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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 [email protected]

Review by Carolyn McKenzie

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

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Novel will carry readers along

25/3/2020

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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

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Truly delightful

18/3/2020

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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

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A well written whodunnit

9/3/2020

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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 [email protected]
E-book: Amazon

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Seeing the world in a new way

2/3/2020

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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

Comments

Novel offers encouragement and inspiration

Novel will carry readers along

Truly delightful

A well written whodunnit

Seeing the world in a new way

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