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Fast-moving easy read

29/7/2020

The Air that we Breathe
by Kara Douglas

This is a novel, but closely based on historical fact. It was written in response to the author’s own father dying from mesothelioma caused by exposure to asbestos fibres while working in the asbestos mines in Wittenoon, a town in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
It is told through the eyes of a young Italian man Abele, Maria, and later, their daughter Luciana who along with hundreds of others, were recruited to work in the mine.
   They were promised wages sufficient to set them up for life, had their fares paid to Australia, and provided with a company house in a town built for the mine by the government. They overcame the outback heat, working doubled over in mine shafts one metre high, constantly covered in dust and fibres and built a life for their families. The town grew to 20,000 people, with schools, medical centre and pub.
What they were not told was that the company knew of the dangers of asbestos, and were deliberately ignoring  the safely regulations and the advice of safety and health inspectors in order to make the most profit possible.
The story tells of the experiences of the family while living in Wittenoon and their later life in Perth, culminating in the precedent-setting civil law case, brought by Abele against the owners of the mine.
   Two thousand of the former inhabitants of Wittenoon have died from asbestos disease, making this town one of Australia’s worst environmental sites. It reminded me very much of the Erin Brockovich story.
The author’s strategy of telling each chapter in the person of one of the characters makes the book a fast-moving and easy read, a sad tale of deceit and unnecessary  death.
It is well worth the price.

Review by K.H.B

Title: The Air that we Breathe
Author: Kara Douglas
Publisher: Redust Publishing
ISBN: 9780473507756
RRP: $34.95
Available: bookshops

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Memoir is a riveting read

22/7/2020

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Ripiro Beach – A Memoir of Life After Near Death
by Caroline Barron

At some time in our lives we wonder what is our destiny? Is it ingrained in our DNA or is it nature, nurture or free will? These are the questions that haunted our author Caroline Barron.
Caroline has a typical life of a child growing up in New Zealand but on her 20th birthday her life is shattered as her beloved father dies, and she fears for herself, that she too may die at an early age.
Move forward a few years to a life-threatening haemorrhage following the birth of her second child. But for the skill and fast action of her medical team she survives but is left with so many questions of her own mortality.
Combined with undiagnosed post-partum depression, it leads the author to find solutions for her fears and anger by delving into her whakapapa for answers.
As in so many families, her extensive research leads her down many branches of her family.
It was at this stage that I documented her family line to keep track of it and found it absolutely fascinating. It was like a thrilling detective story and I sat for hours reading avidly as the puzzle pieces untangled and fell into place.
Not only was the author finding her family she was also trying to make sense of her own emotions that were threatening to derail her.
It is a story of family love, strong friendships, courage and determination and even if the text ends with a wonderful conclusion the reader is left with the feeling the author will continue with her research to tie up loose ends.
The book has many photographs and the chapters are short enough to encourage the reader to read “just one more chapter” before they turn out the light.
To quote Dame Fiona Kidman, Ripiro Beach is “a very brave book,” "riveting, at times confronting, moving and passionate.” I totally concur with that.

Review by Merilyn Mary

Title: Ripiro Beach – A Memoir of Life After Near Death
Author: Caroline Barron
Publisher: Bateman Books
ISBN: 978-1-98-853820-4
RRP: $34.99
Available: bookshops

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For motoring enthusiasts

15/7/2020

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Automania: Iconic New Zealand Collections
by Don Jessen

This book has 320 pages of stunning photos and car descriptions, taken at some of New Zealand’s best private and public automobile collections.
Instead of just seeking out the public collections Don has enlisted the help of four friends who tracked down the private collections we are privileged to see here, along with a few others that are open to the public. The locations of the private collections are not stated.
Much credit for making the book the stunning visual feast it is goes to Marilyn Jessen who has taken most of the exquisite photos.
There are about 24 collections covered here and the variety and scope of these is vast, ranging from American muscle cars, through traditional English saloons and sports cars, to rare military vehicles, and a number of beautiful motorcycles. Each collection has an overview of what cars, or other vehicles, are included, then some are singled out for closer examination, with photos and mechanical details, and the vehicle’s history.
I was amazed at the number of very rare cars that are listed as New Zealand new vehicles, not specially imported. This really demonstrates the international motoring diversity that New Zealanders have enjoyed over the years, and I think that our remoteness, and need to keep vehicles on the road, has served to preserve many vehicles that in other places would be scrapped. Almost all of the vehicles have been restored to a very high standard, and this workmanship should also be a matter of pride to all Kiwis.
Some collections are confined to just one maker, but many are an eclectic mix showing the appreciation of the collector for all types of machinery.
This is a book not to be read quickly, but to be slowly browsed and each chapter savoured several times.
The page layout is landscape A4 instead of the more usual portrait mode, and this makes it easier to include bigger photos. The typeface chosen is clear and the whole book is beautifully presented. It would make a wonderful gift, and I can recommend it to all who have an interest in motoring.

Review by Harold Bernard

Title: Automania: Iconic New Zealand Collections
Author: Don Jessen
Publisher: Bateman
ISBN: 978-1-98-853824-2
RRP: $49.99
Available: bookshop

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A multi-faceted writer

8/7/2020

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You Have a Lot to Lose: a memoir 1956-1986
by C. K. Stead

Christian Karlson "Karl" Stead was born in Auckland. For much of his career he was Professor of English at the University of Auckland, retiring in 1986 to write full-time.
Widely honoured as a ‘titan of NZ literature’, CK Stead’s writings include poetry, short stories, novels, literary criticism and editing as well as a brief statement written on the wall of a Hamilton police cell in the wake of his arrest during the aborted Waikato-Springboks game of 1981.
He has been honoured at many levels: by his contemporaries in a lengthy list of prizes and awards for literary achievement that includes the Katharine Mansfield Menton Scholarship, the Montana Prize for poetry and the highly-regarded Sarah Broom Poetry Prize. He has been honoured by governments of both colours in the award of the Prime Minister’s  Award for both Literary Achievement and Fiction; the Queen’s Medal then a CBE for services to New Zealand literature and, in 2007, membership of the Order of New Zealand. In 1995 his contribution to the international world of literature was recognised in his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, while in August 2015, Stead was named the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2015 to 2017.
Stead’s claims to ‘titanship’ are therefore well established, for in both range and number, his literary output almost mocks the term ‘prolific’. Of the corpus of nigh on forty  substantial works following his academic foundation stone, ‘The New Poetic’, many are written in consecutive years but none except for ‘The Singing Whakapapa’ is separated by more than two years from the preceding one.
With reference to his literary upbringing “The University of Auckland” writes Stead, “. . . first educated me, then employed me . . .” and  his association with it involved him in the world of those giants of a distinct, if inchoate, NZ literature: Duggan, Baxter, Curnow, Shadbolt, Frame, among many others and, over and above all, in the strength of his friendship with the Godfather-like Frank Sargeson. One notes, in passing, that this was also a world of Renaissance-type involvement with plays, opera, concerts, music and the art of McCahon and Henderson, and is redolent of a time when “education” was concerned with more, perhaps, than today’s Google-dependent linearity.
There is, though, a sense in which if it didn’t happen in Auckland, it didn’t happen; an example is a Sargeson-like nod towards the writing of Ronald Hugh Morrieson that acknowledges the rural voice without mentioning Hawera, where Morrieson lived, worked and died.
Stead’s doctorate was undertaken at Bristol and, in the milieu for literary criticism established by his supervisor there, LC Knights and by FR Leavis of Cambridge, he learned to take no prisoners, and this has been seized on by his detractors. Indeed, Diana Wichtel once quoted Frank Sargeson as saying to Stead, “I can’t imagine a worse fate than to be reviewed by you.”
In his later years Stead himself acknowledged the truth of this, but in his defence, if one were asked to choose only one salient feature of this memoir, for me it would be Stead’s total dedication to the literary world and all facets of it. In this sense, a thing ‘is’ or it ‘is not’ and it is never Stead’s way to encourage doubt whether reviewing, critiquing, editing or travelling across the world on the literary scent regardless of anything else.
He is as ruthless with himself and his failings, though, as with any writer he reviews. In his recounting of his own moral shortcomings, and in particular of two bouts of marital infidelity, we see his conviction not only that the truth is unflinchingly valid but a dedication to a ‘warts and all’ picture that would earn a nod of approval from Cromwell himself. By the same token, that honesty of conviction underpins his views on the treatment by their own society of Australian aborigines, the Vietnam War and the Springbok tour of 1981.
So what does this, the second of his memoirs, reveal of Christian Karlson Stead? Growing up in a NZ suspicious of anything that didn’t conduce to the battle for world rugby hegemony against the Springboks, his early yet enduring commitment to a NZ literary nationalism contrasts oddly with a discernible homage to the academic world of the UK; one (he notes) in which the Commonwealth nations were “clamouring to be free” but “seldom wanting complete severance”. He is revealed as a good friend to the wide network of contacts, colleagues and acquaintances with whom he maintained a truly impressive correspondence. Never one to hold a grudge, he participates in the cut-and-thrust of literary criticism on the basis of an unvarying ethic that “Business is business”.
Turning to the book itself, one or two infelicities that may perhaps be whimsical bons mots are revealed on pages 164 and 165 where Stead writes of a “. . . priests’s surplus” and of the “Security Intelligent Service”. More important, however, is the omission of an index that would greatly assist the to-ing and fro-ing involved in keeping up with the vast network referred to in my preceding paragraph, and this omission is the more surprising given Stead’s scrupulous footnoting throughout.
Overall, ‘You Have a Lot to Lose: a memoir 1956-1986’ is an important look at a seminal period in New Zealand’s literary history through the eyes of one of its great movers and shakers.

Review by MJ Burr

Title: You Have a Lot to Lose: a memoir 1956-1986
Author: C. K. Stead.
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409128
RRP: $49.99
Available: bookshops

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Narrative of a politician

1/7/2020

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Bill Birch: Minister of Everything
by Brad Tattersfield

Is this a biography or not? Some recent books claiming to be written as a biography are more like political memoirs, as told to a sympathetic former staffer.
Brad Tattersfield is certainly a former staffer and an admirer, and this book is described as Bill Birch’s story. Nonetheless, the author is very even-handed when it comes to examining the political issues of the Birch era, while certain personalities in National governments do receive criticism. This is both a strength and weakness of the book. Being based largely on Bill Birch’s archives, detailed diaries, and more recent interviews, it exposes candid views of colleagues. But political enemies seem to become caricatures: Ruth Richardson as an ideologue and Winston Peters as a shameless populist; with Birch and Jim Bolger as sensible pragmatists.
In fact, with regard to economic policy in the 1990s, Richardson and Birch ended up having more continuity than change, at least on the substance of policymaking. Maybe the difference in style mattered at the time, but not in hindsight.
Tattersfield admits, late in the book, that Birch became a fiscal conservative/economic liberal through his exposure to Treasury officials over time – so even if he didn’t start as a purist, he was eventually converted. But Birch also worked officials hard, convening policy meetings after midnight. The interaction with officials, and attention to policy detail, was Birch’s strength compared with the big personalities that preceded him as finance minister. While he wanted to move away from personalised economic branding – especially ‘Rogernomics’ – he seemed to lack the salesmanship needed to sell controversial policies. But he nevertheless presided over very controversial policies, from Think Big energy policies in the early 1980s, to the 1991 industrial relations legislation, where the role of trades union were no longer recognised.
So this is the major question for the book: how did a conservative, moderate politician become identified with policies which appear to be diametrically opposed, at least philosophically, and within such a short period of time? Of course, there are many versions of the economic upheavals of the 1980s, and the polarising politics that ensued, as well as a consensus among commentators on the framework. Birch certainly accepted Richardson’s Fiscal Responsibility Act which, combined with the 1989 Reserve Bank Act, circumscribed the role of ministers and Parliament, but which also reduced the accountability of officials.
Tattersfield addresses the underlying conflict in economic approach mainly in an analysis of the Think Big projects completed in the 1980s. Some readers may not be aware of the deep energy crisis in the 1970s, and policy reactions that included the so-called ‘carless days’. The massive financial cost of Think Big was just part of the contentious policymaking. The 1984 Labour Government appear to have engaged in a fire sale of the new energy assets, even before they had really been up and running, losing billions in the process. But if this appears to have been an example of fiscal vandalism one still has to wonder why the privatisation programme continued under the 1990 National Government, despite being very unpopular.
The book is less analytical, on the whole, and more of a chronological narrative. It is easy to read if one is familiar with the political events of the time, but becomes rather disjointed as the book goes on, and especially after 1996 (when MMP is introduced). Bill Birch is rather obviously a figure associated with the previous electoral system, if not the bad old days.

Review by SA Boyce

Title: Bill Birch: Minister of Everything
Author: Brad Tattersfield
Publisher: Mary Egan Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-47350197-6
RRP: $40.00
Available: bookshops

Comments

Fast-moving easy read

Memoir is a riveting read

For motoring enthusiasts

A multi-faceted writer

Narrative of a politician

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