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So many gems

27/9/2023

Bits of String Too Short to Use
A memoir of collecting, writing and the highs and lows of life
by Jennifer Beck

When I first saw this book I was attracted to the cover. It has an old black and white photograph on it and I identified with the era immediately.
It was not a disappointment. It could have been my childhood in those pages but it’s the memoir of the author as she writes about growing up in country New Zealand, her schooling, employment, travel, courting and marriage.
There are many memories that are so familiar. The nursing homes (instead of birthing centres), service cars, tins of loose biscuits, outside toilets down the garden path to the back of the section covered with sweet smelling vines and walking down the path at night carrying a candle hoping the spiders are asleep. They were all part of growing up in early NZ. We also had aunties and uncles who were no relation but family friends, and that gave us a sense of belonging in small town living.
Bits of String is written with short chapters that are easily read. They are accompanied with many photographs that add to the enjoyment of this memoir.
There are so many gems in this book making it a trip down memory lane for the older reader; but one that fascinated me was on the front cover. It is an old cutting entitled “How to open a new book”. It gives explicit instructions on exactly that so the integrity of the book is protected. Well, who knew? We live and learn.
The chapter ‘Hen and Now’ had me laughing as the author compared past kitchen teas for brides-to-be with hen parties held now. Then, peg-bags, egg-beaters and graters were given as gifts, but today it’s more likely knickers or suggestive gifts opened to much hilarity as guests sup wine or champagne, rather than Choysa tea taken oh so delicately from English bone china.
For me, there was a sense of excitement when the old stone Church on the top of the hill in East Tamaki was mentioned. I remember it well as I used to take the back road to Howick as part of my employment at the time. Is it still there I wonder?
Thank you Jennifer for this glimpse into your life - your collections, your writings and the highs and lows of your life. Any reader will be enriched with these stories and so will future generations that are curious about living in New Zealand during the 1940’s and onward.

Review by Merilyn Mary

Title: Bits of String Too Short to Use
Author: Jennifer Beck
Publisher: Mary Egan Publishing
ISBN: 9780473678753
RRP: $40
Available: bookshops

A book to be inspired by

20/9/2023

Gordon Walters
by Francis Pound,
with Foreword & Afterword by Leonard Bell

“There is no doubt that [Gordon Walters] is the most striking painter in New Zealand, who can hold his own with the best company anywhere in the world.” – Theo Schoon.
We are very fortunate that a figure of the University of Auckland’s art history department and a producer of some of the country’s finest art historical writings, Francis Pound (1948–2017) dedicated many years to producing this remarkable study of modern abstract artist Gordon Walters. Walters’ work is iconically New Zealand, with his best-known works being the koru paintings, like Makora. But what do we know about this Wellington born artist?
Francis Pound writes in his introduction -
It has long been my experience that when we New Zealanders want to show something of our art to visitors from Europe, we show them McCahon. But what they want to see is Walters.
I want to see how Walters invents himself, becomes himself, makes himself. How does he get from the arts society banality of his first exhibited work, Wellington Wharves, to the Koru paintings?
This is a book about one artist and his art, and the primary focus is on the art itself.
Gordon Walters’ long and productive career, spanning five decades, is celebrated in this 464 page, large jacketed hardback book. It is written by Francis Pound, with a foreword and afterword by Leonard Bell.
We are introduced to the making of a New Zealand modernist – tracing the work of Gordon Walters (1919-1995) from student charcoal sketches in the 1930s to the revelation of the mature Koru works at the 1966 New Vision Gallery exhibition in Auckland. Pound follows Walters through steps and missteps, explorations and diversions, travel in Aotearoa and overseas, as the artist discovers new forms, invents others and discards many more. Pound looks hard at the paint, the brushes, the rulers, the scrapbooks, to reveal an artist at work. And, resolutely internationalist like the artist, the author provides not only astute insights into Walters' art, but also a guide to the elements and ideas that informed the work – notably, Māori and Pacific art, surrealism, Mondrian, De Stijl, the Bauhaus and Euro-American abstraction, conceptual art and minimalism. With Francis Pound accompanying us through the work as guide, critic, wit and enthusiast, Gordon Walters is an extraordinary journey into twentieth-century art.
Pound’s last book, The Invention of New Zealand: Art and National Identity, 1930–1970 (Auckland University Press, 2009) was an exceptional and ground-breaking study of nationalism in twentieth-century New Zealand art.
When Francis Pound died in October 2017 he had been working on this book for many years, but it remained unfinished. While he was in hospital he met with his friend of fifty years, Leonard Bell and discussed how his book could be completed for publication, along with fragmented notes.
According to Leonard Bell; Gordon Frederick Walters, (born in 1919) was one of New Zealand’s first geometric abstract painters. During the 1950s and 1960s, ‘modern’ art, especially abstract painting, could run into antagonism and derision in mainstream society. Cultural nationalists, who aimed for supposed New Zealand-distinctiveness in art, marginalised abstraction as ‘foreign’ or ‘international’, somehow not really of New Zealand. Indeed, Walters later said that he did not exhibit between 1949 and 1966, because the climate ‘was so hostile to abstraction, there would have been little point in showing his work publicly’.
Walters married Margaret Orbell, a scholar of Māori language and culture, at Wellington on 14 May 1963. By 1964 he was making large acrylic paintings the first of which was entitled ‘Te Whiti’. By using Māori titles, Walters acknowledged the inspiration he received from the koru and related motifs such as rauponga. He created a new kind of painting in which Māori motifs and European abstract painting were drawn together. He was criticised in the 1980s for appropriating these motifs, but Walters himself saw it as a positive response to being an artist with bicultural roots, and Margaret Orbell undoubtedly contributed to his awareness of Māori and Oceanic art.
He died in Christchurch on 5 November 1995, survived by his wife and children. He was 76.
Gordon Walters is a book for all New Zealanders to treasure and be inspired by.

Review by Renee Hollis

Title: Gordon Walters
Author: Francis Pound, with foreword and afterword by Leonard Bell
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409531
RRP: $89.99
Available: bookshops

Abundance of observation in poetry collection

12/9/2023

Green Rain
by Alastair Clarke

Green rain falls over a lot of territory, from the Wairarapa to Canberra and America. This collection is divided into five sections: Dance, Churning, Seeing, Hedging, and Crossing. While the various sections don’t seem to have particular relationships to their names, they come together to form a consistent text in the full book.
The title poem (given in full here) is a good introduction to the poet’s style:
  ... this window, 80cm x 80cm:
  seeing now how leaves spiderly –
  see there, so many, so many –
  reach beyond frame,
  beyond the neighbouring gutter
  to gather nearer sun –
  movements unseen, like conjuring,
  the tips of each looped canoe
  fast on each stem ...
                               but to know, distant,
a farmer grasping through days for signs
  in a barren sky that might repair his
  grey land; that he might see small green canoes
  arcing through green rain ...   (p 17)
There is a lot of landscape and movement, a wide view of an open idea – but to my mind, the author doesn’t do himself or his work justice. I am left with an impression of someone wandering through lavishly furnished rooms, picking up objects at random and then putting them down again, without taking matters further or connecting them with each other.
This is noticeable not only with topics but in matters of style. The first three lines here have wonderful alliteration, but then we stop. There are a few g-sounds later, but they don’t seem to belong together as well as the sibilants do. There’s quite a lot of alliteration throughout the collection, and it seems as though it could be more of a focus than an (apparent) accident.
Looking at the rest of this stanza, I also can’t understand any pattern for omitting/including the definite article the. Are frame and sun to be taken in a broader? different? sense than the gutter? Clarke uses both these style devices throughout the book, but for what reason isn’t quite clear.
As well as the content of individual poems, the arrangement of poems in a collection makes a major contribution to the meaning of the whole work, and I think again here the author is selling himself short.
For example, there are quite a few references to geology throughout the book. We have, in ‘Tauranga’ (p 26):
  This town’s sea-sculpted,
  carved still by sea’s incursions
  – by its volcanic making
In ‘High Country’ (p 51) we are shown:
  These volcanic extrusions
  scarring the high plateau, these
  (it is mid-winter) under snow.

  Passing through is passing through
  a geology primer –

And ‘Rotorua’ (p 80) ends with:
  Rotorua, sited so confidently
  upon its thin clay, above such
  geologic, such chemical fury.
  Was it arrogance, carelessness
  to think that in this land of geyser
  and volcano and earthquake humans
  would win? – Or ignorance?

               So questions
  remain – How to walk lightly,
  attentively on this land ...
And there are more geology references – enough that they could be put near each other, providing a focused group of poems, rather than leaving the reader with informative, but basically light-weight, casual observations. We could say something similar about the book’s use of ‘seeing’ as a theme: it is spread far too thin and leaves us wondering ‘seeing what?’ or why it matters, since the verb itself appears in most of the poems (every one in the first section).
Perhaps this is a fair summary of the collection as a whole, that we are given an abundance of observation, but very little involvement in, such a wide display of notable landscapes, scenes and experiences.
This is the first book from a new publisher, and it’s a pleasure (reviewer bias!) to see that Ugly Hill Press chose to start out with a poetry collection. The presentation is appropriate to the book, bar some proofreading glitches (both text and bibliographic information). We wish everyone involved well for the future and look forward to seeing what comes next.

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: Green Rain
Author: Alastair Clarke
Publisher: Ugly Hill Press
ISBN: 978-1-7385836-0-7
RRP: $30
Available: bookshops

Great dialogues in bilingual book

1/9/2023

Te Reo Kapekape – Māori Wit and Humour
by Hona Black

I don’t know Hona Black but I can tell he tangata hātekēhi ia, and imagine he had much fun writing this book.
The title Te Reo Kapekape is literally, the language of poking fun and that’s the main thrust of the content. With each of the 130 themes, the author gives an explanation then constructs two short dialogues between recurring characters, members of an extended family. Being whānau, they don’t hold back. As the author explains – “Our ancestors did not shy away from hurling words at each other to tease, to belittle, to humour, and to compete.”
Hēni: Ko Rangi tētahi o ngā kaiako o te kura reo ā tērā wiki.
Moana: E kī rā! Kāore e makere te kiri o te rīwai i tērā kua haere ki reira whakaako ai.
Hēni: Rangi is one of the teachers at the kura reo next week.
Moana: Is that so! That one can’t even peel a spud and he’s going there to teach.
These pieces of dialogue are not only illustrative but often highly amusing and a source of further memorable sayings, frequently with an emphasis on body parts and functions.
They’re also right up to date, including references to such contemporary things as air conditioning /whāhauhau, facebook/pukamata, man flu/rewharewha tāne, poledancing/kanikani me te pou, and more. Some things, though, such as budgie smugglers and Zoom, defy translation.
He pukapuka reo rua tēnei, ko te reo Māori ki tētahi taha me te reo Pākehā tētahi atu, so whether or not you’re bilingual you can read the Māori or English side by side.
Even in English, and sometimes especially so, some of the phrases are priceless – your tongue will be the deaf of you!
Kia ora, Hona. Tata tonu au ka hemo i te kata.

Review by Bronwyn Elsmore

Title: Te Reo Kapekape – Māori Wit and Humour
Author: Hona Black
Publisher: Oratia
ISBN: 978-1-99-004237-9
RRP: $39.99
Available: bookshops

Fast paced novel recommended

19/8/2023

Boxed
by Stephen Johnson

This story is set amid the greyhound racing scene in Melbourne. It is full of action involving murder with a chainsaw, poisonous snakes, bodies crammed into greyhound starting boxes, the activities of a TV investigative journalist crew, and a prisoner scratching a record of the passing days on the wall of her prison.
The scenario is complicated by a protest group seeking to end greyhound racing.
Kim Prescott, a reporter for the Spotlight, receives an anonymous tipoff that live baiting is still occurring in Melbourne, so she and crew go to the old gold mining town of Steiglitz, hoping to find evidence. What they do find crammed into a greyhound starting box is a body savagely butchered with a chainsaw. Other murders take place as the story unfolds.
     The book shows the inner workings of a news office in the Melbourne television industry, on one hand and the characters who make up the dog racing fraternity on the other. It shows a close knowledge of the greyhound racing industry, Melbourne and the surrounding  district.
     The author uses short chapters, rapidly changing scenes, and characters that develop as the story builds to a climax. The story is very fast paced and contains a lot of detail forcing me to pay close attention to the book.
     I liked the book and would recommend it to all.

Review by Harold Bernard

Title: Boxed
Author: Stephen Johnson
Publisher: Clan Destine Press
ISBN: ISBN:9780645002171
RRP: $20
Available: Paperback or e-book from Amazon or www.clandestinepress.net, www.stephenjohnsonauthor.com

Playful use of words

11/8/2023

Big Little Blue: SandyPants!
by Raymond McGrath

Two penguins (the Big and Little Blues of the series title), a few other beachy creatures, and not a human in sight – all add to the charm of this small volume.
It’s not the usual format of picture books for little ones. Not a chapter book for the next group but the format’s closer to that. Neither is it a graphic novel, though the many pics with dialogue and text make it most like those.
The 90 pages contain three stories, all on the theme of friendship. Without overt moralising each ends with advice on how to respect and sustain social relationships.
Young self-readers should have some fun getting their eyes and tongue around the playful use of words. Throughout, the language is colloquial and contemporary – the characters speak as the readers do.
The author, Raymond McGrath’s, background as animation director, illustrator, designer and writer working in children’s television and advertising, is reflected in the text and the illustrations which are apt, colourful and humorous. Some could well be framed and hung on a nursery wall.

Review by Jacqui Lynne

Title: Big Little Blue: SandyPants!
Author: Raymond McGrath
Publisher: Scholastic NZ
ISBN: 9781775438342
RRP: $18.99
Available: bookshops

All will learn from children’s book

1/8/2023

Tuatara A Living Treasure
by Katie Furze & Ned Barraud

There are two parts to the text. The storyline follows the growth of one tuatara, from the time of her hatching till she in turn lays eggs to continue the lifecycle of this ‘living treasure’ native to this country.
The second, is the insertion on several of the pages of facts about the tuatara. The information in these extras will let most people know all they wish to know about the tuatara – prehistory, cultural significance, habitat, physiology, lifecycle – all together, what makes it unique.
Essential in a book for young children is the visual element and in this one the illustrations stand out. Ned Barraud has done a splendid job in capturing each scene and portraying the drama that marks the creature’s lifespan.
Readers who share this with young children will find both text and pictures lead to good discussion, and all will learn.

Review by Emily R

Title: Tuatara A Living Treasure
Author: Katie Furze; Illustrator Ned Barraud
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 978-1-77543-798-7
RRP: $21.99
Available: bookshops

Attractive to young readers

25/7/2023

Elastic Island Adventures: Rarotonga
by Karen McMillan

What a way to travel. Step onto an elastic island and be transported, or ‘pinged’, to another place “faster than a plane…more environmentally sound…but not for the fainthearted”. Be sure to hold on tight to a palm tree while you’re pinged almost instantly to another landing place.
In this seventh book in the Elastic Island series, a group of children plus a cat and a dog brave the transit and once again visit an exotic spot.
This time, though, there’s a difference. Unlike previous destinations such as Jewel Lagoon, Port Mugaloo, Kingdom of Blong and Flip Flop Bay, they travel to a real place – Rarotonga.
They’re hoping for a relaxing time but once on the island find there’s a mystery to be solved. They take up the challenge which leads them on a tour to places of local interest and cultural experiences. If you’ve been to Rarotonga you’ll be aware of at least some of them. Each location gives them a clue to the next – the clues being solvable by children in the target readership of 7 to 12 years.
Karen McMillan has an easy straightforward way of writing, and the layout is attractive to young readers. If you’ve missed out on the series so far, no problem, for this one stands on its own.

Review by Jacqui Lynne

Title: Elastic Island Adventures: Rarotonga
Author: Karen McMillan
Publisher: Duckling Publishing
ISBN: 9781991170194
RRP: $21.99
Available: bookshops

Absorbing Coming of Age Story

18/7/2023

Eat and Get Gas, a novel
by J.A. Wright

Eat and Get Gas is an engaging story told from a teenager’s point of view.
J.A. Wright creates a compelling voice for Evan, whose life in the USA is framed by the challenges of her family. Evan’s father is a Vietnam vet, her mother has multiple sclerosis, her younger brother has learning difficulties and her older brother (Adam) just received his Vietnam war draft papers.
Evan’s mother goes with Adam across the border into Canada so Adam can avoid becoming like his father – messed up. “When I asked [Mum] if she thought the war had changed Dad … she said only his good parts,” Evan tells us. Evan’s dad has acquired a second family to return to in Vietnam so he doesn’t want to look after Evan. He organises for Evan to stay with her grandmother at ‘Eat and Get Gas’ – a café combined with a gas station in Hoquiam, Washington. There Evan meets a further set of unusual characters, including her forthright Aunt Vivian, Uncle Frankie who has PTSD, Frankie’s sister Louanne badly scarred by a car crash, and Paco, a draft dodger Frankie has taken in.
Evan’s coming of age is described in relation to her relations in a very believable way. J.A. Wright captures the impact of the Vietnam war on American society well and a good amount of humour lightens what could be a dark narrative. Occasionally, the number of characters and need to keep track of their stories became challenging. However, J.A. Wright does a good job of giving them all unique voices. In addition, all the players have their redeeming features, making them likeable, sometimes in odd ways.
I highly recommend ‘Eat and Get Gas’, which embeds plenty of deeper meaning in its easily digested narrative.

Review by Jane Shearer

Title: Eat and Get Gas, a novel
Author: J.A. Wright
Publisher: Toad Ltd. (NZ only) She Writes Press (USA/Canada)
ISBN: 978-1647424817
RRP: $29.95 NZD
Available: Paperback, ebook, audiobook
Nationwide Books distributes the paperback version in NZ. Most online book retailers sell the paperback, ebook and audio versions, including Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Indiebound, Betterworld Books, Powells etc.

Past political figure reassessed

10/7/2023

We Need to talk about Norman: New Zealand’s lost leader
by Denis Welch

Denis Welch’s book is about Norman Kirk, in the first instance, whom he describes as an inspirational leader. Apparently there have only one or two others, and they have also been Labour prime ministers.
The book begins with an attempt to find some continuity between Kirk and recent leaders. But most of the text is a commentary about economic and societal change since the 1970s. This is more interesting, partly because one has to now be a senior citizen to have a full memory of Kirk.
Welch’s book doesn’t have an actual structure – at least there is no contents page, and it reads more like a personal essay. Or perhaps like an old-style Listener article that has been extended. Welch was an political columnist for many years, but is somewhat less convincing as a historian, especially on economic issues.
Everything comes back to what he calls ‘neoliberal ideology’, which apparently has captured the policy process and political leaders since 1984. We are familiar with the policies, and the events of the Rogernomics period, as it was called at the time. Basically it involves opening everything up to international finance, and restricting the role of the elected government in managing money; while every commercial activity has to be undertaken by the private sector.
Welch ends with a list of policy activities that had been initiated or promoted by Kirk’s Labour Government. Some of them were implemented by what were known as ‘statutory corporations’, such as the Development Finance Corporation, or the Housing Corporation. All of these relatively innovative organisations were restructured or privatised in the 1980s, and only ACC remains from that era. So essentially Roger Douglas and co. undid everything that Kirk had attempted to do.
All of this is well known, or has been analysed before, without great insight into the causes. Kirk himself has already been the subject of one detailed biography and the publication of diaries kept by his assistant, Margaret Hayward. Welch does not add a lot of new information here, although there is more detail about Kirk’s failing health following international visits. We already know that Norman Kirk was a modest man, a working class autodidact, and a moral conservative in an age of what he called permissiveness. Although he was deeply mourned at the time was he a transitional figure?
I personally remember when Big Norm died, despite just having started school around the time. I happened to be in Christchurch, in the electorate seat which Kirk held, and where my grandparents lived. Safe to say that not everybody mourned, or that he was universally respected. Denis Welch was then a young man in his twenties, who was actually living in England during the time of Kirk’s premiership. He admits to not having been that impressed at the time; not just with Norman Kirk as a leader, but with New Zealand society, which he describes as being stultifying and too conformist.
Well that portrays the view of the baby boomer, brought up within the regulated welfare state at a time of great prosperity. The society that Kirk defended was in a sense closed, at least because of what was known as the policy of ‘insulation’, aimed at protecting vulnerable industries and jobs, if not all the people. The baby-boomers who returned from their O.E. after 1984 found a much more cosmopolitan culture, and open society, as well as then benefitting from repeated tax cuts and rising property values. Meanwhile the working class disappeared as a political force, and left the field to the professional/managerial stratum, of which the author could be categorised within, if not one he identifies with. Having another charismatic Labour leader hasn’t really changed that structure.

Review by S A Boyce

Title: We Need to talk about Norman: New Zealand’s lost leader
Author: Denis Welch
Publisher: Quentin Wilson Publishing
ISBN: 9781991103055
RRP: $39.99
Available: bookshops