Flaxroots Productions - FlaxFlower

Useful in NZ classrooms

29/5/2020

Journal of a Junior Writer
Diary of a Kiwi Kid Series: Book 2
by Robin Lee-Robinson

There is a distinctive New Zealand flavour to this story, plus it includes a glossary of Maori words and phrases in the back matter.
The journal begins with Jack Jondell in Gisborne during 2018. Those unfamiliar with Te Reo may find the opening pages rather disjointed as they flick back and forth to the glossary.
The story’s flow picks up with the step back in time to 1978 when Jack reads his missing grandmother, Rosalyn Jondell’s, diary entries from when she was 10 years old. Rosalyn is a precocious child, with a vivid imagination, who aspires to become a famous writer. The world shown through Rosalyn’s perspective is filled with humorous anecdotes and highlights her quirky personality.
Due to the colloquial historical insights from a snapshot of 1978 New Zealand, and the conversational use of Te Reo, this book would be a useful edition within NZ classrooms. Teachers would need to assess the ages and sensibilities of potential readers due to some of the content – although not graphic, it could be upsetting to younger readers.
In addition to the main story, there’s an underlying mystery of what happened to Rosalyn, who disappeared when she was 18 from Bangladesh. This unresolved factor drives the reader to want to find out more about Rosalyn’s fate in future books in this series.

Review by WJ Scott
Award-Winning Children’s Author

Title: Journal of a Junior Writer
Author: Robin Lee-Robinson
Publisher: Red Hen Books
ISBN: 9 780473498436
RRP: $20
Available: Red Hen Books P.O Box 503 Opotiki 3162, robinleerobinson@gmail.com

Words from new New Zealanders

19/5/2020

Mixed: Creative Writing by Newcomers to Our Shores
compiled by Angie Belcher
artwork by Lucia Lemos M. Conceicao

I enjoyed reading through this variegated collection of work by 27 writers from 18 countries. Their 22 poems and 17 short pieces primarily depict the background to their departure from their homeland, their arrival in Aotearoa New Zealand and all the contrasts between. All viscerally amplified by the vibrant artwork from Lucia Lemos Monteiro Conceicao from Brazil.
The writers had different rationales behind their coming to these shores: from being refugees from war and famine, through to a deliberate choice to seek a more salubrious climate, both economic and environmental.
Tali Rose, for example, wanted to escape the political turmoil and the concomitant violence of Israel, as she reveals in her well-worded title, From Warzone to Godzone. Satoko Tsunokawa sought solace here in a more tranquil surround than city life in Japan, as per the opening verse of Carpe Diem (p. 53) -
In Tokyo
    I worked hard until midnight.
I didn’t see the moon.
    I didn’t hear any birds sing.
More, not all the contributors would classify themselves as speakers of English as a foreign or second tongue, as for example Neil Simpson from Scotland, who writes cogently about constructing autangi (stringed instruments) in a piece accompanied by several photographs illustrating his craftmanship.
The collection, then, is variegated and variable, but always candid. As Angie Belcher notes in the Acknowledgements, ‘The diversity ranges in ethnicity, age, length of time in New Zealand and ability to speak and write in English.’
There are two contributions I find especially noteworthy. One is the clever A Review of Physics by Tara Prieto from Philippines, which is accompanied by a mathematical diagram (p. 49.) Prieto sets out her exercise thus -

A Filipino worker mops a 20sqm. floor of a restaurant in New Zealand. She needs to finish the task in 30 minutes so she can get to school on time to submit her assignments. The angle between the mop gripped by her blistered hand and the concrete floor is 70 degrees.
The mop weighs a ton.
Find the force the Pinay needs to accomplish her task on time.

The second is the moving, no-holds-barred The Evil Within by Mia Love, originally from Bosnia. Here, we read about terror, torture, tyranny, in graphic and grisly detail replete with brilliant imagery, such as, ‘An army of bullets pierces the clouds. The sky is wounded and the laughter ends,’ (p. 70.) Yet, in an accompanying poem, Love can conclude – after her eventual settlement in New Zealand –
Read it.
But don’t hold onto it.
Life is still filled
with beauty and wonder…
(from And Now, p. 74.)
Indeed, this is a shared emotion among most of these newer arrivals, namely a general  thanksgiving for being here, despite also in several cases, some misgiving about coming in the first place, as Megan Pap expresses in Arrival (p. 62) –
Do you know what it is…
to be accepted only like a wolf in sheep’s clothes
Cast out by voice…
  Mixed may be the title of the book, but ultimately the sentiments expressed about residing here are positive and united. As Donghun Shun, originally from Korea, summarises -
So let’s walk through darkness
walk toward dawn.
(From Be Brave p. 15.)

Nau mai ki tēnei whenua o te haeata.
[Welcome to this land of the dawn.]

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana

Title: Mixed:Creative Writing by Newcomers to Our Shores
Author: Various; compiled by Angie Belcher
Publisher: Stromboli Press
ISBN:978-0-473-51398-6
RRP:$29.95
Available: Softcover: Wheelers.co.nz, www.angiebelcherwriter@gmail.co

Account of life in a hostile place

23/4/2020

Scott Base Antarctica – The Early Years
by Don Webster

Don Webster’s book began as a project to document photographs he had taken during two expeditions to Scott Base during the early sixties. His first expedition began at the end of 1959 when he was one of four young science technicians who, together with a senior technical officer, boarded HMNZS Endeavour for a fourteen-day voyage to the Antarctic. His second trip in 1963 was by plane.
    Webster’s career began in 1957 as a technical trainee in a government laboratory, part of the Department of Science and Industrial Research (DSIR). His training and work as an electronics technician led to him being selected for the Antarctic over-winter team. Preparation for the job included learning about the Antarctic, making and recording observations in the field and the Auroral radar which New Zealand had been offered by Stamford University in the USA. Little of this prepared them for venturing into the Southern Ocean on board the 190 foot wooden Endeavour.
    The author describes the journey south to the ice shelf, and Scott Base as it was when they arrived there. A shortage of accommodation saw them sleeping outside in tents until someone discovered the deep snow of their campsite was where explosives were kept.
   There is a good deal of specific detail about the layout of Scott Base on Ross Island and how it was developed and added to over the years. The huts, labelled A, B, up to F – separated from one another and joined by an enclosed access way – included accommodation, messroom, laboratories, radio and machinery spaces.
    We are taken on a tour of the work they did and how they socialised and entertained themselves. They had to adapt to sixteen weeks of continuous daylight in summer and sixteen weeks without sunlight during winter. During summer other parties came in by sea or air to carry out research projects or to use the base as the starting point for expeditions. Around the middle of March all ships and aircraft would depart, leaving the wintering-over party of fourteen on its own. Their only contact with New Zealand would be by radiotelephone or by walking miles in the dark to the American McMurdo Base.
    The Antarctic is a hostile place, where the temperature can fall below minus fifty Celsius. Deep snow drifts and unstable ice are the order of the day. I was surprised to learn that one of the greatest dangers was from fire. With a dry atmosphere, drums of fuel and heat sources throughout the base, they had to remain alert. The author describes a fire he experienced and comments wryly in the style of a lab report, ‘the design specification of human beings does not include living in cold polar conditions without habitation.’
    The book is abundantly illustrated with photographs taken by the author and from other sources. He apologises for the grainy quality of some of them but, if anything, this adds to the charm, harking back to the 1960’s. There are some photographs of wingless aircraft – the wings having been torn off in crashes – used to “taxi” personnel between the ice landing strip and base. They also had more conventional ways to get around, including tractors, Landrovers and dog sledges.
The Appendices provide a list of personnel involved, together with their brief biographies. This is followed by a further reading list and a good index.
Scott Base Antarctica – the early years would be an excellent resource for anyone interested in the polar regions and in the history of the development of atmospheric and geological science. Essentially, this is a story about the way in which humans can live and work in one of the world’s most challenging environments.

Review by Ian Clarke

Title: Scott Base Antarctica – The Early Years
Author: Don Webster
Publisher: Don Webster
ISBN: 9780473458522
RRP: $59.95
Available: https://www.donwebster.org

Short history on big subject

16/4/2020

A Short History of Farming in New Zealand
by Gordon McLauchlan

This is a rather curious book, a short history on a rather big subject. The late Gordon McLauchlan has also written short histories on bigger subjects, this is something of a series, but it seems more of a challenge. One may think there’s been plenty of writing on farming in New Zealand, but there has been very little of note by historians who aren’t specialists, and ‘agricultural’ historians don’t exist.
McLauchlan was also more of a journalist writing history than academically-trained: this is a strength, but also a weakness in this book. The author can make a good point very concisely, but also prefers to insert very long quotes without any referencing, something a professional historian would not do. The subject matter is much broader than just pastoral farming, as even former pests like deer get a chapter, as well one on horticulture. There are still quite a few chapters on sheep and dairy farming, but with no real structure in terms of chronology. The reader will get to chapter 10 and still find the author discussing the meaning of land settlement, as it was understood in the 19th century.
One of the strengths of the book is that McLauchlan does not shy away from the environmental destruction of bush clearance, especially in the North Island, and the many failures that happened for aspiring farmers on small blocks of uncleared land. The clearing of bush also involved fire and created a stark landscape that really was an environmental disaster, even if the family farm was viable economically. There is no a sense of the ‘booster’ here, a narrow view of land settlement.
While a lot of the detail about farming, and especially trade policies, seems familiar, some of the detail is quirky. I was not familiar with the so-called ‘remittance’ men who were 19th century migrants from Britain, usually recalcitrant aristocrats with an alcohol issue, who did some casual labouring, but relied on money coming from ‘home’. The whole idea of Britain as ‘Home’ is played out here over a number of chapters, as almost all our export trade went on ‘home boats’, until Britain joined the European trading block. The politics of this has already become a cliché.
McLauchlan obviously specialised in narrative history, but as the book goes on he adds more literary allusions, and somewhat odd metaphors. He refers to the UK and EEC relationship as a marriage, which made the New Zealand farmer the “mistress of the British food business.” This somewhat dodgy metaphor continues in the next paragraph, as the jilted mistress tries to ply her wares to other customers, a rather odd way to describe ‘diversification’ and ‘restructuring’ in the 1980s. A similar thing happens in the next chapter with an odd quote attributed to John Ruskin, which compares the colonised Indian people to the Scottish, the kind of settlers found in the South Island.
Another aspect of the narrative in this book is the need to repeat a lot of statistics, and numerical proportions. For some reason McLauchlan can’t bring himself to use the % symbol, so writes in ‘per cent’ every time. Indeed, there are no tables of figures or graphs at all in the whole book, which makes the text a bit monotonous. There are no illustrations or photographs either. So, while it is a well-designed book, it is all text, and something that only Gordon McLauchlan could have written.

Review by Simon Boyce

Editor’s note: FlaxFlower sends condolences to the family of Gordon (‘Gordy’) McLauchlan, who died on January 26, after battling cancer for several months. He had just celebrated his 89th birthday. Gordon was a gracious supporter of FlaxFlower reviews.

Title: A Short History of Farming in New Zealand
Author: Gordon McLauchlan
Publisher: Bateman
ISBN: 978-1-98-853801-3
RRP: $29.99
Available: bookshops

Read, listen and sing

8/4/2020

Kia Kaha! Together standing strong
by June Pitman-Hayes
Illustrated by Minky Stapleton
Maori lyrics by Ngaere Roberts

KIA KAHA! Together, standing strong is what this little book is all about; children relating to one another, and caring about each other, whether it be in school classrooms, parks, playgrounds, homes or backyards.
These caring little characters are multi-cultural and from various ethnicities. Some are handicapped. Others are able. Their clothing styles are as varied as their cultures too, but the underlying message is that our kids grow up seeing no one as really different from anyone else; they are all just kids. And all kids are different anyway, regardless of how their eyebrows sit on their brow, or how tall they might be.
For example, one kiddie falls and grazes his knee and another is stung by a bee. As one little girl gets stuck up a tree, another is feeling sad and lonely.
But not to worry, friends stick together and together friends are strong.
Kia kaha! Kia kaha!
   Together standing strong.
    We join our hands in friendship, that’s how we get along.
    All around our gentle land, no matter where we’re from
    We’ll fill the air with laughter and our kia kaha song!
Whilst singing along to this catchy little song, the illustrations show the very many ways we can reach out and be friends to one another, no matter the place, the season, or the background. The song is also written and illustrated with Maori as the language.
This is a gentle read, and easy for young children to follow. The rhyming verses help them remember the words and learn the message in the story. And the illustrations are clear and simple, showing how adults care about each other too. It’s lovely.
Comprehensive glossary at the back.
Plus a BONUS CD!
I have previously reviewed My Kiwi Gumboots, by the same author and illustrator. If you enjoyed My Kiwi Gumboots, you are sure to enjoy this too.

Review by Susan Tarr

Title: Kia Kaha! Together standing strong
Author: June Pitman-Hayes; with Minky Stapleton (illustrations), Ngaere Roberts (Maori lyrics)
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN:9781775436225
RRP:$19.99
Available: bookshop

Novel offers encouragement and inspiration

31/3/2020

The Gift of Words
by Josie Laird

A Celebration of Literacy
Sharon is a 45-year-old gym bunny. She works part time in a grocery store and lives modestly. She was widowed 9 years ago and has 2 adult children – a dream daughter, Emma, and a P-addict son, Finn, and a 2-year-old granddaughter (her son’s child) whom she hardly ever sees.
   Tying all her life together is Sharon’s secret. Her late husband knew it and teased her unkindly. Her daughter knows and helps her mother to cope. And although she denies it, Sharon is smart. She has tried and true coping mechanisms and regularly picks up new ones.
One day, on the footpath opposite the grocery shop, Sharon sees a very grubby, abandoned child. She rescues the little girl and realises to her horror that this poor tot is her granddaughter, Mia.
In the weeks ahead, as Sharon applies to be Mia’s guardian and negotiates meetings with social workers and court hearings, she comes to accept that she needs to bring her secret out into the open and deal with it.
If you could read these 180 words as easily as I could write them, it’s possibly hard to imagine the full impact on everyday life that Sharon’s secret has on hers. It’s as if she’s in a cage in the middle of life teeming all around her, but unable to fully participate. Sharon is illiterate. She can’t read, write coherently, or tell the time. The list of other things that she can’t do because of this is daunting.
Once the decision is made and Sharon faces her demon, every chapter is a celebration of the power of literacy.
The Gift of Words isn’t set in late-19th century New Zealand or a third world country: it is set in Waiuku, South Auckland, in our time – the final action takes place in 2019.
Josie Laird’s style is down-to-earth and totally engaging. In Sharon she has created someone we want to see succeed. Even if illiteracy is unimaginable for the reader, Sharon’s innate goodness and grit involve us in her journey and take us inside her head.
    An insight for me was when Sharon tells her Adult Literacy tutor that she can read the numbers on a digital watch but she didn’t know there were 60 seconds in a minute. She has no understanding for example of 5.40 being five minutes short of a quarter to 6.
Sharon’s literacy challenge is only a part of The Gift of Words. Along with the joy that Mia brings her, she is challenged by Mia’s maternal grandparents and conflicted in her relationship with Finn as he sinks further into addiction along with Mia’s mother.
The Gift of Words offers encouragement and inspiration beyond acquiring literacy. With Sharon, Josie Laird introduces her readers to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, Tough Love and Tuwhero Trust (support for families of P addicts). The Gift of Words is clearly written from the heart and is extremely thought provoking.
   As a child Sharon slipped through the cracks at school. If reading The Gift of Words prevents one more adult like her from being held back by illiteracy; one more adult from being unable to read a child its bedtime story; one more grandparent from struggling alone with a grandchild or one more P addict family member from losing hope, I’m sure Laird will be well pleased.
The Gift of Words is confronting but ultimately heart-warming, and very readable. I recommend it in particular to anyone who needs to know more about these real and challenging issues.
Josie Laird wrote the first draft of The Gift of Words during the 2019 NaNoWriMo last November and is certainly to be congratulated on meeting the challenge so well. Although begun in this way to complete a novel with a minimum of 50,000 words in a month, there is nothing lacking or unpolished in the final book.
Readers of this review who are unable to acquire The Gift of Words immediately but need advice on any of the issues mentioned, can go to www.literacy.org.nz/ www.toughlove.org.nz  / www.grg.org.nz and tuwherotrust@gmail.com

Review by Carolyn McKenzie

Title: The Gift of Words
Author: Josie Laird
Publisher: Swooping Kereru
ISBN: 9780473505257
RRP: $29.99
Available: bookshops

Novel will carry readers along

25/3/2020

The Ash, the Well and the Bluebell
by Sandra Arnold

More than anything else, this is a novel that explores deeply and movingly the question of what it means to belong. It begins with the most unsettling of tragedies, and it ends, perfectly, with a strong suggestion that, for the main protagonist, a deeply satisfying personal resolution will be reached. Or will it? At the end, and throughout the book, we are reminded that there will always be rogue chance to contend with.
For many readers, the main satisfaction will come from the author’s finely plotted main story and sub-stories, all involving well-drawn characters.
The plots cover a range of times and places and events from suspected witchcraft in a north-east England village in the seventeenth century, through post-war struggles in that same village in the nineteen-fifties, the trials and triumphs of new immigrants in New Zealand, experiences in a kibbutz in Israel in the sixties, and so on up to contemporary happenings in New Zealand and in that same northern English village.
The main narrative and the subplots are skilfully intermingled so that the sense of ultimate continuity is not lost. Indeed, the segueing of times gently hints at there being, tragically or joyfully depending on the particulars, a sameness in our experience as human beings whatever the time and place.
As the stories unfold, readers will find that it is not simply what happens that is important, but that the prejudices and assumptions behind the events are even more significant. Friendship and enmity, racism and compassion, honesty and pretentiousness, idealism and brutality, greed and poverty – these are all here, and in all the places and times that are visited. What is it that makes one feel at home? What is it that alienates? These questions are not answered didactically, but subtly, tellingly, by implication. In fact, no direct answers are attempted nor would they be welcomed, but the questions enter the mind regardless, as they are no doubt meant to.
It is, perhaps, this aspect of the book that appeals most. It is old-fashioned in the best sense of that term, a true novel that explores ways in which the world challenges, rewards and punishes us, and the ultimate importance of other people to our well-being and our survival as individuals. It is people who matter most, who alienate us or enable us to feel at home, to belong. ‘Place’, the physical presence of landscape or buildings or the weather or vegetation and wild-life, and even its history, can be extraordinarily evocative. It can be comforting or unsettling. It can evoke memories both pleasant and unpleasant; but it can and does change, sometimes rapidly, almost by the second. The more significant influences on our feelings of belonging are other people. He tāngata. Our fellow human beings. So has it always been, and, this book hauntingly persuades the reader, it is just as true today as it ever was.
This is a novel that will carry the reader along in an entertaining fashion, but it is also one to sink into, to think about and to savour.

Review by Tony Chapelle

Title: The Ash, the Well and the Bluebell
Author: Sandra Arnold
Publisher: Mākaro Press
ISBN: 9 780995 119123
RRP: $30
Available: in print from bookshops

Truly delightful

18/3/2020

Moa’s Ark
by Peter Millett
Illustrations by Shaun Yeo

I knew I just had to read this perky book.
It’s the delightful cover art that first drew me; a pair of moa and a couple of kiwi excited about their adventure into the unknown, and old Noah and his vision of a brand new future where two of each creature would survive in a new land.
It’s a Kiwi adaptation of the Bible story about Noah’s ark, and the rhyming is quick and catchy.
Throughout these colourful pages, the animal’s expressions convey their excitement. Like when the ark beaches in some new and distant land.
One such land is hot and while all the animals are eager to escape the confines of the ark, Noah gently says, “It’s too hot for you.” And the pair of moa and the couple of kiwi have to stay on board.
Looking on glumly, they stay behind and can only watch as the zebras, lions, elephants, snakes and tropical birds set belly, foot and feather on their new homeland, slithering, walking or flying up the beach.
Noah and his remaining animals set off again into the ocean blue to find another land. But when they arrive, and the seals and penguins are eager to escape the confines of the ark, Noah says to the moa and the kiwi, “It’s too cold for you.” And they have to stay on board.
So once again, looking on glumly, they stay behind and can only watch as the seals and penguins slither and slide up the icy beaches.
But now, they’re feeling sad, as the ark heads back out to sea; this time the sea is not welcoming them. It’s blustery and cold, and choppy with huge, peaked grey waves. They’re all feeling quite sick.
Then out of the blue comes a white feathered bird; a seagull.
“Follow me, Noah,” he squawks, before leading the way to a land that is beautiful beyond belief. Not too cold. Not too hot. Just perfect for a pair of moa and a couple of kiwi.
From start to finish, this book is truly delightful. And the book is beautifully presented.

Review by Susan Tarr

Title: Moa’s Ark
Author: Peter Millett. Illustrations: Shaun Yeo
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 9781775435846
RRP: $18.99
Available: bookshop

A well written whodunnit

9/3/2020

Into the Void
by Christina O'Reilly

Reviewer admission: I love detective fiction. Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, PD James, Ian Rankin, nothing beats a well written whodunnit. Into The Void is that. I read it in one sitting.
    DSS Archie Baldrick is in his forties and feeling it. His two teenaged daughters cause him pride and trouble in equal measure and there’s a distancing in his marriage to Jenna which his workload really doesn’t give him time to investigate.
   At work, he has a new DC to deal with, Ben Travers ‘…like a large Labrador puppy, all legs and feet…’ with the same hyper enthusiasm, too which doesn’t help Archie’s personal sense of encroaching middle age. They are called to investigate a missing person – banker Richard Harper who has disappeared leaving a wife struggling in her fight against cancer and a pregnant girlfriend. Has the man merely escaped from the confused entanglements of a suddenly difficult personal and professional life, or is something more sinister at play?
O’Reilly doesn’t mess about setting scenes or personalities. She throws the reader smack bang into the middle of Archie’s life and trusts you will pick up the essentials as you go and as she is a deft hand at characterisation and dialogue, this is easy.
I had two minor quibbles – one, if a character has startling blue eyes, I don’t need to be told every time we’re in her company and as there is always a great point made of this, it jarred. On pages 96/97 during the interview with Joanne, I felt the establishment of belief in her instability seemed too quickly and conclusively arrived at. No allowance was made for a person’s temperament in such a fraught situation which might lead many people to appear guilty when nerves and fear of the police might alter how they react under questioning. These are very minor issues which might not worry anyone else but they stood out for me in an otherwise well written detective fiction.
    O’Reilly’s characters are all strong, believable people with equally believable domestic lives and troubles. It’s nicely flavoured with New Zealandness without feeing contrived and carries a story which would work in any international setting. Nice reveal, too.
I hope O’Reilly revisits Archie and his life and work. I’m keen for a series. Christina? Please?
Thanks to Christina for a solid, enjoyable read.

Review by TJ Ramsay

Title: Into the Void
Author: Christina O'Reilly
Publisher: Christina O'Reilly
ISBN: 9780473502621
RRP: $25.00
Available: Paperback: Paper Plus in Feilding and Palmerston North or from Writers Plot bookshop. Or from the author directly via ckwordsmith@gmail.com
E-book: Amazon

Seeing the world in a new way

2/3/2020

the everrumble
by Michelle Elvy

This is a magical story created by a magical mind. No-one other than author Michelle Elvy could have created the everrumble. It is unique.
In order to simply enjoy how the author casts words and creates worlds a reader must suspend all expectations of a linear story. This is a book of prose that follows no traditional structure but rather creates its own.
A child closes the world out by hiding under a woven blanket and she stops speaking. We suspect a terrible trauma causes this, but it is not spelt out, not dwelt on. Instead we enter her world and see, hear, smell it through her heightened senses.
We get a sense of the trauma, but it is not dwelt on. Instead the reader is taken into a wonderland of the imagination.
The reader is never certain whether Zettie chooses to never speak or something physiological has taken her voice. But the fact that she never makes a sound and only speaks using words on a page encourages the reader to engage all the other senses with her. We hear sounds and they come to us from far away. Our minds circumnavigate the globe with Zettie. We hear ocean sounds, voices from the earth and the songs of creatures bursting through the baobab. (103)
The book is written as a diary with dates for each story. However, like everything about this book the layout contradicts the true definition of a diary. The pages are not in date order but appear to be randomly uplifted from a previous record. This creates a sense of each piece being especially gift wrapped for the reader.
Every piece of prose is no more than three pages in a slim volume giving the reader time to savour the word crafting and the ambience of the book.
Purity for example is just a bit over a page long.
This is an extract: Have you ever heard the sleep of a child? It is the colour of soft melon, the smell of freshly mown grass. (85)
This made me think of a sleeping child in a completely new way. Surely, the role of the true artist is to do just what Michelle Elvy has done – open the reader’s mind to seeing the world in a new way.
Along with the pieces of prose there are intricate pen and ink drawings by Eyayu Genet from Ethiopia. They add a mystical mood to this delightful book.

Review by Suraya Dewing

Title: the everrumble
Author: Michelle Elvy
Publisher: Ad Hoc Fiction
ISBN: 9781912095735
RRP: $27.99
Available: Paper: https://www.nationwidebooks.co.nz/product/the-everrumble-9781912095735; ebook for kindle via Amazon

FlaxFlower Reviews

Reviews on this page are of New Zealand books – that is, written by Kiwi authors.
They are written by independent reviewers not known to the authors.

Join the posting list
If you'd like to receive an email when a new book review is posted, please respond via the CONTACT function above.

If you are a Kiwi author
and would like your book reviewed send an email via this site and you’ll be sent further details. Give details of genre, length, short synopsis, and formats available – print, ebook (Kindle, Kobo etc). You will need to provide one book free to the reviewer.

If you’d like to be a reviewer
send an email via this site giving details of your experience/expertise what genres interest you, and the formats you will consider – print, ebook (Kindle, Kobo etc). If possible, include a URL of one of your published reviews.
Offer only if you take the task seriously and are certain you will deliver the review.

Archives

April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013

Categories