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Truth being stranger than fiction

31/5/2018

An End of Honour
by M J Burr

It is a brave undertaking to write any novel, and even more so in the case of an historical novel as the author must know every aspect of the period. The inclusion of real people among the characters, details of whose lives are recorded and known, adds a further huge dimension and demands careful handling in order to portray them fairly.
M J Burr has taken up such a challenge in his novel An End of Honour, and he succeeds admirably.
The main period covered is the 1860s; the places – southern states of USA, and New Zealand. The American Civil War is drawing to a close and the Land Wars in this country escalating.
The central character, John Selby Hunter, Captain of a Confederate cavalry troop, leaves his West Virginia home for good reason and travels to New Zealand where he is persuaded by Governor Grey to accept a commission in the mounted division of the New Zealand Armed Constabulary.
The working in of actual battles in Taranaki, details of weaponry, cultural customs of different peoples and their intersection, all show there has been a huge amount of research undertaken by M J Burr to inform his crafting of this work. Real figures from New Zealand history are brought alive on the page as they are encountered by Hunter – Thomas McDonnell, Gustavus von Tempsky, Donald McLean, Robert Wynyard, George Whitmore, Governors Gore Browne and George Grey, premier Edward Stafford, and others of colonial society; Maori leaders and personalities including Rewi Maniapoto, Tikaokao, Titokowaru, Kereopa; with the renegade American Kimble Bent between the two.
The author notes – This novel follows the historical record as faithfully as a work of fiction might, because I am wedded to the notion of truth being stranger than fiction.
If I have any criticism of this novel, it is with the subtitle – a novel of Titokowaru’s War. It is that, yes, but it is more than that, and I found myself becoming immersed in further storylines that are part of the whole book – Hunter’s Civil War experiences, gun smuggling, details of the social life of settlers in this country 150 years ago. There’s some consideration of varying views of Darwin’s work On the Origin of Species, recently published at the time. And there’s a love story intermeshed with the main story – well handled, not sentimental.
All’s fair in love and war, it is said, but is it really? As the title points to, the main theme of the book is that of honour, and this is developed well through the story lines – relating to society, ethics, warfare, and love.
Throughout, the fluent writing and realistic dialogue makes this book easy reading.
Recommended for anyone with any interest in New Zealand’s past, or for those who simply enjoy a good story. It's one that will stay with me while others fade from memory.

Review by I Reddit

Title: An End of Honour
Author: M J Burr
Publisher: ClioWrite Ltd
ISBN: 978-0-473-26061-3
Available: paper via www.cliowrite.com; Email [email protected]; Post 36 Wairau Road; Oakura, Taranaki 4314. Telephone / fax 06 7527 50; Ebook via Amazon

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Important grief story

25/5/2018

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The Gift Horse
by Sophie Siers
Illustrated by Katharine White

The Gift Horse, written by Sophie Siers and illustrated by Katharine White, is the rural tale of a girl named Olivia and her family, following the loss of her mother. It is an important grief story, with lovely, relatable descriptions of sadness such as -
...in her bed where she can pull the duvet over her head and make the world silent around her.
and expressive metaphors like -
She feels like there's a balloon in her chest which is blown up so tight that there's no room for anything else. It squishes right up into her throat; sometimes she feels like she can't breathe.
The portrayals of feelings as they change - questioning why, being angry and feeling numb - will be so recognizable and validating to children experiencing loss or sorrow. All the grief stages, and the importance of one's unique walk through them, are thoughtfully referenced through Olivia's emotions.
People just don't understand. She would cry, but there aren't any tears. The big
balloon has pushed everything away and her heart feels empty inside.
In this backdrop, the arrival of a young horse, himself traumatized – a parallel to Olivia's character – is an uplifting, hopeful storyline. It's a special connection to Olivia's mother, who also had a way with horses, and a path towards feeling close with her again. It's also a chance for Olivia to find some catharsis and to help herself through this journey, in her own time and her own way.
The overall themes of grief and the healing of time and love are well handled in The Gift Horse. The illustrations really support the feelings, with dark pastel scribbles isolating bleak moments and whirls of moving, colourful pastel giving movement and life to turnaround scenes. They're appropriate for children in their style, as is the simple text, so there is a wide range in age appeal.
The ideas are universal, helpful and, of course, we all love a happy, hopeful ending.

Review by Jenny Palmer

Title: The Gift Horse
Author: Sophie Seirs. Illustrator: Katharine White
Publisher: Millwood Press
ISBN: 9780473408558
RRP: $19.99
Available: bookshops

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One for yachties

18/5/2018

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Doumar and the Doctor
by Neville de Villiers

This is the story of a mostly solo yachting expedition by the author from England to New Zealand, via the Mediterranean, in 1980. It seems to have been a one way passage in his smallish yacht, the Doumar, as he finally reaches Whangarei and decides to settle there. The sub-title of the book labels him as a “courageous adventurer,” but perhaps it might be best to describe de Villiers as being very lucky.
The book is certainly a vivid tale, and a well remembered blow by blow account of all the action at sea. On the one hand it has an element of ‘derring do’ and the honest reflection of an amateur adventurer. On the other hand, the author leaves behind his wife and two young children, which could be seen as irresponsible in the extreme given the task he pursues after his crew abandons ship on the French canals. Indeed, it is hard to believe that it was a good decision to carry on solo, but he does survive.
Unfortunately, the book itself seems to be limited by the subject matter and the ability of the storyteller. The description of the sailing experience inevitably uses very specific terminology that the general reader won’t understand. Even with a glossary of sailing terms at the end of the book it is still difficult to follow. The author provides some biographical context at the beginning of the book but the rest is more like a diary, rather than a story. He does make the odd aside about certain aspects of his life, but without any continuity as a story. For instance, he often refers to a book by Naomi James which is apparently about her solo yachting, but doesn’t bother to give the title.
Although the cover of the book is well-designed the contents indicate the limitations of self-publishing. The sentences and paragraphs are not especially well constructed, particularly for grammar; and the book needs more proof-reading. There are hand-drawn maps at the beginning of each chapter which are inadequate really, and while the other illustrations are better drawings they don’t add much to the book. The author’s photographs have come out well but are mostly too small to be effective.
So this is one for the yachties mostly, as a tribute to a man’s relationship with his beloved boat, but it could have been the basis for a broader memoir of more interest.

Review by S A Boyce

Title: Doumar and the Doctor
Author: Neville de Villiers
Publisher: Neville de Villiers in association with Wild Side Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-473-407674
RRP: $29.99
Available: ask at Paper Plus and independent bookshops

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Challenging poems

11/5/2018

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ternion
by Vaughan Rapatahana

The cover leads the reader into any book. This cover, with its ribbons of vivid colours that stream both up and down, yet never seem to mingle, presents an apt context for the poems.
Overall, on first read-through, I felt I’d been hurtling down a busy highway in some alien place, picking up only random, disconnected signs as they flashed by, some in a language I didn’t recognise. Discordant, cacophonous, unruly, a sprawling city of symbols and sirens.
The editor has chosen to begin with death. New life evokes old death, in ‘Blake’. The blank, final gaze of a corpse mirrored in the static slices of life on the wall. Chilling.
For me, ‘my father’s death’ with its plethora of double adjectives, over-does the emotion, descending into cliché with ‘pearly gates’, though I like very much the final word ‘limn’. I paused in ‘park plaques’ to try to allow an umbilical cord that conjugates us all from within the group, but failed.
In ‘endgame’, not knowing who ‘you’ addresses, I’m unable to run the images together into coherence. ‘I carry a rage’ delights me with its sound-play: conniption, Wittgenstein, submission, and mis interpreted. In ‘the rain’ the poet recognises himself, coming out of his safety zone, his ‘house’, to identify with the rain, as a ‘dirty old man’.
I like the use of direct speech in ‘waharoa’, offered ‘like a dirty lolly’. From such brief, personal exchanges, an image of loss that’s universal, yet unvoiced.
In ‘rua kenana century’ many of my concerns about many of the poems appear, so I’ll address them all here:
1. The bold underlining of the poem titles separates their meaning from the poem. This feels like an odd alienation, as more usually, poem titles work together with the text.
2. White space works better on an online page, where the constraints of page and font size, and the ratio between them, are not the same. Here, and in many of the poems, the different fonts and their sizes, the use of bold and underline, italics, translations, and footnotes that aren’t clearly divided from the text of the poem, all combine into a messy image on the limits of the printed page.
3. Although not present in this poem, the same confusion occurs when epigraphs are used. In ‘pipiwai’, for example, the epigraph appears directly under the ruled-off title, and includes, in brackets, its own translation. Further translation of other terms used in the poem appear at the end of the poem. What is the poem, then, if it can’t stand without these crutches, imprisoned by these fences?
The final poem was about death, too. Death, seen as a universal destination, that requires a lessening of faculties as words devolve to whimper. ‘Nough said.
Ultimately, I’m left with these impressions: dis-ordered, jagged words that attack rather than understand, and a sense of a poet who, though familiar with three different cultures, no longer feels entirely at home in any one of them.

Review by Mercedes Webb-Pullman

Title: Ternion
Author: Vaughan Rapatahana
Publisher: erbacce-press, Liverpool, U.K.
ISBN: 978-1-907878-91-6
RRP: NZ$17.50; US$12.75, UK£9.95
Available: http://erbacce-press.webeden.co.uk/vaughan-rapatahana/4593968366

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Author builds up suspense

4/5/2018

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Glory Days and Other Stories
by John Mack

I enjoyed reading these stories, given that I had the occasional qualm or two – which I will refer to further on.
At best, John Mack certainly has the ability to propel a reader onwards, to want to keep on until the story or novella – of which there are two – is finished. Mack builds up the suspense like a sleuth unravelling the next clue thread .
He writes in clear prose, with plotlines that are well thought through, given that in the Hammett-like novella Mike Dunn, Sleuth, the concluding sicko-sex connections between the murdered Harold Withers and the sleazy Polynesian gang are not so clear to me. The obvious connotations in this piece are to the Lundy murders, yet the twist through to the gang involvement perhaps needed a bit more of a back story.
Accordingly, also, his dialogue is colloquial and crisp; his settings – most especially the rural scenes – well depicted.
Mack, then, certainly achieves his avowed back cover aim, as here, “Each story stands alone as a tale with no particular message or function other than to provide for the readers entertainment.”
The topoi of the ten tales are varied too. From country living near Morenawhira (Morrinsville) through to perhaps the ‘best’ and most personal piece in the collection – the realistic World War Two saga, War Bride, the remaining content and concern ranges over fascinations with fast cars; private detectives patrolling and extolling socially tangential methodologies; wanna-be rip-off criminals; the sweet revenge obtained after such criminals’ activities. The trope is generally the underdog winning out in the end, and some sort of street level justice being served, regardless of the moral scruples involved. The tales titled Three Bros; Easy Money; Long and Short; Chronicle of a Hitman; A Town like Taumaranui; Revenge for Mrs Arkwright, most definitely revolve around and in this axis.
I did mention earlier a couple of concerns. One is that there are some typos and confusions here. For example, in War Bride, a certain Mike appears (pg. 262). Up until then and indeed, afterwards, through denouement and climax, this person is non-existent. More, the Contents lists the novella commencing on page 209, when it starts on page 219.
Then, in the shorter story Pongaroa Passing, we come across this sentence on page 43, “Janey had grown up the daughter of her father’s sister who had married an Englishman.” Certainly “a bit incestuous,” (page 53) and I think the reference to ‘her’ father is meant to be ‘his’ father i.e. Tom, the cousin she married.
It would also be good if Māori and Ngāti had the apposite macron, eh. Which leads me to address my wider concern that Mack is often not exactly PC. Polynesians, for example, do not like being referred to as ‘Polys’ – as they are consistently throughout the first novella. So there we sight such statements such as, “the most formidable front office Poly in the city,” (page 159) et al. Again, “the Māori thing,” (page 53 x2) isn't the one, either.
Given that this is fictive entertainment, I also know that the sentence remarking on Captain Cook’s legacy to Aotearoa New Zealand, “Steve wanted to see the statue of the man who had claimed that faraway place for the Empire and given it the values that led to Bill and all the other New Zealanders coming to its aid,“ (page 255), will not sit well with everyone in 2018.
Mack can however twist a tale back toward the politically astute. As in Pongoroa Passing, where the reader encounters an earlier statement of, “Though it was fashionable now for people to say that other people had owned the land before his great-grandfather, he knew in truth it was once long ago as good as empty of all human life,” (page 38). This is somewhat abnegated by the later plot development, whereby, “The iwi were going to get their land back after all,” (page 53).
He can also be socially acute and astute, as in the pithy, “The only good thing about tabloids since they shrunk from broad-sheet is that they are easier to read outside in a breeze. Quicker too, because the intellectual rigour of the contents has atrophied along with the size,” (page 68) from People Actually.
To conclude. These are well-written tales with a fair bit of brio and – in places – a little too much salt.
Tena koe John Mack.

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana

Title: Glory Days and Other Stories
Author: John Mack
Publisher: Little Red Hen Community Press
ISBN: 978-0-473-41888-5
RRP: $20 from author, $US15 (plus postage) from Amazon
Available: Paperback obtainable from author www.johnmack.co.nz and online www.amazon.com and kindle.

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Truth being stranger than fiction

Important grief story

One for yachties

Challenging poems

Author builds up suspense

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