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Easy to follow plot

10/13/2017

Nothing Bad Happens Here
by Nikki Crutchley

Nothing bad happens here – or does it? The main character is a journalist (one of many, much to her dismay) sent to a sleepy little (ficticious) town on the beautiful Coromandel Peninsula, where a decomposing body has been discovered in the bush by some trampers.
The reader quickly becomes familiar with the journalist and the other personalities who gradually weave their way into the story, all with their various complicated and emotional backgrounds.
The hard working, honest policeman of the town suddenly finds himself in the middle of the investigation and then upstaged by a more senior officer sent to head the inquiry who seems to delight in undermining the local cop.
Dark secrets begin to unfold. Why and how did this young girl disappear and end up murdered? Another unexplained event comes to light.
The characters gradually evolve and evoke sympathy, frustration and curiosity in the reader.
It’s a mystery, with a twist at the end.
The book is well written with good grammar and punctuation, chapters just long enough for a bedtime read, and would appeal to readers aged from 16 years upwards wanting an easy read. Younger readers may find the emotional and psychological aspect of the characters hard to comprehend. As events unfold and accelerate, it made me want to read on. It has easy to follow plot with good descriptions.
This is Nikki Crutchley's first work of fiction and I would certainly encourage her to write another.
An enjoyable holiday read – unless you happen to be relaxing in a Health Retreat where anything can happen!

Review by Fran Hartley

Title: Nothing Bad Happens Here
Author: Nikki Crutchley
Publisher: Oak House Press
ISBN: 9780473404505
RRP: $29.99
Available: Paperback: Paper Plus stores in Waikato, King Country, BOP, Carson's Book Shop Thames, McLeod's Book Shop Rotorua, Whanga Books Whangamata, Unity Books Wellington.
E-book on Amazon and Kobo. Or from www.nikkicrutchley.com

1 Comment

Work of fiction. Or is it?

10/7/2017

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A Killer Harvest
By Paul Cleave

This is the first of this author's books I've read, but it certainly won't be my last.
Do scenarios like these actually happen in our world? It appears plausible enough, so why not?
And if this did happen in our world, which side would I choose, if I were to be any part of it. Would I side with life for all, regardless, or be done and dusted with the bad guys?
In this book, anything is possible.
To have a group of highly specialised 'vigilantes' making decisions on who should live and who should die can evoke many different reactions in one, in me. I read, keeping an open mind. This is, after all, a work of fiction. Or is it?
My mother-heart cried for the blind boy who would regain sight at the cost of his father's life. What a gift, although unintentional at that time. But the boy received far, far more than just his father's eyes.
The plot is intricate and yet masterfully revealed. The writing simple and eloquent.         That this book originally started out as a Young Adult read is apparent by the paucity of bad language throughout. Like the publisher, I feel it's for a much wider audience.
Brilliant portrayal of characters, brilliant medical research into organ donations and harvesting, and cellular memory.
That it is situated in Christchurch, NZ, with stunning scenery descriptions makes it even more appealing.
     Well done, Paul Cleave. Well done!

Review by Susan Tarr

Title: A Killer Harvest
Author: Paul Cleave
Publisher: Upstart Press
ISBN: 978-1-927262-36-8
RRP: $34.99
Available: bookshops

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Privilege to read

10/3/2017

2 Comments

Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across Worlds
by Anne Salmond

What an extraordinary privilege it is to be reviewing this marvellous book.
At last I got some understanding as to how the fraught relationship between Maori and Pakeha arose. The two parties held such diametrically opposed philosophical positions when they first came into contact.
The missionaries arrived with belief systems that revolved around a single God and the belief that people controlled the world and all in it. This conviction, arising from Genesis, gave them the right to tame natural resources. As kaitiaki (guardians) Maori lived in harmony with the land. It could never be owned, so when land was alienated they were surprised that it had gone out of Maori control forever.
This is simplifying the position put by Dame Anne Salmond and people should read the book in order to fully understand the case she is making.
While the missionaries learnt the language, the nuances behind the words were, naturally enough, missed, intensifying the impression of two groups talking past each other.
Maori cosmology of many Gods juxtaposed with that of one Christian God also made misunderstandings inevitable. Those early differences in world view continue to impact on race relations today. Dame Anne Salmond explains how this plays out.
I was intrigued by her explanations around the practice of cannibalism. While the reasons she outlined made sense I have to admit to recoiling from the thought. However, I am glad she dealt with it openly. Often it is used as an excuse for the way missionaries set about ‘civilising’ Maori. It was a bold move on Anne Salmond’s part to go into this topic in depth. However, unless we face these undercurrents and bring them to the surface they will continue to influence attitudes.
Her book explains why such terrible misunderstandings occurred when settlers swarmed into New Zealand, courtesy of the New Zealand Company. The ground was laid for the inevitable Land Wars that followed the signing of the 1840 Tiriti o Waitangi. I also found myself deeply stirred by admiration for the dogged determination Maori have shown over the years to have injustices and misunderstandings rectified. Nevertheless, there has been a huge social cost which we continue to pay.
But Anne Salmond does not leave it there which is wonderful because she takes those early contact confusions and explains how they have impacted on Maori–Pakeha relationships today.
As I read, I found myself almost exalting. At last someone had the courage to dig deeply into the metaphysical influences that drive Pakeha and Maori actions. Many will not even be aware of what these are.
For example, the fraught question of who owns water is examined. She quotes: Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au I am the river, and the river is me (311). This single whakatauiki (proverb) makes water such a powerful life force that it is easy to understand why Maori and supporters are prepared to put themselves at risk when companies like Petrobras start oil exploration.
An unpolluted ocean is the source of life as are our rivers. Yet so many take water for granted.
How fortunate we are that anthropologists like Dame Anne Salmond take the time to examine these questions in depth.
Without the debate and erudite works like Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across the World, this nation would stand in danger of becoming one homogenised blob. It is never too late to start listening to each perspective and from there agree on a way forward. Anne Salmond’s book shines a light on the path we could each take.

Review by Suraya Dewing
CEO, Stylefit (formerly The Story Mint) http://www.thestorymint.com

Title: Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across Worlds
Author: Anne Salmond
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 978 1 86940 865 7
RRP: $65.00
Available: bookshops

2 Comments

Irish Charm

9/28/2017

3 Comments

The Girl from County Clare
by Vicky Adin

This delightful novel is divided into three parts and spans several years.
Part one: The journey
The story starts in 1886 in Ireland. Successive crop failures and brutal English landlords have pushed a family of subsistence farmers to the brink of starvation and close to despair, but not close enough to extinguish a flickering flame of hope and determination. For her own and her family’s survival Brigid, an eighteen year old girl, leaves the only life she has known for an uncertain future on the alien shores of Australia. Her cousin Jamie is on the same ship but in different quarters.
Part one focuses on the voyage and in particular the evolving interactions between passengers. These relationships, which can be both romantic and hostile, become the driving force and the glue that shapes the course of their lives. The characters are well drawn and the author displays considerable insight into what motivates people and how various character types are likely to react to each other.
Part two: Australia
Although the passengers are dropped at various ports, the residual attraction and antagonism of the shipboard liaisons merge with pure chance to draw the passengers towards each other. But circumstances are changing and natural disaster plays its part. Hopes and realities have different agendas and people can be swept in directions they neither planned nor wanted and end in murder. With a body being hidden and the police looking for a missing person it becomes time to change names and find another ship to take them to New Zealand and the possibility of a new venture.
Part three: New Zealand
     Hungry for opportunity, at a time when women were considered genetically unfit for commercial enterprise, the group’s hope focuses on Brigid. Her Irish integrity and outstanding skill at lace making is complimented by Sally’s risk taking, and her ability to use charm and style to manipulate everything from shop windows to financial records. But the local economy is in distress and bigger companies control most of the market. Shadows of their Australian venture fall across their fledgling venture threatening to overwhelm it and snatch away their hopes.
As I turned the pages I was taunted by the possibility that the seeds of integrity planted by an eighteen year old girl from County Clare could germinate and grow strongly enough to outmanoeuvre these threats so far from her native home. Vicky Adin leaves us in no doubt about the answer to that question. And at the same time provides an insight into what hope and determination can do when mixed with a bit of Irish charm.
     I found this a delightful novel that was hard to put down. It has been well researched and reflects considerable understanding of the attitudes of the era. After reading the book I felt I knew and sympathised with the characters.
     The copy of the book I read is a perfect bound paperback and has an appealing cover that I found most appropriate for the character of the novel. From a handling point of view I felt the publisher could have provided a larger offset gutter as I found it necessary to hold the book open to prevent it from snapping shut if I relaxed my grip.
     I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in people.

Review by Peter Thomas

Title: The Girl from County Clare
Author: Vicky Adin
Publisher: AM Publishing NZ Ltd
ISBN: print book 978-0-9941135-8-0; ebook 978-0-9941305-0-1
RRP: $29.95
Available: in print and digital formats. Via Amazon; from author via http://vickyadin.co.nz

3 Comments

War’s impact on ordinary people

9/22/2017

3 Comments

The Lives of Alice Pothron, one woman’s escape to freedom
by Jenny Harrison with Evelyne Pothron

Courage and determination survive victorious against all odds
The Lives of Alice Pothron is the result of a chance encounter in 2009 between author Jenny Harrison and Evelyne Pothron. At the time, Evelyne – Alice and Emile Pothron’s daughter – was in search of an author to tell her parents’ amazing story.
  Born in the very first years of the 20th century, Alice Guyonvernier and Emile Pothron both knew abject poverty as children. These early years, and the miserable years that Alice experienced when an aunt took her to America constitute what she thinks of as her first two lives.
The book opens in July 1938 with Alice and Emile, now proud holders of American passports, happily married and comfortably well off but regretfully childless, departing America by ship for a short holiday in France. They haven’t a care in the world. War is brewing in Europe but, incredibly, in America boxer Joe Louis’s victory over Max Schmeling and Howard Hughes’ around-the-world flight excite more interest than world affairs.
   When the Pothrons arrive in France they find the country still in mourning for the losses of the Great War and in complete denial – there cannot possibly be another war.
     This then, the years between 1927 when Alice met Emile in his hairdressing salon and his call-up to serve the country of his birth in September 1939, is Alice’s third life – a worry-free time of happiness and love. This comfortable period has cocooned Alice from real life. She has become Americanised, no longer French in her view of the world, her clothes or her way of speaking. With the outbreak of war and Emile serving in a military medical unit, she is about to become an alien in the country of her birth.
In The Lives of Alice Pothron, Harrison enriches the telling of Alice and Emile’s stories (based on the recollections of their only daughter, Evelyne) with pertinent details of the bigger picture of France’s situation and mind-set prior to the outbreak of war and conditions for ordinary civilians during the war. Added to the mix is the Pothrons’ beloved dog that has come with them from America and their much longed-for daughter, born in June 1939.
     The threads of the story are an account of constant danger, hardship and heartbreak, and of amazing strength, ingenuity and courage. Alice’s need to protect Evelyne at all costs see her learning to live once again in poverty, drawing water from the well, cooking on a wood stove and coping with rationing.
     Harrison’s account of events in Alice and Emile’s lives after they are separated by war is both bleak and grim, but at the same time there are moments of humour. Their almost parallel paths as fugitives heading south into unoccupied France and eventual safety are an inspiring tribute to the Resistance workers who risked all to help them: guiding them, feeding them their own precious food, providing a dry bed and then handing them on like a parcel to the next link in the clandestine chain.
As Alice comments …it always seems to be winter… in this book. Harrison has succeeded, through dwelling on the long, bitterly cold winters in the north of France, and beautiful prose, to convey the cruelty of the war’s impact on ordinary people …a blue-fingered morning, cloudless with a chill that stubbornly hung on the shirt tails of the night.
     The Lives of Alice Pothron does have a happy ending (as mentioned in the back-cover blurb) and it is a story driven by unfaltering love, but it sensitively recounts a time in our history without a trace of romanticism. I found the book very thought provoking and often found myself thinking how lucky we are. My only disappointment with The Lives of Alice Pothron is that I would have liked to know, even briefly, how life turned out for Alice, Emile and Evelyne when they returned to America in 1942.

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: The Lives of Alice Pothron, one woman’s escape to freedom
Author: Jenny Harrison with Evelyne Pothron
Publisher: Lamplighter Press
ISBN: 9781478346777
RRP: $25.99
Available: In Paperback and e-book from www.amazon.com; paperback via author’s website www.jennyharrison-author.com

3 Comments

Keen observation shown in stories

9/16/2017

0 Comments

A Tranquil Place & Other Stories
by Pamella Laird

The author, retired nurse and former hospice volunteer, donates 50% of proceeds from the sale of this book to three North Shore hospices. That seems appropriate as the stories would make good reading for anyone wanting short reads, such as during a hospital stay.
Most of the tales are set in New Zealand – they’re human, lightly humorous, unpretentious slice-of-life stories.
Some, particularly those that relate incidents of country life, read more like anecdotes of the sort that a family and friends might share at social get-togethers.
They are varied. Among the storylines there are some memorable scenarios. Mrs Beeton, long-dead doyenne of domesticity, appears in a contemporary kitchen bent on instructing a present-day woman in culinary skills. (“The tiny buttons on her black boots fascinated me; no doubt she had a lady’s maid; certainly one accomplished in the use of button-hooks, and so well able to delicately loop each into its small hole. I looked at my Crocs.”) A brother and sister argue over where to site a house on their land. The thoughts of an example of living art (“Bring on the philanthropists and the open wallets. They ease my pain.”) An 80-year old woman meets up with an old love. Another of similar vintage falls for a bass baritone. A present-day woman takes Katherine Mansfield to a café in Takapuna.
It’s good to see some locations and characters recur in different stories.
Throughout, the author shows keen observation of both the social world and human behavior. Her colloquial prose is enlivened by metaphors and similes, and is polished so it reads easily.
Five poems are among the 22 items. These too are colloquial and personal, though they differ in tone. Of them, I was particularly taken by Hey! You! that addresses forces present in South Island topography.
This well-produced volume of 154 pages makes a good gift to anyone forced to endure a hospital stay, or who simply appreciates short reads.

Review by Kauri Wood

Title: A Tranquil Place & Other Stories
Author: Pamella Laird
Publisher: AM Publishing New Zealand
ISBN: 978-0-9951000-0-8
RRP: $25
Format: Paperback. Available: North Shore Hospice, Takapuna <info@hospicenorthshore.org.nz> Ph (09) 4861688 Note: 50% of the proceeds is donated to the Hospice Funding.
Hibiscus Hospice <jane.finch@hibiscushospice.org.nz> Ph (09) 4219180
Also from Pamella Laird lai2rd@orcon.net.nz Ph (09) 4211394

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Dramatic courtroom scenes

9/8/2017

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Presumed Guilty
by Mark McGinn

Presumed Guilty is a standalone novel, the third book in the Sasha Stace series.
   Sasha is a lawyer in New Zealand’s South Island. After many years at the bar, she is weary of criminal law. She’s tired of “living in a world where two showers a day is not enough.” Promotion to the High Court bench offers a brighter future, but when her ex-partner faces murder charges, Sasha agrees to defend him, and puts that future at risk.
  Sasha is an intriguing and sympathetic character. The dramatic courtroom scenes are well drawn, and shadowy political plotters add to the suspense. The author builds a realistic backdrop with detailed descriptions of the murder scene and beautiful coastal Akaroa. The criminals are convincingly creepy and ruthless, and some of them meet suitably nasty fates. The author keeps some shocking and unexpected twists for the very end. They’re worth waiting for.
   The large supporting cast and weight of back history distract from the flow of events on occasion. I didn’t want to know quite so much about Sasha’s personal issues and family dramas, either. Sasha is a strong, independent woman. She doesn’t need a wrapping of domesticity to make her real. And I’m not sure the inclusion of various Australians adds much to an already complex plot. But these are minor quibbles.
I love the New Zealand setting, and the mix of courtroom drama and criminal investigation. Sasha’s integrity overcomes the forces of evil, a universal theme which adds to the story’s appeal.
     I recommend Presumed Guilty to readers of crime fiction.

Review by Jai Baidell

Title: Presumed Guilty
Author: Mark McGinn
Publisher: Merlot Publishing
ISBN: 978 15 436 1860 8
RRP: $32.99
Available: from all good bookstores and Amazon

0 Comments

Comprehensive and valuable guide

9/4/2017

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New Zealand Secondary Schools and Your Child: a Guide for Parents
by Bali Haque

Bali Haque’s latest work is New Zealand Secondary Schools and Your Child: A Guide for Parents and the book certainly lives up to the promise inherent in the title, for it is a carefully-compiled and comprehensive response to an often-heard observation that “I’ve no idea what they do at school these days.” Whilst it’s good to know that schools are therefore keeping up with the pace of change in society, it’s equally comforting to know that books such as this one exist to help lay people pick a path through what can be a confusing and even tortuous process.
In its 77,000 words arranged in eleven chapters, the Guide considers the choice of school; its structure including governance, teachers, discipline systems, pastoral care and bullying; the curriculum; and perhaps most important of all from a vocational perspective, the minefield of the NCEA process and results; reports and interviews, and special needs.
All these are explained in precise and impeccable language which is also conversational, and mercifully jargon-free. This is nowhere more noticeable than in the sections devoted to NCEA. One suspects that this will be the major selling-point of the book, for that section is as excellent as one would expect given the author’s background in that area. On looking at the notes made during the reading process, one is struck by the number of times the words “clear”, “logical”, “well-explained”, “comprehensive”; and “sound advice” appear, for the benefit of a parent in need of good advice.
As noted, it is a comprehensive and valuable guide to parents of secondary school students, and that cannot be overstated. Teachers, especially those who endured the birth-pangs of ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’ in the early nineties, may well have viewpoints that are not apparent to the parents for whom the book is intended, and that is as it should be. One such instance is the author’s comments on how the principal ‘holds most of the (power) cards’ and it is tempting to respond that, while schools have always been driven by professionals, until the restructuring wrought by the Fourth Labour Government they were supported in that by a team that included professional overseers in inspectors and advisers and administrative professionals in the ten departments of education throughout the country.
Under the premise that anyone could administer and oversee education, Lange’s contribution to educational restructuring was to strip away the support network so that the burden of guidance for lay people devolved upon principals alone, and whilst Haque acknowledges this, it seems uber-critical to cavil at the power which that functionary wields faute de mieux.
Similarly, I found myself questioning whether the section in chapter three that deals with pedagogy, and in particular pages 76 and 77, offering a ‘checklist’ of teacher competence that can be used by lay people, ought really to be in a book that offers parents the ‘big picture’ of secondary education. In this, it is easy to see ‘the administrator view’, one which is often at variance with that of a teacher facing thirty-odd students, whom Haque himself is generous enough to admit are not always tractable or even interested in a subject which may not be a teacher’s strength, in a room which is often too small for the sorts of interaction he lauds.
Those reservations aside, though, this is an outstanding guide for parents to the New Zealand secondary school and will be worth every cent of its modest purchase price to the market at which it is aimed.

Review by M J Burr, MA; MEd Admin

Title: New Zealand Secondary Schools and Your Child: a Guide for Parents
Author: Bali Haque
Publisher: Bateman
ISBN: 978 186953 959 7
RRP: $34.99
Available: bookshops

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Intelligent result of a lifetime’s scholarship

8/30/2017

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The Truth About Language: What it is and Where it Came From
by Michael C. Corballis

“Without language there would be no stories, no religion, no science, no history…. Strangely, though, we seem to take language for granted, a gift bestowed on us for the privilege of being human.”
By choosing the title, The Truth About Language, the author sets himself a huge challenge, but one he meets with distinction. His very broad discussion of the subject – the evolution of language, prerequisites needed for its development, and its construction – goes far beyond mechanics such as structure, characteristics, uses, spread, similarities and differences. Michael Corballis, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Auckland considers aspects associated with a range of academic disciplines beyond his own – anthropology, history, philosophy, religion, science, and more.
Though the 20 pages of bibliography show evidence of extensive background research, this is more than a mere reworking of others’ ideas and findings. The author takes on thinkers as eminent as Darwin and Chomsky as well as other masters of language, philosophy and psychology.
There is much throughout the whole text to inform and fascinate a range of readers. Others, as I was, will be interested in the author’s insights into such topics as language and natural selection; thinking without language, mental travel; precursors to language – gestures, signing, pointing – leading to the thought that “Speech is facial gesture, half-swallowed.”
Along the way some light is shed on animal behaviour – such as maze navigation by rats, communication by chimpanzees, graphic recognition by pigeons, apparent thought by other birds, and specific word recognition by dogs.
Several words have been added to my vocabulary, even though I have worked with words for decades.
For this reason also, I was especially interested in the chapter “Stories”, that confirms my own views on the value of fiction, about which Corballis says –
"Fiction is in essence a simulation of the social world, in which the characters have minds with which the reader or watcher can identify. Immersed in fiction, you mentally enter the social world created by the novelist or playwright, just as in real life you enter the social lives of the people around you….it enhances empathy and theory of mind, making us better able to understand others."
The work is a highly intelligent and intelligible result of a lifetime’s scholarship and thought. What might in other hands become a heavy read is made accessible by Corballis due to his easy, often conversational, tone interspersed with anecdotes and personal observation to assist readers to grasp his points. There is no doubt that the author is a skilled communicator.
For the reader’s part, The Truth About Language is well worth study as part of one’s search for the intellectual key to the social life of humankind.
As well as the extensive bibliography, the volume includes 27 pages of notes and a full index.

Review by Bronwyn Elsmore

Title: The Truth About Language
Author: Michael C. Corballis
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408633
RRP: $39.99
Available: Bookshops

0 Comments

Story of hope and courage

8/23/2017

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Seeing How: Beating Blind Spots
by Jewel Dell

A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other thing. - Laura Wilder -
If there is a book that mirrors the above quote then it is this one.
  The author, for whom there is no biography included for background knowledge, shows she certainly has a way with words and an incredible sense of humour. The story follows her journey into losing her sight with glaucoma and its insidious progress over the months.
It starts with her awareness of her changing sight and progresses through to the treatments she endures – the endless appointments, the medication, intraocular injections, surgery, the eye drops – and throughout it all always finding the ridiculous side of a very serious condition.
     As the author comes to terms with her condition she describes for the reader’s benefit how she deals with problems living alone with just her cat, Muff, as an ally, but not a very effective one. She describes how she tries to teach him to stem a leak in a plastic pipe carrying the water supply to the house, though without much success despite Muff being bright enough to open doors, spoon up gravy using his paw, turn over the electric water jug and carry a mouse in his teeth. Even trying to teach him to drop a tea bag into a big mug failed as the task eluded this feline companion.
     On a more serious side, the author describes how other senses compensate for the loss of sight, and gives a great account of how the link between her brain and eye causes difficult manifestations of sight - but not as we see it. It is the Charles Bonnet Syndrome and really quite difficult to understand. It wasn’t described in my Medical Dictionary but Dr Google was a great help.
     Throughout the book there are hints on how she manages with every day chores. For example, cooking and cutting up vegetables without doing any damage to her fingers or contaminating the food with blood; but the one that I really enjoyed was how she learnt to drive the 4-wheeler Kawasaki mule around the paddocks and keeping track of her “Bovine Biddies”. Probably of not much use to urban drivers but you never know, her hints could be very handy for a rural driver on some back paddock if they were having sight problems.
     There must be frustrations, grief and angst as sight deteriorates for anyone, but Jewel Dell has turned her affliction into a positive story of hope and courage with her brand of very quirky humour. It was a book I took inspiration from.
     At the end are a couple of recipes and they sound quite delicious. One day I will give them a try.

Review by Merilyn Mary

Title: Seeing How: Beating Blind Spots
Author: Jewel Dell
Publisher: Enhanced Education Fund
ISBN: 978-0-473-37697-0 Softcover
RRP: NZ$35.00 print
Available: Softcover from the Publisher by emailing the author at jeweld@ps.gen.nz; Wheelers Bookshop
Amazon as EPub, Kindle
Audio version copyrighted by NZ Blind Foundation for client members

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Easy to follow plot

Work of fiction. Or is it?

Privilege to read

Irish Charm

War’s impact on ordinary people

Keen observation shown in stories

Dramatic courtroom scenes

Comprehensive and valuable guide

Intelligent result of a lifetime’s scholarship

Story of hope and courage

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