rich in vivid descriptions and insights, Iconoclasm is a haunting story which will certainly repay a second read.

Review by Carolyn McKenzie

Title: Iconoclasm
Author: David Coyle
Publisher: Calaveras Press (self-published)
ISBN: 978-0-473-71545-8
RRP: $30
Available: Wellington independent bookstores (Unity Books, Marsden Books, The Undercurrent, Another Chapter, and Schrödinger’s Books)

Great and timely guide to te reo

20/9/2024

Ngā Hapa Reo Common Māori Language Errors
by Hona Black & Te Aorangi Murphy-Fell

He pukapuka pai rawa atu tēnei. This is a very good book. He aha ai? Why? Because it – across six sections – cogently sets out what the title expresses, namely common language errors made by people who speak and write te reo Māori, from novices, through to experienced veterans.
It is also a frustrating book, precisely because it is so cogent and well-organised. Why? Because it pointedly, through several examples per error, displays exactly how te reo Māori should be articulated, and it brought home to me, for example, that I continue to make mistakes, especially with ‘Errors in the postponed particle’ (section four), while I am still not good at incorporating correctly some of the appropriate grammar outlined in section two. This concise resource, then, while a treasure is also – for me at least – rather riling because I realise when reading through it, that I do make several of the errors!
All the more rationale to deleve into Ngā Hapa Reo every day, eh!
Now, there is also something key that the authors stress, and that is the rather pernicious influence that te reo Ingarihi (English language) has had and continues to have on te reo Māori. Something I have consistently stated for a long time, as I am a strong critic of the ongoing linguistic imperialism brought about by agents of the English language on Indigenous tongues globally and have written extensively about this.
Thus, Black and Murphy-Bell in their section three, articulate the following about errors caused by the influence of English on Māori, ‘These errors originate from the English language and its associated Western ways of thinking, where Māori speakers have taken these thoughts and translated them. We could probably say that the thinking is English, the world view is English, the stucture is English, but the language of communication is Māori’ – resulting in an incorrect language structure. A specific example of this tenet?
Put your shoes on
Incorrect: Purua ō hū ki runga
Correct: Kuhuna ō hū
As the authors state about such an inaccuracy, ‘This error is also one that highlights a Pākehā thought or structure being conveyed in Māori’. Because the verb ‘kuhu’ means ‘to put on’ and there is no need for another or additional ‘on’. Te tika!
Finally here, there is also a valuable appendix to this litany of common errors, whereby macrons (ngā tohutō) are carefully ascribed – or not – to over 100 words, whereby some words do not have macrons yet are still mistakenly granted them, while more words are utilised incorrectly because they should have these.
‘Tangohia tēnei pukapuka (Accept this book).’ It is a great and timely companion to my copy of Complete Manual of Māori Grammar and Conversation, revised and enlarged edition by A.T. Ngata, who also succinctly expresses my own actions now with regard to Black and Murphy-Fell’s pedagogic gem, with ‘Kotahi anō tāku ako i ia rā, i ia rā (I take a lesson every day).’
He kahurangi. Tēnā kōrua.

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana

Title: Ngā Hapa Reo Common Māori Language Errors
Author: Hona Black & Te Aorangi Murphy-Fell
Publisher: Oratia Books
ISBN: 978-1-99-004259-1
RRP: $39.99
Available: bookshops, www.oratia.co.nz

Art book celebrates extraordinary women artists

13/9/2024

Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa
by Kirsty Baker

From Rita Angus to Merata Mita, Fiona Clark to Mataaho Collective, Sight Lines tells the story of art made by women in Aotearoa.
This is an important book that celebrates painters, weavers, sculptors, photographers, poets, activists, textile artists and performers.
    The substantial text-heavy book of 430 pages celebrates 35 extraordinary women artists from Aotearoa. It includes over 150 illustrations and is written by art historian and curator, Dr Kirsty Baker from Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington). Baker is the perfect person to write this book as her thesis through Victoria University of Wellington — Te Herenga Waka, ‘Constituting the “Woman Artist”: A Feminist Genealogy of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Art History 1928–1989’ —  was awarded a place on the prestigious Doctoral Dean’s List for 2020.
   In a recent interview with NZ Booklovers, Baker was asked what inspired her to write the book. “I’m interested in the shortcomings and exclusions of feminisms, and how we can go about trying to rectify them…I find art itself to be endlessly inspiring so in fundamental terms it was art, and the artists who make it, that really inspired the book”.
Sight Lines includes contributions by Chloe Cull (Ngāti Tahu, Ngāti Te Ruahikihiki), Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou), Ioana Gordon-Smith (Faleula, Le’auva’a, Pākehā), Rangimarie Sophie Jolley (Waikato-Tainui), Lana Lopesi, Hanahiva Rose (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tahu, Ngāti Toa), Huhana Smith (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga) and Megan Tamati-Quennell (Te Āti Awa, Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe) adding a depth of knowledge and perspective.
   Examples of these are; Wāhine Māori and the Worlds of Adornment: He toi rākai, he mana wāhine, he mana tāngata – by the arts of adornment, there is the prestige of women and all people, by Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou); Ka Whawhai Tonu Mātou: The revolution reflected by the work of Robyn Kahukiwa, by Rangimarie Sophie Jolley (Waikato-Tainui); and ‘We were making art, which is what we always wanted to do’: Elizabeth Ellis and Mere Lodge, by Chloe Cull (Ngāti Tahu, Ngāti Te Ruahikihiki).
Throughout Sight Lines there are three major thematic threads, focusing on how women artists have whanaungatanga (relationships) with whenua (land) and how they express themselves through their art. The second, the term woman itself, is reflected upon in the ways that woman pushed against gendered barriers. Lastly, the thread of speaking back, by looking at the ways that artists have used their practice to speak back to the exclusions and limitations of art history and art institutions.
   I found the protest theme a fascinating read. On page 184, Baker writes,          “Currents of protests and resistance have always been embedded in artistic practice in Aotearoa. By unpicking this rich seam, we can trace the myriad ways in which the visual, visceral and emotive power of art-making has been harnessed to illuminate urgent socio-political concerns”.
The book has been warmly received. But there has been some debate about the women included and omitted in Sight Lines. Baker stated in an interview on RNZ National Radio, “An attempt on a complete history of women’s art history is doomed to fail”. Clearly not all New Zealand artists can be included, but I was surprised that Gretchen Albrecht CNZM, painter and sculptor, Ans Westra CNZM and Fiona Pardington MNZM, photographers, Kura Te Waru-Rewiri, artist, academic and educator, Raukura Turei, painter and architect and Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck, a Tongan interdisciplinary artist were not included. In her defense, Baker said, “I didn’t want to include artists without their permission and participation from them and or their whanau”.
   Sight Lines has a luxurious fabric book cover with the image body/house in pride of place, by visual artist, poet and film-maker Joanna Margaret Paul. The extensive index, artist notes and detailed glossary adds value to the book.
   Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa, is an excellent asset for any library, school or personal book collection. An inspirational and informative read to motivate future generations of New Zealand artists and to understand their history and what has motivated their work.

Review by Renee Hollis

Title: Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa
Author: Kirsty Baker
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409982
RRP: $69.99
Available: bookshops

Clear colourful illustrations in children’s book

6/9/2024

Beau and the Stone Giant
by Hydie Balle-Hands
illustrated by Audee Halim

A quest, an adventure, and three keen young dogs equipped with swords – all elements in this picture book that will captivate youngsters for the vitality of the story.
Adding to the appeal are some less usual creatures – a stone giant, a friendly flying tuatara, ferocious flying fish in a merciless sea, and a bad dragon guarding a special harakeke on Whispering Mountain.
The text is mainly in rhyming couplets, with altering metre, and the vocabulary will need some interpretation for most little ones, so this works better for an adult-to-child reader rather than as a self-read for children themselves.
A mixture of New Zealand and foreign elements in the text and illustrations broadens its reach to a wider audience.
The book is beautifully presented on high quality paper, with the clear and colourful illustrations by Audee Halim more than supporting the text.

Review by Emily R

Title: Beau and the Stone Giant
Author: Hydie Balle-Hands; Illustrator Audee Halim
Publisher: Beau Books
ISBN: 978-0-473-71786-5
RRP: $22.99
Available: Paperback: selected stores and online from www.beaubooks.co.nz;
online at wheelers.co.nz; Ebook: Amazon Kindle, Apple Books

Book merits popular acclaim

29/8/2024

Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud
by Lee Murray

The only drawback I find with this book is that too few people will probably get to read it. And that’s a shame because it is beautiful and deserves wide appreciation. It has been honoured as Winner of the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize in 2023 and now merits popular acclaim.
Lee Murray takes the Chinese tradition of the húli jīng, the nine-tailed fox spirit, as the linking trope to tell nine tales of women brought half a world away from the Middle Kingdom to this antipodean land in years past. Just as the fox is not endemic, so the women find themselves alien to New Zealand, condemned to lives of cultural isolation.
The tales are inspired - provoked may be a more fitting word - by the lives of people and happenings that occurred in this country.
The first, a very moving story told in exquisite prose, reveals the sadness of one who longs for a career in music, but she’s a girl, just a girl, so years sorting fruit and vegetables in the family’s Auckland shop is her lifelong gender-prescribed lot.
Even in New Gold Mountain, your father’s empire belongs to your brother, of course. It is the way things are, the way things are destined to be.
From this one, the fox spirit inhabits further women whose stories are increasingly unhappy. But while this is so, the quality of the writing makes them beautiful.
So you grow up in China, speaking the silk-slipper tongue of your father’s ancestors, your strangeness pinched and nipped and contained so you might become a golden filial daughter.
Beautiful, yes, in relation to the prose. The women’s experiences are in sharp contrast – loneliness, violence, hopelessness, all too often leading to extreme action. Reading of them, one weeps for the reality of their lives, which makes Lee Murray’s remembrance more poignant – the prose which is of high poetic precision partially making up for the brutality.
…at last you [the fox] understand your purpose. You will bear witness. You will give these women voice and nourish them with hope. You will sing their spirits to the mountains and shout their stories from the tips of the red turrets. You will give them flesh and make them real.
The short chapter pieces alternate fox-girl-fox-daughter-fox-woman-fox-wife and so on. My advice is to read this 130-page book pairing a fox view followed by the human persona, with gaps between the pairings rather than in one sitting. That way the humanity of the stories will be accentuated and time allowed for later thought. And the whole experience will last longer.

Review by Bronwyn Elsmore

Title: Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud
Author: Lee Murray
Publisher: The Cuba Press, New Zealand
ISBN: 978-1-98-859577-1
RRP: $28
Available: print book. From the publisher, or via Bateman distributors.
Also as an e-book (ePub) https://thecubapress.nz/shop/fox-spirit-on-a-distant-cloud/
Information on the author's website: https://www.leemurray.info/foxspiritonadistantcloud

Less is more

23/8/2024

Below Ground
by Sandra Arnold

Below Ground is a collection of flash fiction pieces uncovering the lives, feelings, actions and interactions of a variety of New Zealanders. While every story is entire unto itself, some stories link to others, which you discover as you read through the series. Flash fiction makes for a very easy and entertaining bedtime read – one or more, depending on the heaviness of your eyelids, with no requirement to read in any particular order.
My favourite story could be titled, ‘Revenge of the Worm’, but is actually called ‘Ka mua, ka muri – walking backwards into the future’. In it, a bullied schoolgirl (bullying is a repeated theme through the stories) becomes brave in multiple ways to overcome her tormentors.
Don’t be put off by the cover of Below Ground. The truth is, if I saw this book in a store I would be unlikely to pick it up as the cover conveys magical realism. The stories are, however, all too real as they cover the many ways people relate to one another in fictional settings.
Sandra Arnold has a great eye for detail of people and their behaviours which she combines, apparently effortlessly, with a smooth and humorous approach to language. Once you start reading, as another reviewer said, “…you will want to read one more story, and then another, and then another…” all the way through.

Review by Jane Shearer

Title: Below Ground
Author: Sandra Arnold
Publisher: Impspired
ISBN: 9781915819932
RRP: $25
Available: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1915819938; Scorpio Books, Christchurch

Memoir, biography and novel mixed

16/8/2024

Nell
by Penelope Todd

“This above all: to thine own self be true / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
     Time-serving windbag though Polonius is generally accounted, it must be conceded that this advice to his son offers a guide to living a life of integrity, and Penelope Todd has been quick to adopt the advice in her memorial to her grandmother. Memoir, biography and novel mixed, the life of the woman born Eleanor Preston but known all her life as ‘Nell’ is a study in that very quality.
     A product of the times in her upbringing, Nell was born in 1897 at the high tide of Empire, the year of the Queen-Emperor’s Diamond Jubilee. As a child of empire, she imbibed the attitudes and mores of her times as readily as she absorbed the primal tastes, feels and scents of plants, the farm and the sprawling land under the vast skies of the South Island, and these attitudes sustained her as she watched the progressive crumbling of the world of her birthright under the impetus of outside events.
     She was a maid of 20 when Passchendaele tore her generation of young men apart; a young mother of 30 at the onset of the Great Depression; 40 at the onset of another war that occurred because the ‘War to end War’ had signally failed to do so; 50 as a New Elizabethan and 60 at the advent of the Swinging Sixties. However the world around her of which she was so much a part altered or convulsed, Nell remained staunchly high-principled, self-aware, self-possessed and happy in her own skin, buoyed and sustained by the behaviours and principles she learned as a daughter of the Empire at its apotheosis.
     This went beyond the public into the private life also. Today, when the term ‘colonist’ is more often an epithet than a description, it is instructive to consider the type of life such people led. Todd spares no effort in showing the reader just how much strength, self-sufficiency and stiff upper lip were called for not only to live in a wattle-and-daub cottage through several Maniototo winters but to adapt to marriage, miscarriage, childbirth and supplying indispensable farm labour along the way. Such self-sufficiency was essential in a land that was even more empty than the North Island and Todd shows us, all the way through the work, that Nell’s cares were often worsened or at the least added to, by pressure from the needs, deeds or wishes of others.
     From a husband, for example who, although not consciously cruel nor misogynistic, was nevertheless a man of his times and upbringing with expectations to suit. This is best shown in the early awareness of a nine-year-old Nell that ‘Each time visitors come, she notices afresh that men and boys are lords, and that women and girls look after them.’ In her early twenties, Nell was the victim of her own mother’s need for companionship and assistance to the extent of giving up a promising career as a nurse. Again, thirty years later her husband’s decision in the face of the post-war economic slump to sell the farm that had been purchased with her ‘dowry’ and into which they had poured blood, sweat and tears is presented as a fait accompli which Nell had little choice but to accept.
     Through such major blows, though, as well as the multitude of setbacks present in an age of muscle rather than machine, ever and anon Nell’s ability to roll with the punches was founded upon an inner strength that came from knowing whom and what she was as a sentient, thinking being; a product of her times and situation no less than was her husband. Todd demonstrates this by recounting how a new and young doctor rather sniffily dismissed the “old wives remedies of . . . all you intractably opinionated women . . .until you need actual medical care, actual scientific advice” in a manner that showed how little he knew of the life situations and realities facing frontier women often far from “actual medical care” in an empty land.
     Only one event in a long life came close to breaking this amazing woman, and for the sake of Penelope Todd’s well-told story, this reviewer has no intention of revealing it, as to do so would deprive the reader of the impact which the event and its aftermath had on me.
     ‘Nell’ is a deceptively simple story of hard work and simple pleasures; of a generation who ‘got on with it’ through thick and thin; of the people who, in a variety of ways, made New Zealand the place that it is and who were responsible for my abiding conviction that History is the story of ordinary people frequently doing extraordinary things. Anyone interested in New Zealand’s story needs to read Penelope Todd’s tribute to her grandmother.

Review by MJ Burr

Title: Nell
Author: Penelope Todd
Publisher: Cloud Ink Press
ISBN: Paperback 9781738594337, epub 9781738594344
RRP: $34.99
Available: Most bookshops; online from
Bateman Books, The Women's Bookshop, cloudink; e-book Amazon

Valuable addition to war history literature

8/8/2024

Our Gun
by Geoff Lawson

Our Gun is the story of how a field gun built by the German company Krupp for the South African Orange Free State ended up in Wanganui.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Southern Africa included the Cape Colony, Orange Free State and Transvaal. Cape Colony was part of the British Empire while the other two regions were settled by Dutch farmers, referred to as Boers. There was already confrontation between Dutch farmers and the British, which escalated after a huge seam of gold was discovered in the Transvaal, which was subsequently invaded by British nationals. This eventually led to the South African war.
The Krupp gun belonged to the Orange Free State Artillery Corps. It suited the local conditions, being relatively simple to maintain, and munitions were readily available. The Boer republic was surrounded by territory under British control and Cecil Rhodes, an English mining magnate, had ambitions to extend their control into Boer territory. He organized a raid, intending to annex all land in South Africa. The raid was unsuccessful. The Dutch farmers’ familiarity with the country gave them the advantage but given time, the British were able to call in reinforcements from their Empire. These included troops from Australia, Canada and New Zealand, with the New Zealanders being first to land in South Africa. Although the British Empire won the war, it came at a terrible price with over 22,000 dead and 23,000 injured. The Dutch Africans lost 12,000 men.
The author became aware of Krupp Number Four at the Wanganui Regional Museum, one of eight similar guns used during the South African War. Number Four was captured by New Zealand soldiers and became a war trophy to commemorate the country’s contribution. In later years it had been neglected and was in poor condition. With the museum’s permission, Geoff Lawson formed a restoration team. The gun was restored to its original state with great care and detailed records of the work were kept. His acquired knowledge of the gun’s past motivated him to research and write about the Boer war.
Our Gun provides a very readable overview of the South African war and the people involved on both sides. The book’s A4 format is ideal for clear maps, diagrams, sketches and photographs which include individuals involved on both sides of the war. The story of the Krupp gun restoration follows, providing much detail about the gun itself.
Our Gun is an interesting and valuable addition to the field of war history literature, especially for New Zealand genealogists.

Review by Ian Clarke

Title: Our Gun
Author: Geoff Lawson
Publisher: Geoff Lawson
ISBN: 9780473207472
RRP: $40
Available: Geoff Lawson: [email protected]

Short stories impress

1/8/2024

Partly Sunny
by James O'Sullivan

This further collection of O’Sullivan’s short stories impresses no less than did his first, “Mostly Cloudy”, of 2018 and for the same reasons. The laser-like perception of human nature and motivation is still there, as is the classic dialogue in his depictions of the Kiwi vernacular. In fact, and as this reviewer was prompted to write six years ago, the quality of his perception is well-attested by the number of times the thought “Hey, I know someone just like that” pops into the reader’s head, for O’Sullivan is a keenly accurate observer and scribe of the human condition and this offers a rock-solid platform for his stories.
In his present offering, O’Sullivan mainly returns to the dark side of human nature inasmuch as most of his characters are either flawed or dependent in one way or another. ‘The Hitch-Hiker’ and ‘We Are All Australians’, for example, each concern central characters whose need to be needed drive their lives and actions. While it would be nice to think that Melody, in the former, turns away from her intended suicide because the hitch-hiker provoked feelings of altruism, the feeling persists that she has concluded that even her largely pointless life of rejection is better than his. Similarly, Catherine, the closet racist in the latter work, represses her true nature in expounding the need to be inclusive, even if her attitude towards her nearest and dearest shows quite the reverse.
Closer to O’Sullivan’s Taranaki home, even his depiction of rural life pack something of a wallop, for his stories dealing with small-town manners and morals range from a demented woman keeping the mummified corpse of her mother in a back bedroom to two stories involving murder and the clandestine disposal of the bodies. Similarly, despite the assumption of the city-slicker bystander in ‘Incident at the Dairy’ that racism is alive and well in the town, the dairy-owner’s reaction to the main character persuades us that something much deeper, more sinister and definitely locally-based is at work in his refusal to serve the main character.
There is social commentary in ‘Visiting the Doctor’ and ‘Fish and Chips Tonight’ when poverty leads to actions that shock, and outright revulsion at the psychopathic attitude of Polly in ‘Hens’; but the anthology contains some leavening of humour in “Raising Capital’ and ‘The Chief’s Daughter’, the last being something of a spoof on stories that include the presence of a princess whose peerless beauty is the motivating factor in fairy stories of derring-do.
Two outstanding stories of inter-generational conflict are ‘Give Me a Kiss’ and ‘Arriving Home’. The former contrasts a traditional Pacific Island attitude to life, work and charity with the reality of the heroine’s working life, and the contrast is nowhere more marked than in the title, for the same words are spoken by her gentle, traditionally-focused mother and a drug pusher who has just exacted oral sex as the price of his product. Throughout, and in a tribute to the author’s ear, the dialogue is accurate, contemporary and realistic. The latter, ‘Arriving Home’, also addresses the generational divide in the recounting of how a self-made-and-proud-of-it salesman alienates his talented daughter by refusing to acknowledge that her world contains aspirations and possibilities that his does not, and never will.
However, and true to the man’s talent, in ‘Leaving For England’ O’Sullivan shows that perhaps the generations are sometimes more alike than different. He does this by having a grandmother pick up Nietzsche’s theme of ‘The Eternal Recurrence’ in telling her own story of the traditional Kiwi OE in London when her grandchild is about to do the same; an OE in which she ‘had seen Pink Floyd play in a poky, godawful nightclub in the acidic bowels of Swinging London’.
All told, then, “Partly Sunny’’ bears the stamp of authenticity in its characters, its settings, its interactions and its themes. James O’Sullivan shows us ourselves in full measure, and if sometimes the ‘warts and all’ predominate, the thoughtful reader may conclude that this says more about us than he.

Review by MJ Burr

Title: Partly Sunny
Author: James O'Sullivan
Publisher: Independent As Books
ISBN: 9780473710118
RRP: $20 + postage
Available: Paperback: fishpond.co.nz, or from author at [email protected]

Fiction & fact make for imaginative novel

25/7/2024

Greene Lyon
by Alan Goodwin

Fiction and fact are melded together in Greene Lyon, Alan Goodwin’s entertaining exploration of the life of Sir Isaac Newton. There are many things to like about this novel, but it is not a story for children. Having got that caveat out of the way, I find that it offers the reader a fairly accurate measure of factual information compounded within an imaginative story that was often not easy to put down.
The alchemist’s aspiration to find magical combinations of materials and energies that undergo transformation into something more valuable is part of the story and an apt description of what the author has achieved.
It is, in my opinion, poor form to offer spoilers in a review, so there are some limitations to what I will reveal here, but the story ties together things that are known about Sir Isaac with a speculative love life and the consequences of that life in the very religious and superstitious sixteen and seventeen hundreds. It does this quite well.
Starting with Isaac’s childhood and following through his knighthood, this inventive depiction of the roots of science and discovery as Britain was emerging from the Dark Ages and the role of Newton’s love life in his own contributions to that emergence does not disappoint.
As an honest reviewer, I must intentionally think of something that I didn’t like so much about the book, and there was one. Some of the descriptive details around Sir Isaac’s repressed sexuality seem a bit overdrawn. As I mentioned before, it is not a children’s book. They turn out to be necessary for the conclusion to hang together and they are not horrible, just unsettling and quickly forgotten. I recommend putting up with them. You will be rewarded.
It is an enjoyable book. Alan Goodwin has clearly done his homework, he tells a good story, and his explanations of the thought processes leading to Newton’s Principia are believable in the context of the history of the time. He is quite meticulous at the end, sorting out the fact from the fiction, and that effort, short though it might seem to him, made the book a keeper for me.

Review by B J Chippindale

Title: Greene Lyon
Author: Alan Goodwin
Publisher: Quentin Wilson Publishing
ISBN: 9781991103239
RRP: $37.50
Available: bookshops