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Fitting climax to trilogy

11/2/2021

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Have You Forgotten Yet? 
by 
A N Arthur


This story of the inter-War period is a massive book; at 439 pages, each of an average 350 words, it tops out at 153,650 words, over half as many again as the accepted length of a novel.
     The story opens in the aftermath of World War One and moves through the effects of the Great Depression upon New Zealand’s urban poor and a farming family in Murchison just getting by in the relatively benign rural economy, and contrasts that life with the Nazi Party’s takeover of Germany’s Weimar Republic.
     This latter story is admirably done, with outstanding images of the sophisticated and cosmopolitan Republic crumbling before the brutal vigour and nationalism of the Brownshirts while its contributions to art, literature, architecture and democratic politics were denigrated and swept aside.
     This is the third volume of a trilogy that began with ‘Orphanage Boys’ and continued with ‘Between Two Worlds’, and that consideration has shaped the book. From the very beginning we meet droves of characters and for a reader new to A N Arthur’s work the relationships – and even the surnames – are hard to pick up. Given the number of words to which the book runs, one feels that some of them might well have been employed in setting the scene to greater effect.
     As example, while the relationships between the protagonists in Wellington and Murchison are never spelled out, the appearance of Wilhelm in Germany is tidily and comprehensively explained in only a few words.
     Again, Alex and Jeannie/“Tyke” are major figures in the story but it is some time before it becomes apparent that Maudie, with all her growling lower-class speech, attitudes and a heart of gold, is a surrogate mother and grandmother to the pair.
     Tyke is a heroine “up against it” all her life; whether from a violent and abusive father to whom she is a symbol of lost manhood; rejection from her mother’s well-to-do parents or a period of mixed messages from her eventual husband, Moss, Tyke’s empathetic and caring nature doesn’t evoke a lot of luck. Some of Arthur’s most heart-wrenching writing occurs in the context of the little girl’s rejection by her mother’s family.
     Technically, the story is a big one and one wonders if a narrower focus might not have been desirable. Matt in Murchison has much the same formative experience at school with Drover as does Tyke with Emma in Wellington; surely one or the other would have been enough to underline the essential decency of New Zealanders.
     There is a discernible emphasis upon class and the growing divide between urban poor and the rich. This serves the story well in the harrowing descriptions of life in the relief camps – blistered and bleeding hands, insufficient food, brutal working conditions and a total lack of empathy towards the plight and care of those forced into unfamiliar and back-breaking work.
     Again there is good writing here, but the author’s determination to use large brush-strokes to gild the lily of working-class misery quite fails to chronicle the fact that relief work was an accepted and understood expression of 1930s economic orthodoxy in rejecting welfare without work. In this, New Zealand’s policy mirrored the ‘alphabet soup’ schemes of Roosevelt’s USA and, in passing, if Gordon Coates did indeed express the contention that the unemployed could always eat grass, this reviewer was quite unable to find the reference.
     The ascent from the depths of the Depression throughout the decade of the Thirties and the pioneering work of the first Labour government helped by the foresight of the Coalition government might well have provided less abrupt transitions to London for Tyke and Moss and to Singapore for Matt, but the driving-home of the maxim that ‘war is hell and causes people to behave hellishly’ required all three to relive the experiences of the generation before them.
     “Have You Forgotten Yet?” impresses as a fitting climax to AN Arthur’s trilogy.
 
Ed note: reviews of the first two of the trilogy can be found in FlaxFlower archives — Orphanage Boys,  June 2017;  Between Two Worlds,  December 2018

Review by MJ Burr
Title: Have You Forgotten Yet?
Author: A N Arthur
Publisher:  Rangitawa Publishing
ISBN: 9780995116672
RRP: $35
Available: Rangitawa Publishing. Can be ordered at any bookstore. And through Amazon. Or the author at holly.tj2020@gmail.com

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London Blitz brought to life

4/2/2021

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Picture
The Healing Hands 
by 
Chris Davies Curtis

 
‘Nurse Alice Baker always knew she could draw pain away from her patients with her healing hands, but not the price she might pay.’
    I don’t read romance novels and wasn’t expecting this to be one so I began reading with a different mind-set, looking for the fantasy aspect. A few pages in, it became clear that romance came first, or rather, romance-style writing. 
    Curtis writes mostly in the tell not show style, which is fine but through the first third of the story it did leave me wanting more depth. Once she had laid out the back stories sufficiently though, she showed us the story and it became more interesting. And actually, leaving the romantic aspects to one side, the idea was intriguing.
    A woman with the ability to heal and time travel? Who doesn’t love the idea of time travel? I love fantasy so Curtis’s blending of the factual historical events of London in the Blitz and time travel was interesting. 

    Not being a reader of romance, there may be things that I misread. For example, the speed of developing romances made it difficult to trust there could be real depth invested in the relationships, an expectation I felt was expected of the reader but not sustained by that rapid matchmaking. I never like being retold someone has stunning eyes or gloriously coloured hair or resonating deep brown eyes. These things became repetitious, but again, that could be my failing – it could well be a romance staple. 
    There were great ideas introduced – time travel, alternative universe, but the speed we were introduced to the concepts and the way we were told about them, not shown, meant there was little in the ideas themselves that didn’t feel forced. These themes were offered as exposition only, so remained under-developed. There were several cases of vital information being overheard, too, which again allowed for a quick push of the plot but gave little to individual character or plot maturity. One oversight niggled – Alice had already proved she could summon John by telepathy so the business of her and Freda wondering how to let him know urgently he was needed and then have someone fetch him was a fairly big hole in the narrative.
    Curtis did a lovely job of bringing Blitz London to life and she had some wonderful domestic touches which made those parts real. She obviously knows her stuff here. The heart-breaking tragedies consuming those years was well realised, too. I also learned some things, which is utterly ideal in historical fiction writing. I feel Curtis has allowed for future volumes with her main characters and she has given herself a universe to roam in.
    Some great ideas and some lovely visual retelling of the Blitz. Much thanks to Chris Davies Curtis for the opportunity to read and review her novel.

Review by TJ Ramsay
Title: The Healing Hands 
Author: Chris Davies Curtis
Publisher: Chris Curtis Books
ISBN: 9780473540852
RRP: $25
Available: Paperback from Amazon and cedcurtis@gmail.com; ebook from Amazon or other formats via Smashwords
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