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Historical fiction is rollicking good read

27/5/2019

Chronicles of The Scraeling: Chronicle Two – The Scraeling
by MJ Burr

Was King Harold killed by an arrow through his eye? What was Hereward the Outlaw really like and what did he hope to achieve by resisting Norman rule? What was it about Norman war technology and administrative policies that made them so successful as invaders despite their relatively small numbers?
Possible answers to these and many other questions are incorporated into this fast-moving novel centred on the more brutish and warlike aspects of life in England in the eleventh century.
The action in this particular book, the second in what is to be a three part series, takes place mainly in the five or so years following on from the Norman Conquest. It is a turbulent and fascinating period in the history of western Europe, a time when war lords and their sworn fighting men battled for riches and power, and the idea of nationhood was still in its infancy.
The Scraeling of the title (the term means, literally, ‘foreigner’ or ‘outsider’) is a Breton and therefore probably of Celtic origin, while the major protagonists in the struggles and battles depicted are mainly Scandinavians, Normans – (i.e. descendants of Scandinavians who were settled in northern France in the first part of the tenth century) and Anglo-Saxons. Many of them are actual historical figures – for example, Harold Godwinson, Morcar of Nothumberland, Magnus II of Norway, Svein (Sweyn) II of Denmark, William I himself – though these are, of course, fleshed out in a purely imaginary fashion.
Much of the plot is carried forward in dialogue, though there are also pages of exposition, notably in the ‘chronicle’ of the Scraeling which runs throughout and helps the reader keep up with people and events. There is action aplenty, and the dialogue as given is earthy and vivid. It is a book dominated by men – as one would expect, considering the dominant subject matter..
Some account is given of the Battle of Hastings (‘Senlac’, to the Anglo-Saxons) and to its immediate aftermath, but more space is given to the attempts to settle once and for all with Hereward and others from further north who joined him in carrying on resistance to Norman rule from his base in the Fens. The plot here becomes quite complex, with much intrigue and treachery. Relationships based on kinship are eventually revealed, showing, very properly, how significant such connections were in the mediaeval world.
There are a couple of style idiosyncrasies, one in punctuation, the other in paragraphing, that take a little getting used to, but there is also much colourful description and attention to detail. By and large, this is a rollicking good read, especially for those who like their historical fiction raw and action-filled.

Review by Tony Chapelle

Title: Chronicles of The Scraeling: Chronicle Two – The Scraeling
Author: MJ Burr
Publisher: Cliowrite Ltd
ISBN: 9780473450557
RRP: print $25; Kindle $3.99
Available: Print from Poppies Bookshop, Ariki Street New Plymouth, or from Cliowrite 36 Wairau Road, Oakura, New Plymouth. ebook (Mobi) from Amazon.

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Historical romance set in troubled times

22/5/2019

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Storm Clouds Over Levuka
by Margaret Gilbert

Storm Clouds Over Levuka is set in a tumultuous time in Fiji’s history.
It is 1868 and recently-weds Charlotte and Richard Swann have just arrived in Levuka, Fiji’s old capital, full of excitement for their new life there. Tragically, in a case of mistaken identity, Richard is killed on their first day ashore. Kind British settlers care for Charlotte and she makes friends and finds work.
Although Charlotte and Richard were enchanted by the seascapes that they sailed through to reach Levuka harbour, we soon discover that the town is far from an island paradise. There are some very unscrupulous types among the colonial plantation owners and businesspeople in the town and at the same time there is enormous unrest among the Fijians themselves as they strive for better working conditions on the plantations and for greater political independence.
Storm Clouds Over Levuka follows Charlotte’s adjustment to life on the island. She is supported by caring people, settlers and Fijians, and through her friends and workmates we learn much of the difficulties and dangers for law-abiding settlers in those unruly times in Levuka. The undercurrent of vicious warfare among the island tribes highlights the precariousness of the settlers’ existence.
Margaret Gilbert’s ancestors settled in Fiji in the 1860s and she was born there. Her knowledge of the country’s history and its luxuriant vegetation bring Storm Clouds Over Levuka to life. While the book is peopled with many fictitious characters, the warlord Ratu Seru Cakobau, self-proclaimed King of United Fiji in 1871 and the Tongan leader Eneli (or Enele) Ma’afu (born Tonga 1816, died Fiji 1881) add authenticity to the violent events that unfold as Charlotte finds love and happiness again.
Given the timeframe of Storm Clouds Over Levuka it is easy to imagine that, in writing this historical romance, Gilbert has drawn on stories from her own family’s history. In a broader sense, the book appears well-researched and impartial in its telling of Levuka’s history.
Storm Clouds Over Levuka whetted my appetite to learn more about events in the Pacific in a time running parallel to when New Zealand was also being settled by Europeans.

Review by Carolyn McKenzie
Writer, freelance proofreader, copy editor, & translator from Italian to English.
Carolyn kindly offers accommodation at reasonable rates for FlaxFlower writers
in Thames (Waikato) and Ventimiglia Alta (Liguria, Italy). carolynmckenzie@libero.i

Title: Storm Clouds Over Levuka
Author: Margaret Gilbert
Publisher: Copy Press Books
ISBN: 9780995115514
RRP: $30
Available: bookshops

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Collection well worth reading

17/5/2019

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Because a Woman’s Heart is Like a Needle at the Bottom of the Ocean
by Sugar Magnolia Wilson

This is poetry of possible worlds: time, personality and place swirl around like smoke coming from a genie’s bottle. was and could have been intermingle with I am and I might be, and we have a hard time figuring out who “I” is at any given moment (assuming we need to).
     Look at the title, for starters: Is a woman’s heart really bright and sharp, lying where no one can find it until they are pricked by it? or are we talking about a classic tai chi move designed to send an opponent off balance without shedding blood?
     Other times, the two worlds face off against each other, as in ‘Conversation with my boyfriend’ (pp 20-21), two poems called ‘English into [in hangul: Korean]’ and ‘[Korean] into English’:
Sleeping, you dream of a field of red cabbages. I am in the long dry lines
between the rows wearing wooden sandals and talking with your mother who
   speaks to me in circles and squares, which I use to cut and gather crisp leaves
   into urns.
On the opposite page is:
In sleep, I dream of the red cabbage fields, discarded urns, and you cutting my
mother’s spicy talk and hanging it on long drying lines between the rows of
vegetables. You bend down to supplant the cabbages with small strawberry
   plants.
Just the same, only different.
     ‘The sleep of trees’ (pp 53-55) is a lullaby? a meditation? which travels from one persona to a different one, beginning:
I photosynthesise in the half-light ...
small boats upon the light
they carry sugars to feed the
birds in my hair...
The world slowly changes, using words that might apply to both trees and people, keeping us thinking ‘tree’ until:
But this is not the sleep of trees this
is the sleep of
horse and foal, always awake to the tune
of the wolf ...
and, finally, this is the sleep of mothers.
     The suites of poems ‘Dear sister’ and ‘Pen pal’ begin and end the collection. They give us a panorama of worlds that play off each other, abridge each other, and contrast with each other – but all within a believable emotional framework. Where the original impetus comes from, we don’t know, although the sixth ‘Dear Sister’ poem (p 6) names the dream horse Lilith and the poet goes on to say:
We ride a lot at night. ... The night is a strange tune. Past the hustle of elm,
and there she is, Lilith, far from the Red Sea, a night creature without capacity
for fear. A breeder of demons? No. She gives me strength. ... [And]we are
home, stabled and in bed before the new day reminds the robin and the
redstart they exist. It’s a secret work we do.
    The ‘Pen pal’ sequence is equally surreal. Part 3 (p 62) starts out:
Halleluiah, konnichiwa and
jumbo.
There is a tortoise that has
a broken shell and I
want to climb into the TV
and kiss it on the face. ...
and in Part 4:
This letter is in a terrible way –
knows no end.
She (Mum) is a skellington of
nothingness: shardy bones,
spider webs, a small
tortoise with a broken shell. ...
    So where in the world is this all coming from? you ask. And which world? We all start out with a private world – then gradually assemble a public world of our own – but these poems go considerably farther. They seem to take their inspiration from the boundary world, the constantly shifting boundary between public and private that’s the basis for our social-media and gaming worlds. Magical realism makes sense here, as does the ability to hop from persona to persona.
    And how should we deal with the poet of these worlds? Not leave her starving in a garret, that’s for sure. In ‘Pup art’ (p 31) Wilson might be giving us an suggestion:
Before she floats any higher you
hurl a net over her body, peg
the twine taut to the lawn
so she is suspended against
the pull of space.
– THIS IS ART! – you proclaim
your arms goalposts through
which only silence flies. ...
Or maybe let her fly free – depends where you’re coming from, perhaps, but this is a rich and lively collection, well worth reading in whichever world you inhabit.

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: Because a Woman’s Heart is Like a Needle at the Bottom of the Ocean
Author: Sugar Magnolia Wilson
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408909
RRP: $24.99
Available: bookshops

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Interesting anecdotes in book on Treaty

11/5/2019

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Waitangi A Living Treaty
by Matthew Wright

I really enjoyed reading this book and did so very quickly over a couple of days.
Wright writes well in fluent, conversational prose and regales the reader with lots and lots of interesting anecdotes about historical figures, along with screeds of wide-ranging notes. In fact, I learned quite a bit about events and personages I was not fully aware of earlier – some quite humorous, including the escape attempts of one oil-coated ariki!
It is not a stodgy, dry read at all – quite the opposite in fact. There are a couple of editing issues I will point out, such as a rather frugal Index, and a bit of repetition of the same points – as for example regarding Te Arawa and Ngāti Tūwharetoa not signing the document – but these are trivial pedantries.
The key point Wright makes is summed up in the title – Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a living being, which has been and will continue to be reappraised and reaffirmed differently over historical periods, as dependent on wider Weltanschauung pertaining. What the treaty meant for Pākehā in and around 1840 is considerably different nowadays, while for Māori it has always been a lodestar of equality, fairness, justice, ownership – even given its sublimation by Pākehā for most of the 20th century and the later 19th. In short, the treaty far exceeds its decayed paperwork: existentially, it is an historical continuum of ideas and ideologies.
Wright is at his most entertaining and erudite when dealing with the formative early years – the whys and wherefores and whos of the establishment of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and its somewhat ad hoc compilation, including the me-too meddling of James Busby. Later on, after successfully explaining how the treaty became abnegated, forgotten and then re-designated as a Pākehā self-love fest, he is not quite so clear cut and comprehensive as to how today’s newfound ultra-significance of that treaty-ground compact between some Māori and a few Pākehā in 1840, has come about.
I found myself a little occluded by the explanations presented in the final couple of chapters, given that Wright’s disdain for the nutters attempting to ‘prove’ a pre-Māori settlement of Aotearoa New Zealand, is palpable. Why has the Treaty of Waitangi become so regenerate recently, other than via the obvious increase in the Māori demographic? The author’s vaguer references to changed generational attitudes and a swerve towards legally-impelled principles of ethnic justice are far less tangible.
I would have loved far more Māori voice, more reo Māori per se. The relativist ambience of an empathetic professional Pākehā historian is obvious throughout, given of course that most reference material remains written by Pākehā: then and certainly considerably even now. The time is long overdue for a record of Māori voices about the Treaty of Waitangi, compiled by Māori – regarding its relevancies over time from genesis to gestation to growth as the key to the current bicultural and burgeoning multicultural relationships in New Zealand.
To his credit, Wright stresses that for Māori there were several differing rationales behind their ‘signing’ the treaty, just as there were several possible perceptions about what they were placing their insignia on. But let us hear from Māori now, eh. E pīrangi ana ahau he pukapuka ki nui ngā reo Māori mō tēnei tiriti. Kei whea tēnei pukapuka, tēnei mea tino nui ināianei?
Ultimately, however, I can only recommend this book. It serves as a cogent explication of the various values the treaty has had during different stages of this nation’s history and as such serves as a robust foundation for the next epoch, whereby Māori continue to surge and whereby also potential new nuances are accorded it. Who knows? After all, autonomy was never vitiated in the Māori versions of the original drafts.
Tēnā koe mō te pukapuka, Matiu. Ko he rawa mōhio ki tēnei tāima whakamere.

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana

Title: Waitangi A Living Treaty
Author: Matthew Wright
Publisher: Bateman
ISBN:978 -1-86953-996-2
RRP: $39.99
Available: bookshops

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Novel based on real-life events

6/5/2019

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Between the Immensities
by Doreen Davy

I love the title of this book. I loved where the title came from and everything it means. I loved what it meant to the author and her mother.
Dr Katherine Moore (christened Kathleen) makes the decision to leave her life in New Zealand to nurse her dying mother through her final months. Returning to Bootle, Liverpool, she reconnects with her three sisters and the mother she loved but never really knew or understood. This is a novel based on real-life events unfolding without bitterness or regrets that cannot be explained with a nicely rounded ending. I hope we all have the opportunity to say our goodbyes in such a caring, loving way though, alas, I fear most of us are condemned to less easily understood emotions and resolutions.
The skills Dr Moore brought into her family to help her dying mother and two troubled sisters proved cathartic for her as well, while the questioning of an after-life through the raising of religious and professional doubt provided the opportunity for some carefully explained/unexplained phenomena – Dr Moore’s scepticism is brought up against the possibility of her mother reaching out to her from beyond the grave. This was interesting stuff.
As much as I enjoyed this book, I enjoyed it at a remove. With a professional background as a psychologist the author was able to lead us capably through this dramatic time. She wrote of the possibilities for terrible family fall-outs from hovering misunderstandings and stolen money with a calm detachment that translated itself into the relationship between me the reader and her characters. I never felt fully engaged. Her writing was skilful, the story touching in its themes, just not in its story-telling. There was sense of writing up case-notes as opposed to telling a story.
That said, this was an interesting book and I’m writing this review with my own family’s disfunctions sitting ghost-like around me, hoping that we can find the healing it needs before it is too late for any one of us. I felt the author was lucky to share this ending with her mother and sisters.
Thank you, Dr Davy.

Review by TJ Ramsay

Title: Between the Immensities
Author: Doreen Davy
Publisher: The Book Guild Publishing
ISBN: 978-1912575213
RRP: $24.99
Available: Print: The Book Guild, a variety of online bookstores including Amazon, or independent booksellers

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Impressive research

1/5/2019

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Pathway of the Birds – the voyaging achievements of Māori and their Polynesian ancestors
by Andrew Crowe

At a time when no member of another culture is known to have deliberately ventured more than a few hundred kilometres from the shore Polynesians had spread themselves over one fifteenth of the Earth’s surface. The territory that they inhabited at that point was greater than occupied by any other race.
At the same time as the bronze age was ending in Europe, Polynesians began settling the remote islands of Oceania including Fiji and West Polynesia. By the time Portuguese navigators reached the Mediterranean, Polynesians had fanned further east and settled the whole of East Polynesia, including New Zealand. An area equivalent to the whole of Africa and Western Europe combined.
The story of how they came to New Zealand is the subject of this book. It takes its title from the annual migration of birds, to New Zealand in spring, and from New Zealand in the Autumn, returning to their feeding grounds in the Pacific or even further, to South America, Hawai’i or even Siberia. Even today some 20 million birds follow this annual migration pattern. The inhabitants of Pacific islands must have been aware that these birds did not breed in their islands but made the journey to an unknown land in the south and returned in the autumn.
The author sets out to prove that the inhabitants of the Pacific islands deliberately followed the birds and by use of the stars, ocean currents, and prevailing seasonal winds discovered New Zealand just as they had all the rest of Polynesia. He uses painstaking research involving, language, plants, animals, and the DNA of people, to make a very convincing case for not just journeys of discovery and return voyages, but well-established trade routes throughout the Pacific. He goes so far as to even consider the DNA of head lice across the Pacific.
The detail of this research is impressive and contains so much material of interest that I found I had to read the book in many parts, giving myself time to digest and take in the huge amount of information offered. It is written in a style that is easy to read and is not a dry academic book.
He approaches the subject by examining each island group one by one, comparing the archeological findings, culture, language and plants of each island group, and showing how they had come in contact with and indeed had traded with other islands. This is in contrast to some writers who considered that return voyages from New Zealand to the Pacific did not happen.
The result is a book that is greatly impressive, and very convincing. In a review it is impossible to cover every aspect of the author’s research and I urge people to read it to discover this for themselves.
The book itself is beautifully printed, on quality paper, with colour illustrations on almost every page.
It contains an extensive reference section and is well indexed.
The price seems very little for a splendid book that I am proud to own.

Review by Harold Bernard

Title: Pathway of the Birds – the voyaging achievements of Māori and their Polynesian ancestors
Author: Andrew Crowe
Publisher: Bateman Publishing
ISBN: 9781869539610
RRP: $49.99
Available: bookshops

Comments

Historical fiction is rollicking good read

Historical romance set in troubled times

Collection well worth reading

Interesting anecdotes in book on Treaty

Novel based on real-life events

Impressive research

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