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Message in picture book

29/11/2022

Hare & Kunekune’s Moonlight Mission
by Laura Shallcrass (text and illustrations)

Another title in what is becoming a series about a hare and a pig – unlikely friends in real life, but acceptable in picture books.
As is usual in the genre, there’s a single, somewhat slim storyline – food is disappearing. Peaches and karaka berries from the trees, strawberries, and more. Where is it going?
The pair see themselves of defenders of the food – ironic when you consider it, so perhaps the motivation’s more selfish.
It is Ruru – as always it’s the owl who embodies wisdom – who helps them come to a broader view.

Review by Emily R

Title: Hare & Kunekune’s Moonlight Mission
Author: Laura Shallcrass
Publisher: Beatnik
ISBN: 9781991165718
RRP: $30
Available: bookshops

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Author’s experience makes believable novel

14/11/2022

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The Road to Madhapur
by David Whittet

This is not like other books in which medical doctors tell stories of their life in practice. This is a novel, written by a doctor, which does include stories based on true happenings in surgeries, but it is broader in scope. Much broader.
Geographically, certainly. It begins in New Zealand where the central character, Theo Malone, is a medical student in Dunedin, and where he is told he will never make a GP. There’s a stint in Uganda where he goes with excellent intentions and is tested severely. Back to New Zealand, to rural India, to Auckland and Bay of Islands.
The geographical locations are also diverse culturally. Every step of his way is fraught with difficulties, it seems each success is paired with a failure.
Inevitably, given the very diverse locations, there’s a theme of faith. An Australian missionary family suffers for their stand in India, leaving one of the younger members, Elisha, with resentment –
“You told me God was going to open new doors for me in India. Well all He’s done is slam them in my face.”
The way is never easy, but some common ground is found with the ministrations of a Hindu guru and eventually the same person learns to accept
“A church or a temple. Heaven or Nirvana. We’re all aiming for the same place. We’ve just got a different way of getting there. It’s the same God.”
In addition to cultural tensions overseas, the doctor’s journey is also roughened and tested by political and social issues both there and in New Zealand, inter-personal relationships, grief, and a less-than-smooth romance.
Though the point of view is mainly that of Theo Malone, it does shift in parts so we also get to know the thoughts of the other central character, Elisha.
How much of the Author’s own experience is reflected and retold in Dr Theo Malone’s story is explained in a few pages at the end. The basis of fact, together with the informed fiction, results in a believable work.
The 436 page volume itself is nicely designed with a very attractive cover

Review by Norma D Plum

Title: The Road to Madhapur
Author: David Whittet
Publisher: Copypress
ISBN: 9781991167422
RRP: $35
Available: bookshops

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Exquisitely careful choice of words

7/11/2022

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My American Chair
by Elizabeth Smither

She is a serene and hugely well-informed tour guide, Elizabeth Smither, as she takes us through her latest poetry collection. Poems lead from one into the other, and they present their levels of meaning to us as though this were the easiest trick in the world. (It isn’t.)
  All day in the hotel room
in a red chair by the picture window
I am looking at cranes.

On the fourth floor I am level
with the new fourth floor they are building.  (‘Cranes’, p5)
The title opens for us a possibility of talking Japanese art, as do the first three lines, but in the second stanza, we have no choice but to focus on a modern, industrial city. The first poems in the collection all use this conceit: but cardinals are not balloting below the chimney smoke, the cigarette dog doesn’t smoke, the fire brigade doesn’t haul baggage.
In ‘Blossoms’ (p 35) we are told:
This year they come in billboards, not in trees,
flat, eye-catching squares, thick
as embossed paper, creamy and deckled
a blossom advertisement along an avenue.
And the ‘Port Hills, Canterbury’ (p 40), are
Not ‘magnificent’, far more slippery
as they tread with giant steps through gorse
or peer over a road they’ve made perilous ...
Nice trick, if you can do it, and Smither certainly does.
Part II of the book reads more like narrative, reminiscences, from one person’s unique and focussed memory. ‘The man in the hammock’ (p 47) starts with
  My neighbour has strung a hammock
between the posts of her veranda
and in it, near midnight, a head arises.
But rather than open out into scary possibilities, pulling up other than the one action, the poem goes on with a simple description of the moonlight, the garden scene and matter-of-factly ends “Sleep well foreheads, man and moon.”
It’s very impressive, watching a poem focus on the here and now, resisting the (perfectly legitimate) invitation to wallow in metaphor. This, taken along with the exquisitely careful choice of words, gives us the smooth pleasure of the poem as part of a “how could it be otherwise?” experience.
The last poem in the collection is ‘A wild book’ (p 87). It illustrates how Smither is both sticking to the focus while moving images from level to level, like some sort of verbal puppet show. The first stanza:
  After a day of dreadful disorder
  you offered me a bed and a meal
  and afterward an art book.
But then it ends:
  Before I reached the end – slices of life cut through
  by each now knife-edged page – a calm
  (it might have been the page of The Scream)

  dissolved the bed and the chicken, your fine
  conversation which calmed everything, and the book
  on my lap was reverently shut again

  while outside, when darkness fell and stars
  like the numbered pages came to glow
  the peace of a wild book descends.
Lovely craft, lovely book.

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: My American Chair
Author: Elizabeth Smither
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 978 1 86940 960 9
RRP: $24.99
Available: bookshops

Comments

Message in picture book

Author’s experience makes believable novel

Exquisitely careful choice of words

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