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Powerful and gripping

1/3/2018

Crystal Reign
by Kelly Lyndon

This is a powerful and gripping book about David, an ex-naval officer, martial arts expert, and engineer, who is faced with a horrible situation when Chrissie, his beautiful wife and mother to their three children is introduced to methamphetamine at a new year’s party.
Her addiction soon becomes uncontrollable and she spirals downward, dragging the family into her personal hell. Her $1000 a day habit costs the family everything that they own financially, including their home, and her personal training business.
Personally, it costs Chrissie much more; she loses the trust of her husband and family. Her friends desert her and the parents of the netball team she coaches shun her and withdraw their children. Her physical appearance deteriorates, her teeth are decayed and even the clothes she wears are dirty and slovenly. She is covered in sores which she has made herself thinking there are demons under her skin. She is reduced to having sex with her supplier in exchange for the drug.
Finally, she is jailed for possessing and selling methamphetamine and appears to have withdrawn from the drug in prison. However immediately after release she falls back into her drug habit worse than before.
Things get even darker for David when Chrissie’s handbag is found floating in Auckland harbour and the police are searching for her body. Suspicion falls on David who the police believe is to blame for her disappearance.
How he copes with this and his own battles with alcohol make for a gripping story that captured me as a reader. David and his children survive thanks to his friends and a generous employer.
The book weaves many familiar facets of New Zealand life, such as All Black matches, commonwealth games, and news events, into a story I could easily relate to, although I found some of the dialogue between Kiwi men a bit stilted and not quite realistic.
Overall this is a very good book and having been a health professional I found the drug scenes and the portrayal of people in the scene very realistic.
I would recommend this book to everyone because it is a believable story about a drug that is tearing the heart out of more and more New Zealanders and their families. It shows that even successful, professional people can lose everything – not just financially but including their self-respect, their families, and every facet of their life.

Review by Harold Bernard

Title: Crystal Reign
Author: Kelly Lyndon
Publisher: Remnant Press
ISBN: 9780473402365
RRP: $34.99
Available: bookshops

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Poetry collection reflects sense of balance

22/2/2018

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The Light and Dark in our Stuff
by Mere Taito

Mere Taito is Rotuman by ancestry, identifies Fiji as her I-grew-up-here home and New Zealand as her right-now home – a bit of a balancing act at times, which other cultural voyagers can appreciate.
This new collection – ten short poems, each illustrated – reflects her sense of balance: light versus dark, certainly, but also visual versus verbal images, images of destruction and fragmentation versus images of completion. This is a book to tuck in your pocket, to take out and re-read. (It’s also a very good book to give as a present.)
The DARK MATTER is illustrated with uncomfortable, sharp edges, and the poems feel the same way. ‘Bad Charity’ asserts: “we have gifted our bones/ to tears…without a skeleton/ how do we run for cover/ from our own fractures?” And in ‘The Lost Art of Kissing a Government’ “we used to eat their mouths// tear their lips/ crunch their teeth// slit their tonsils/ with our forked tongues”.
The dark poems are about unpleasant matters, buildings which are as defective as people, helicopters bringing privilege into the jungle, bodies turned to salt. (Taito has a good line in dark matter. In the 2007 Suva collection, Writing the Pacific, she recounts a first-class nightmare, and this collection takes the dark side even farther.) ‘This Charmed Life’ presents us with a vivid tar-seal road that “slithers into a village like a hungry boa” devouring everything in its path.
The LIGHT MATTER is full of satisfaction, and completion. The first poem is ‘Good Voodoo’, where carefree toes and feet rise in the flowers: “flat on a spine/ she raises her legs and stops only/ when they are perpendicular to the earth…”.
All the illustrations in this section are of living things: feet, girl, gulls, sun and moon (yes, they live). “stars are born/ from a yellow sun father and/ a blue moon mother … the moon lies on her back/ screaming a night sky// legs trussed up high/ on the shoulders of the sun”.
‘Eumelanin Gorgeous’ is dedicated to the poet’s nieces (“may you always be happy in your own skin”) and begins:
earth brown in a basket is…
    where the life of a pandanus tree begins
    where ecosystems stencil the design of breath
the rains pilgrim south to pay homage to the earthworm and
     the heavens reach down for counsel
The light matters speak of completion, being well-fed, sex born out of stars. The book ends with ‘Fermentere’ – a song of gradual completion, a song of fermentation, a song of making tāhroro, comparing it with a visit to Rotorua where “yellow fumes throttle down/ gently swirling the chunky town/ beneath the hard palette then/ safely back to the soft velum...”.
Tāhroro is a fermented coconut condiment, a delicacy – a flavour you will never find elsewhere because it tastes like your past. Your nearest and dearest write this sort of food off as an acquired taste, and they put up with your eating it because they love you, not because they want a second helping. I think there’s a food like this in most cultures, and it’s a wonderful metaphor for the things we carry with us when we move around the world.

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: The Light and Dark in our Stuff
Author: Mere Taito
Publisher: Mere Taito (MT Poetry)
ISBN: 978-0-473-41719-2
RRP: $10.00; $14.00 (with postage direct from the author)
Available: From the author, message via Facebook https://www.facebook.com/meretaitopoetry
Writers Plot Readers Read Bookshop (Wellington) https://writersplotreadersread.wordpress.com
Jason Books (Auckland) http://www.jasonbooks.co.nz/

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Well planned collection

15/2/2018

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Patched Words: A collection of short stories
by Rae McGregor

It’s a small volume – 93 pages, nicely produced, with clear text on good quality paper.
The title and the cover graphic fit well with a short explanation by the author –
This year I have been making quilts. While I was doing it, I thought writing a story was a bit like patchwork. Instead of placing fabric into a design, a writer uses words, which are fashioned to intrigue and interest a reader, just as a quilt intrigues and warms its owner.
This, together with the dedication – for my family and my Eden Village friends – suggests an emphasis on tales that will appeal to, and largely feature, mature women.
And this is borne out in the eleven stories and a poem. Overall, then, this collection is well planned and executed.
In the first, fittingly, a woman makes quilts – the latest holding particular memories. She loved how it had emerged from all Nancy’s clothes, and the backing of her mother’s dress was perfect.
Another bakes, choosing the ingredients with care. It was a good cake. Always rose well, always cut well, and she always had approving comments about the flavour.
All the characters are realistic, living the sorts of lives readers can identify with – learning to adjust to changed conditions, including the death of people close to them. But they are not all acquiescent or submissive. A stroke victim rebels, and more than one of the stories has the theme of revenge.
Altogether, Patched Words is a collection accessible to the majority of readers. It would make a good gift – particularly for an older relative or friend.

Review by J.M.

Title: Patched Words: A collection of short stories
Author: Rae McGregor
Publisher: AM Publishing New Zealand
ISBN: 978-0-9951000-8-4
RRP: $20.00
Available: from the author, mcgregors@xtra.co.nz or 09 6304472

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Powerful and gripping

Poetry collection reflects sense of balance

Well planned collection

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