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Controversial subjects discussed

28/9/2018

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Criminal Justice: a New Zealand Introduction
Edited by Jarrod Gilbert and Greg Newbold


This collection of essays is designed to be an academic textbook, presumably for Criminology students, but provides a lot of contextual information for the New Zealand justice system. Indeed, Criminal Justice doesn’t really read like an academic text for the most part, with just a brief introduction and very few theoretical chapters.
    One of the chapters is written by three serving police officials, and their review of contemporary policing comes with some impressive graphics. However, they also steer clear of naming any officers who have been involved in any controversies.

    By contrast, most of the other authors do name names, and the editors have appeared in the media many times and commentated on controversial subjects. Both Newbold and Gilbert contribute two chapters on their specialist areas. 
    Greg Newbold provides some contextual information about crime rates over time, and some explanations for the rise of violent crime. At least, that is for crime by males. He also observes the rise in violent crime by women, and speculates on some causes, including the type of feminist thinking behind self-defence courses and the influence of TV programmes with strong female action characters. 
    Newbold’s second chapter also highlights the role of male officials, with strongly held views controlling corrections policy, divided into particular eras. He then assesses the success of rehabilitation and employment options for prisoners in the modern era of punitive practices and higher security jails.
    Jarrod Gilbert is mostly known for his research into gang practices and their inevitable interaction with the justice system. His final chapter, however, examines the role of ‘underworld justice’, in terms of the intimidation of witnesses and the vigilante activity of gang members. In particular, he refers to a practice of ‘taxing’, whereby the property of an individual is appropriated to settle a score, being a real crime or an imagined one. 
    Gilbert’s other chapter focuses on injustices within the system, and miscarriages caused by police practice, or legal representation and its shortcomings. Here we get reference to some famous cases, such as that of the Crewe murders (and conviction of Arthur Allan Thomas), the ‘false’ confession of Teina Pora, and the ‘false’ testimony that convicted Peter Ellis in the Christchurch civic crèche trial. Gilbert refers to the role of criminal case review commissions, using overseas examples, and the Innocence Project now based at Canterbury University.
    Certainly, strong opinions are held by the main contributors here. Gilbert is obviously not convinced about David Bain’s innocence, and states that he was given $1 million to stop making further claims for compensation. Other compensation claims would seem to have been justified, as in the verdict that resulted in the incarceration of David Dougherty, which was eventually overturned. But the example of the Bain trial can be seen in a different light, as in the chapter by Chris Gallavin which looks at the law of evidence and human rights. This involved the prosecution case in the second Bain trial based on the tape recording of his 111 call, and the admissibility of the Crown’s interpretation of it. 
    Gallavin also looks at the trial of Scott MacDonald, accused in the murder of his brother in law, with regard for the ‘propensity’ of the evidence. This involved suggesting that MacDonald’s other known crimes also made him more likely as a killer. Again, this highlights aspects of well known legal cases, and the role of the news media, which is examined in Tara Ross’ and David Fisher’s chapter. Fisher’s snapshots of crime stories add gory detail not previously known.


Review by SA Boyce
Title: Criminal Justice: a New Zealand Introduction
Editors: Jarrod Gilbert and Greg Newbold
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 
RRP: $59.99
Available: bookshops

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Wonderful book

20/9/2018

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​Fishing for Māui
by Isa Pearl Ritchie


This is a wonderful book, with a cast of achingly familiar characters who show a range of human strengths and frailties, passions and spirit. Best of all, it lets us see how they relate to each other, helping or hindering and generally enriching or complicating each other’s lives. 
    In other words, it’s a novel in the classic sense, and a very successful one.
     In essence, it is concerned with the ordinary or extraordinary trials, intimacies and difficulties that swirl around a particular group of whānau and friends. 
    Gayle, the matriarch, has rediscovered her Māori heritage. Valerie, her daughter, is a doctor, and she has four children. The eldest of these children is Elena, a passionate nutritionist who writes a food blog, and who is pregnant with her first child. Then there is Michael, a University student who spends much of his time surfing and skateboarding and learning Māoritanga from his grandmother, and who is particularly taken by the myths featuring Māui. Next is John, the rebel, chock full of bitterness, who thinks he hates everybody and everything and who walks out of school and out of his mother’s house. Lastly, there is eight year old Rosa, who offers a kind of Greek chorus commentary on events and is childishly charming and irritating, and naïvely honest and perceptive. On the fringes, making an occasional entry, is Caleb, Valerie’s rather selfish ex and father of her children. Malcolm, Elena’s ethicist partner who is struggling to live up to his own reasoned beliefs, and the wounded but courageous Evie, Michael’s sometime girlfriend, are also significant players.
    There is plenty of touching humour even though the themes are often weighty. The various protagonists either choose to or must deal with such issues as mental illness, drug use, animal rights, food adulteration, infidelity, school bullying and, perhaps most significantly, the cultural and psychological effects of colonisation; but all this is achieved without preachiness (unless deliberate, as with Elena’s attempts to reconcile her obsession with natural foods and her taste for doughnuts, or Evie’s sincerely argued justifications for her veganism). 
    The focus is always on the people and their relationships rather than on the issues themselves. Yet they are issues that the author clearly intends us to think about, and in doing this she adds to the value of the book without diluting its entertainment value in any way. It is also unselfconsciously a thoroughly New Zealand book. The problems encountered are our problems, but we are left with a feeling of hope and of belief in the essentially compassionate nature of our society. 
    The dialogue and the descriptive passages are excellent, the prose lean and crisp. It is refreshing and rewarding to read a novel that does not rely on contrived shocks or cleverness but instead presents us with characters we feel we know, putting them in situations with which we are familiar. Indeed, this is a wonderful book.

Review by Tony Chapelle
Title: Fishing for Māui
Author: Isa Pearl Ritchie
Publisher: Te Ra Aroha Press
ISBN: 978-0473437541
RRP: $34.99
Available: bookshops
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Inspiring and persuasive

13/9/2018

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This is it! It’s your life. Live it. 
by Amanda Mortimer


I chose to review This is it! It’s your life. Live it. with a certain amount of scepticism, but a willingness to be proved wrong. Reflecting on what I’ve just read in Mortimer’s book, I realise I have some firmly ingrained beliefs that have been holding me back: I got the plump genes; It’s too wet and windy to work in the garden or go for a walk, I’ll do that when it’s sunny; and the opposite one, It’s too sunny to stay inside and do housework, I’ll leave it for rainy day! 
    Luckily Mortimer makes it very clear that ‘beliefs aren’t the truth’. Beliefs are only what we perceive to be true. So, This is it! It’s your life. Live it. is all about honing our beliefs into positive affirmations, engaging with our unconscious mind, and projecting our dreams and ambitions into a time when they have been achieved and we’re living the reality of our success. This is a book brimming with powerful, positive messages founded in Neuro Linguistic Psychology (NLP). 
     Starting with Kathrine Switzer’s introduction, where she reassures us that it’s normal to procrastinate and be sceptical, through to its closing pages, This is it! It’s your life. Live it. is engaging and energising. Mortimer points out that willpower and conscious effort alone are not enough to achieve many of our goals. Instead, using the S.C.O.R.E and S.P.E.C.I.F.Y models, she teaches us how to connect with our unconscious mind and how to programme it to reinforce positive thought and behaviour. 
    A key to success is imaging ourselves in a ‘goal achieved’ state and visualising our success in the minutest detail. What does success feel like? What do we see, hear, say, taste, smell in our moment of victory? By conjuring up all our senses and picturing success achieved, Mortimer encourages us to cut the One day I’ll … and the If only I …, I’d … from our goal setting and replace it with It’s 2019, I’ve just run the marathon /passed the final exam/lost 10 kg/saved $4,000 … etc. 
    We often talk about ‘psyching ourselves up’ to face some unappealing task: This is it! It’s your life. Live it. teaches us how to psych ourselves up to achieve our goal. Instead of leaning back on negative beliefs, something like I got the plump genes (which I might imagine I got from my mother) becomes I have Dad’s slim McKenzie genes. It’s too wet and windy go for a walk becomes Yes! Rug up and enjoy the wind in your hair!
    Mortimer’s writing is so direct and perceptive, it’s almost as she’s in the room with us: in easy-to-read language she lets us know that she knows when we’re procrastinating. Even for the most sceptical, she will have us closing our eyes and visualising, or up and out of our chairs, stepping on and off a time line on the floor, standing inside an imaginary red circle as we anchor positive thoughts in our minds. And because it’s difficult to do these things and read, This is it! It’s your life. Live it. comes complete with recordings and videos to take us through the process as well as work sheets for the various phases from goal definition to achievement. 
    This is it! It’s your life. Live it. gets us looking at every aspect of our goals – not just defining the goal itself, but also exploring the resources that will help us achieve it and looking at the cost to others of our pursuing and achieving our goal: accountability in other words, but referred to in This is it! It’s your life. Live it. as Ecology (to fit the E in the SCORE and SPECIFY mnemonic). So it’s more than just a textbook to achieving our goals: it’s an interactive experience. Along with the practical goal-setting material there are case studies and Mortimer’s accounts of her own achievements, including how she psychologically prepared herself to run over 200 km across Portugal for charity. 
    10% of This is it! It’s your life. Live it. profit is donated to the Jodie O’Shea Orphanage, Bali.

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.it
Title: This is it! It’s your life. Live it.
Author: Amanda Mortimer
Publisher:  Your Life Live It
RRP: $34.99
Available: https://yourlifeliveit.com

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KeenĀ perception shown in stories

5/9/2018

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Mostly Cloudy
by James O’Sullivan


This collection of short stories is very appropriately named, for each of the book’s 23 stories dwells, to a greater or lesser extent, on the dark side of the human condition in their searching examinations of human nature. O’Sullivan is at his best in observing and chronicling the motivations and deeds of the human animal, and only rarely are these of a benevolent, or even a positive, nature.
     That said, however, the quality of his perception is well-attested by the number of times the thought “Hey, I know someone just like that” pops into the reader’s head, for O’Sullivan is a keenly accurate observer and scribe of the human condition and this offers a rock-solid platform for his stories.
     Henry Thoreau assures us that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” and this is certainly present in O’Sullivan’s book, for every social vignette sampled has that desperation in full measure, sometimes as a central and sometimes as an underlying feature. The only exception to this comes, paradoxically, in the attitude to life of the characters in ‘Experience’ who, with fewer expectations than any of the rest of society due to their position on the totem-pole of life, yet remain upbeat and looking forward to the discoveries that the following day will bring. In fact, this point is well made in the consideration of the three-story ‘pod’ formed by ‘Experience’; ‘Urbane’ and ‘Everything is Good’, set together in the middle of the book.
     Beyond that, O’Sullivan puts the microscope on marital relationships in ‘Porn’; ‘Romance’ and ‘A History Lesson’ as well as mocking the pretensions of the arty-farty in ‘A Bad Review’; ‘An End-of-Year Report . . .’ ‘Don’t Name the Animals’ and ‘Naked’. He also devotes a somewhat larger amount of space and no small amount of repetition to the insecurities of young people and their relationships.
     There are proof-reading inconsistencies in the book, such as ‘passed’ for ‘past’, ‘meters’ for ‘metres’ (Word’s US orientation in predictive text has a lot to answer for) and the switch of narrative tense from past to present in ‘Get a Job’ grates, even if intended.
     Of the two dozen stories, ‘Turangawaewae’ came best-heralded as runner-up in the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story competition, and it is easy to see why. This story of a turangawaewae that is nothing of the kind in holding nothing but uneasiness and duress for the gay protagonist, is deeply evocative and it is no surprise that he finds most in common with another social outcast.
     For this reviewer, though, ‘Experience’ and ‘Get a Job’ hit hard in their delineation of society’s expectations in the present and as they used to be; while ‘Something Good’ and ‘Fair Game’ take pride of place in being classic short stories in that they go beyond depiction and description to develop point, purpose and progression. ‘Fair Game’, in particular, is utterly chilling in its subject matter and its fascination with the reality of death, to the point where it was pre-eminent in the collection as a whole.
     It is always good to recognise an artist’s canvas, and James O’Sullivan offers us familiarity in good measure with his. All hail and more power to him in that.

Review by M J Burr
Title: Mostly Cloudy
Author: James O'Sullivan
Publisher: Independent As Books
ISBN: 9780476008717
RRP: $24-00 including postage
Available: paperback from the publisher at jamflux@yhoo.com or www.fishpond.co.nz
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