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Four interconnected stories

26/1/2016

Bend With the Wind
by Suraya Dewing

Bend With the Wind evolves around several interwoven story lines of conflict and deep rooted prejudices. This is in direct contrast to the title – the translation of a Maori proverb advising passive resistance to aggressors.
Dewing has used a deceptively simple narrative style to relate the story of Sophie Gardner’s time as a first year student at Auckland University in the weeks leading up to and during the 1981 protests against the Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand.
Intrigued by the recent protest on Bastion Point (Auckland), Sophie rebels against her fiercely right-wing father. She enrols in classes in New Zealand history and is soon, with her friends Lucy and Clara, an ardent – and eventually violent – anti-racist-tour and anti-apartheid protestor. Dewing’s low-key development of the three young Pakeha women leaves them as seemingly shallow figures, while her treatment of Joe Ra, a young Maori policeman from rural Taranaki, is much deeper and more complex. Sophie and Joe’s relationship develops against the backdrop of the anti-tour protests. Sophie, Lucy and Clara seem to be swept up and along with the tide of more radical protestors, while Joe struggles with the implications of his involvement with a Pakeha girl who is free to demonstrate against the tour, while he, although innately anti-apartheid, is obliged as a policeman to concentrate all his energies on keeping the pro-tour and anti-tour demonstrators apart.
Interspersed in the chronicle of the Springbok tour, the protests and riots, are Sophie and Joe’s visits to his family in Parihaka in Taranaki. Even here there is conflict – not everyone in Joe’s family welcomes a Pakeha girl – and looming, as if it had happened in the last decade rather than a century ago, is the dark memory of the colonial taking of Maori land and the passive resistance movement against the British that was led by chiefs Tohu Kakahi and Te Whiti-O-Rongomai in 1880-81.
As Bend With the Wind unfolds it becomes four distinct but interconnected stories. The anti-tour protest runs parallel to the tale of Joe and Sophie’s relationship. From the first chapter however there is also the 30-year jump forward in time to Joe’s untimely death and his tangi on the marae at Parihaka, while with ever-building tension we are taken a century back in time to colonial-era events in Parihaka. Dewing has skilfully created a unified fabric from these four threads. The intricate and poetic way in which she describes Joe’s death and tangi is deeply moving as is her telling of the tragedy at Parihaka in November 1881. Both these threads and descriptions of Sophie and Joe’s visits to his family are authenticated by frequent use of Maori, with English translations as footnotes.
Many readers will remember the 1981 Springbok rugby tour and the way New Zealand was polarised over it. Wounds that were inflicted then took a long time to heal and pro-tour readers may either be enraged by Bend With the Wind or vindicated by the descriptive scenes of mindless anti-tour violence. Anti-tour readers will doubtlessly relive those heady days under the leadership of John Minto, Trevor Richards and Syd Jackson. Supporters of New Zealand’s police force will be sympathetic to Joe’s turmoil and his suffering in the aftermath of the tour. Towards the end of the book, Sophie wonders “if the tour will ever go away”. For some readers the feeling may be that the tour has never “gone away” and that this book is a disturbing historical comment on the evolution of New Zealand’s society.
Bend With the Wind’s publication is very timely: 2016 is the 35th anniversary of the Springbok tour and the 135th anniversary of the passively resisted colonial occupation of Maori land at Parihaka. Dewing’s account of that event adds considerable weight to the argument that Guy Fawkes Night could perhaps be replaced now with a more significant Kiwi celebration.

Review by Carolyn McKenzie

Title: Bend With the Wind
Author: Suraya Dewing
Publisher: Rangitawa Publishing, Feilding, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9941201
Formats: Paperback
Available from: Unity Books, Amazon, Rangitawa Publishing

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YA novel combines foibles & fantasy

20/1/2016

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The Seer’s Wolf
by Barbara Petrie

Wow. I've never read a young adult book quite like this, but I'm sure there will be readers out there itching for a book which combines human foibles with fantasy.
The Seer’s Wolf follows two families in a rural Canterbury (NZ) community: the Fairnies, well established as farmers – practical, down-to-earth, sensitive – and the Randals, recent arrivals just emigrated from England, who bring a curious lifestyle to the community, keeping to themselves.
Clover Fairnie, the seer of the title, keeps a journal of visions, events and imaginings, and begins noticing more and more of the strange ways of the Randals, her mother, and the young cattle drover. She notices the closeness between Ralph Randal and his eighteen year old daughter Satina, whom he calls Arkie.
Winding through the simple tale are threads of home-made herbal remedies, magic mushrooms, frustrated yearnings, the mauling of stock, floods and rescues, and shocking disasters. The quick ‘tidy-up’ of the ending seemed to leave something vaguely unresolved, but a thorough reading and retracing characters dismisses that.
At the beginning I found Clover’s journal read like something from Enid Blyton, but the author gets a grip on Clover’s voice, her visions come under the author’s control and are more believable.
Ms Petrie’s ‘Note To The Reader’ is almost a spoiler, coming before the Table of Contents. So skip it – go straight to page 11, the first page of the story itself.

Review by Lynne McAnulty-STREET

Title: The Seer’s Wolf
Author: Barbara Petrie
Publisher: Bridgidada Press
ISBN: 978-0-473-318154 paperback
Available: as either a pbk or e-book through the publisher's website: www.bridgidada.nz; or from Scorpio Books, Christchurch; PaperPlus, Rangiora; Take Note Kaiapoi; and bookshops New Zealand-wide by request.

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Yarn-type tales

13/1/2016

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A Blimmin' Disaster
by Mike Aldridge

There’s a target readership for every book, and the stories in this modest volume point to the intended readers of the collection very clearly.
They’re yarn-type tales told in first person, from a male point of view, and on men-oriented subjects mainly to do with a working life. More specifically, most are to do with the trucking industry – transporting goods and livestock. If you’re comfortable with references to Keith Holyoake as Prime Minister, Sir Bernard Fergusson as Governor-General, with JFK in the White House, you’ll be in your element. If you wear false teeth and appreciate the larger than usual print size, all the better.
Add to that the subtitle, A Book of Kiwi Humour, and the cover pic and you’ll have a good idea if it’s for you.
The sixteen stories are unpretentious. They don’t aspire to literary greatness – they’re offered as amusement for the target audience. Beneath the printed text is an underlying humour that’s often more amusing than the story itself.

The situation in the cab had changed in that now I was thinking maybe I would have the nervous breakdown before Loco. Meanwhile I was looking around for a concrete block wall because I felt the urge to bang my head against something hard and unforgiving.

   The humour is often at the expense of Kiwi customs or institutions.

“What are those orange statues on the railway line?”
“Oh no! They aren’t statues…that’s a New Zealand Railways Track Maintenance gang.”

   What comes through most clearly in this collection is the fun Aldridge obviously had in writing the stories. This is particularly evident in the tale titled Dear John, a great piece of self-indulgence by the Author. The penultimate, Hi Viz Ghosts, might be slight as far as top yarns go but its placing, presenting another side to several that have preceded it, makes it work well. It would have been even better in the last spot. For most books, I’d say including clip-art illustrations is a no-no, but here they team nicely with the unpretentious style of the rest of the book.
   So now you know who will enjoy A Blimmin’ Disaster, who is it not designed for? For anyone who is a stickler for grammar, punctuation, and word usage, or who rates themself at any point on the politically correct register, it’s probably best avoided.

Review by J.M.

Title: A Blimmin' Disaster
Author: Mike Aldridge
Publisher: Rangitawa Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-9941268-2-5
Available: Rangitawa Publishing, Amazon

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A book to return to

4/1/2016

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Tell You What: Great New Zealand Nonfiction 2016
Edited by Susanna Andrew & Jolisa Gracewood

Twenty-four writers have contributed to make this anthology a worthwhile publication. That is, the 23 whose contributions are featured, plus John Campbell whose Foreword is as readable and literate as any of those selected and makes a very good introduction to the body of the work.
   If I know anything about authors, each of the 23 will now be skim-reading through this review to see if their piece is singled out, so here they are – Charles Anderson, Vicki Anderson, Naomi Arnold, Steve Braunias, Rachel Buchanan, Kate Camp, Megan Dunn, Dan Eichblatt, David Fisher, Nicky Hager, Ross Nepia Himona, Ali Ikram, Lynn Jenner, Elizabeth Knox, Tina Makereti, Kirsten McDougall, Kristen Ng, Joe Nunweek, Jenni Quilter, Sylvan Thomson, Giovanni Tiso, Matt Vickers, Ashleigh Young.
   Other than mentioning them all, I’m not playing favourites. Not that I didn’t appreciate some of the works more than others. As with any collection, they vary, but overall I found them entertaining, admirable, interesting, fascinating, moving, and one or two a tad boring. I won’t say which I’d put into each group because another reader will judge them differently. I, on another day, or on further reading, might well change my mind and switch them between categories. So, the 23 writers can select for themselves from the adjectives above.
   These pieces are as short as four pages, and as long as twenty. I thought I’d tackle them by reading one per day so as to give each one fair consideration, but on several days I ploughed right on to a second, even a third.
   Through them I was taken to parts of life I know because I’ve been there, or somewhere similar. On other days I visited places foreign to me, beyond my experience. In each case I was pleased for the reminder or the additional insight.
   Most of the works have been published previously, but this doesn’t detract because they’re likely to have been overlooked in the original sources. Or, if already read, they’re worth rereading. Many appeared first online, and there’s something oddly backwards, yet satisfying, about this web-to-print flip.
   Apparently there was a previous collection published last year. That one passed me by, but I’m glad I caught up with this one with its varied pieces and its contributors. On the way through the pages I smiled wryly at this story, empathised with the author of another, and I made a note to reread those that most moved, or challenged, or informed me. It’s a book to return to.

Review by Kauri Wood

Title: Tell You What: Great New Zealand Nonfiction 2016
Editors: Susanna Andrew & Jolisa Gracewood
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 978-1-86940-844-2
Available: Bookshops

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Four interconnected stories

YA novel combines foibles & fantasy

Yarn-type tales

A book to return to

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