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Visually attractive quality production

24/4/2014

New Zealand Made – After the Earthquake
by Jennifer Barrer

This is a 200-page quality production – well designed, printed on high-grade paper, full colour photos. It is a joy to look at.
It is subtitled “a sequence of poems”, and though poetry makes up the bulk of the words, the full volume contains more than that. Some prose pieces are included and the many photographs make this a varied and visually attractive volume.
  The subject matter – both written and pictorial – includes Barrer family history, garden, art, flowers, and the Christchurch earthquakes. As the Author explains in the introduction, the collection was being planned before the quakes in 2010 and 2011, and was reorganized to reflect the social history of the city.
  As is the case in any collection, the poetry varies in quality. All are easily readable. Even people who do not usually choose to read poetry will find these accessible. They are very human, giving insights into personal reactions to formative events in a person’s life; in the latter half particularly to loss in the aftermath of the first, then the second more devastating quake. While moving, they avoid being cloyingly sentimental – one very brief poem titled Demolition gives a different view in its 9 words. After / demolition / the squashed / acrid soil / breathes / once more.
  The photographs are stunning. The Author shows she has an eye for subject, and what makes an ordinary scene into art.
  Overall, the words and pictures show Jennifer Barrer’s full engagement with her locality and surroundings – natural, historical, human and social.
  Such an attractive work deserved a stronger editing eye, but the inconsistencies in the prose pieces will likely be glossed over by most readers and not detract from the whole effect.
  Buy this book for yourself, or as a very acceptable gift for a grandmother, an aunt, or anyone with a long connection with Canterbury. The print-run is limited to 200, so those lucky enough to receive one will be fortunate.

Review by Paua Blue

New Zealand Made – After the Earthquake
Publisher:  Jennifer Barrer, 1 Barrer Lane, Cashmere, Christchurch 8022, ph. (03) 332-4915. Printed by The Caxton Press
ISBN:  978-0-473-25939-6
Available:  Hardback and paperback, from some bookshops or from Jennifer Barrer

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Strength in the writing

17/4/2014

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A Long Commute Home

Poems by Art Nahill

Do we have a challenger to Glenn Colquhoun as physician-poet with Art Nahill? I don’t think so, as ultimately we judge a poet by what he writes, not how he makes a living. Yet there are some similarities in the strength of the writing and the singularity of Nahill’s observations.
His poems keep emotion in check through the cool detachment of his words and phrases, which invite the reader to pay careful attention to what is being said by how it is being said. To me this made it seem that the core and essence of each poem is poised for delivery and awaiting our response to what’s enfolded deep within.
I like this as a process in writing and especially in poetry. Nahill’s ‘Poem From a Shopping List Left Accidentally in My Notebook’ was a particular favourite. I can imagine it inspiring other responses to the accidental and incidental; as a workshop exercise, even. I learned on my degree course that where the best poetry comes from is unimportant; it is where it ends up. I also discovered that you can read a good poem over and over, take it apart and forensically put it together again and lo! when you are done, read it again and it still works.
In case you have misunderstood me, I am not saying there is no emotional content in his poetry. I firmly believe that discipline is not the enemy of creativity – and we are talking about a poet who is both creative and disciplined. I also believe that, to convey an emotion accurately and allow the reader to respond to it, the poet has to step back, as it were, and deliberately underplay intensity.
Because readers of poetry always bring something of their own to a poem that engages. This is often a poem they identify with – and I responded in this manner to so many of Nahill’s that I almost feel this is a man I know and who knows me. Fancy, perhaps; but reading some of his poems that cover ‘the ordinary human existence’ (which never is ordinary to a poet) I identified deeply with their subject.
If you want examples, try ‘Neighbourhood,’ ‘Memento Mori,’ ‘Loneliness’ and ‘Insomnia.’ There is a truth and sadness in them that lightens me as I read. I, too, the poet sings, have experienced your pain. Metaphor becomes a metaphysical link between the writer and the reader.
Overall, however – and there wasn’t a single poem that lacked interest – it is the strength of his writing that won me over. Nahill is firmly a poet of the here and now, but his poems wander off into the past and elsewhere – geographically, emotionally and intellectually. In ‘Emigration’ he reminds us that:
‘... we are not so much citizens
   as itinerants following
the harvest of loss
and acquiescence
   always carrying some form
   of faded identification
   to remind ourselves
   who we were
   before we settled
   for this temperate life.’
I liked the challenge of reading A Long Commute Home and know already I want to return to it some time soon. I don’t think it will be lonely or sleepless on my bookshelf.

Review by Jenny Argante

A Long Commute Home
Publisher: Art Nahill (via Mary Egan Publishing), ISBN 978-0-473-27070-4
Available in print through the Author’s blogsite Two Hemispheres Poetry, twohemispherespoetry.blogspot.co.nz, and in eformat via Amazon.com, Smashwords.com and Apple iBooks

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Intriguing historical read

10/4/2014

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Touchstone
by Lorraine Orman

As a NZ Young Adult fiction, Orman’s attention to detail sets the scene and makes it evident she has done her research. Ordinary conversations are just that, ordinary, and that’s what makes this story believable.
     Educational? Definitely. I learned about ecology, mining in the West Coast, and how an eco-warrior protest group might try to prevent the establishment of another opencast coalmine. The smooth insertion of facts from the region’s history felt natural as we learned at newcomer, 16-year-old Skye’s, pace.
     Skye’s emotions are honest and real. Josh’s are raw and true. These kids and their attitudes made me smile. Close attention to their personal details helps get the reader into the characters’ minds quickly. So these two teenage cousins meet for the first time, having recently found family neither knew existed. To unravel the newer secrets, Skye and Josh first have to unravel the old. And this is where Granddad comes in. But what is the real truth? All they discover is that things are not as they might think they are. It takes the old Granddad to bring life’s lessons into perspective. Skye finally finds what she thought she wanted so badly, only to see it too was shrouded in more lies.
     Although the story didn’t end as I expected, it was still a satisfactory ending. Having said that, I still felt the ending drama fizzled out sooner than it needed to. Minor bloopers and irregularities are more noticeable in the second-half of this work but they don’t affect the pleasure of the read.
     For both Y/A and older, it is an intriguing historical read. This work makes learning fun, and believable. As a history lesson, it is well written, well-paced, and well-plotted. Having read Jenny Pattrick’s ‘Denniston Rose’, I felt completely at home with Orman’s settings and smells.
     Well done, Lorraine Orman!

Review by Poppy

Touchstone
Publisher: Ashmore Books (PO Box 679, Warkworth 0941, New Zealand; email l.orman@ihug.co.nz)
ISBN (EPUB): 978-0-473-23972-5; (Kindle): 978-0-473-23973-2
Available: Smashwords, Amazon and affiliates, Kobo Bookshop, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Paper Plus, Wheelers' Book Club (via their E-Platform) Price: $(US)4.99
A teachers’ resource kit is available at: http://www.story-go-round.net.nz/pdf/touchstone_teachersresourcekit.pdf

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Clever plotting in compelling drama

2/4/2014

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The Candidate’s Daughter
by Catherine Lea

I haven’t read anything by Catherine Lea before, but I will now be eagerly checking for the next or any other book she has written. She has woven together a story that is tense, absorbing and structured cinematically by time and character perspective to hold the attention from page one until the end.
It’s a story of an optimistic kidnap that goes disastrously wrong because it’s carried out without proper planning by a moronic pair of brothers, Matt and Lionel. Matt has enlisted the help of his girl friend, Kelsey, whose own damaged past has impaired her judgement, and who comes to experience a shift in understanding and motivation as the narrative unfolds.
What lifts up this story from the ordinary is some clever plotting, and the 3-dimensional nature of main characters and support players. Each reveals to us how flawed human beings can be and, ultimately, that some of us are, if we choose to be, redeemable.
The kidnap victim herself is heartbreaking real. Holly is a 6-year old Down’s Syndrome girl, and the daughter of high-achieving parents. Neither has been able to reconcile what they got when she was born with what they believed themselves entitled to. Holly is endearing and vulnerable, and she wins Kelsey’s heart.
Though this leads to a shift from being ‘one of the gang’ to the role of Holly’s defender, Kelsey is still deeply mired in the consequences of the criminal actions she consented to. How she manages to resolve this is nail-biting stuff.
Lea brings to her narrative a suspense that is tightly maintained throughout. One example is the unwelcome publicity this bungled snatch brings to senatorial candidate Richard McLaine and his wife Elizabeth and how it leads to an unravelling of carefully constructed facades, personal, professional and marital.
Brought face to face with the realisation of where they have failed, the two women, Kelsey and Elizabeth, work hard to avert pending disaster. The end, when it comes, is a satisfying and heart-wrenching finale of losers and winners.
Because Catherine Lea has made you care so deeply about the significant actors within this compelling drama – the child Holly; reformed accomplice Kelsey and Holly’s shamed and self-blaming mother – we also care deeply about what happens to them. That makes The Candidate’s Daughter a real page-turner.
In my opinion, it would also make a great New Zealand movie. I hope some talent scout will sit down and read the book, uncover its potential and pitch it to a film director – it’s Nicki Caro or Jane Campion material for sure.
I am both a picky and experienced reader and I couldn’t put it down. Take a bow, Ms. Lea.

Review by Jenny Argante
Tauranga-based writer and editor, member of the New Zealand Society of Authors

The Candidate’s Daughter.
Brakelight Press, ISBN-13: 978-0473261757
Available in print, mobi for Kindle, and ePub
Digital editions available from Amazon.com, Amazon.com.au, & Amazon.co.uk
http://www.amazon.com/The-Candidates-Daughter-ebook/dp/B00D3DDNJQ,
Print editions available at Amazon.com, CreateSpace.com, The Book Depository, Barnes and Noble.
Also, to borrow, through Auckland Library.

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Visually attractive quality production

Strength in the writing

Intriguing historical read

Clever plotting in compelling drama

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