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Descriptions vivid and believable

6/6/2023

Who Disturbs the Kūkupa?
by Kayleen M. Hazlehurst

It’s not easy to insert fact into a work of fiction so that it seems a natural part of the story rather than documentary. This author, though, achieves it well.
The storyline is divided into five parts, told chronologically.
In Part One, from 1939, a time of the mobilization of New Zealand forces to serve in WW2, we meet the Wirima family. Two brothers leave their Northland farm to join the Māori Battalion and travel with it to Egypt, then to Greece where they fight in the front line.
In Part Two, the allied forces are driven back by the Germans and the older lad, Sonny, finds himself alone, having to find his way back to his fellow soldiers, or to safety.
In Part Three, Sonny continues his journey through the isles of the Cyclades, attempting to avoid enemy-held islands and to reunite with friendly forces.
The scene then shifts to Crete where he joins the local resistance – a time of hardship and danger. Part Five brings a perilous journey across the Mediterranean, and return to a measure of normality. Or is it? And can he settle to that?
In each of the parts, the accounts of Sonny making his way through foreign land, are matched with segments on what is happening in the Wirima family back in Aotearoa. The two places are linked by references to birds – hence the Kūkupa of the title.
Kayleen Hazelhurst shows much skill in taking information about places and the times and fusing it with imagination. There are full descriptions of locations, houses, and the lives of the people in many parts of Greece. Whether the author has visited these islands I have no idea, but the descriptions are detailed and vivid and more than believable.
Likewise are the details of particular battles, given without glorifying the events. Throughout the text there are several direct comments about the futility of war – the whole story of Sonny and the Wirima family illustrates this.
A huge amount of background research has gone into the writing of this novel and the way the facts have been combined with the human story, including effective use of te reo, has created a very admirable result.

Review by Norma D. Plum

Title: Who Disturbs the Kūkupa?
Author: Kayleen M. Hazlehurst
Publisher: Blue Dragonfly Press
ISBN: 9780473669317
RRP: $45
Available: bookshops

Heartfelt accounts from immigrants

29/5/2023

Southern Celts, Stories from Kiwis of Scottish and Irish descent in Aotearoa
by Celine Kearney

Southern Celts is the result of Celine Kearney’s PhD research to discover how Celtic ancestry impacts the lives of New Zealanders today. Over six years, she conducted a series of interviews from the Far North to Southland, speaking to a kiltmaker and a whisky importer, artists, sportspeople including a curler, writers, a clergyman, educators… In common, they have Scottish and/or Irish ancestry.
How has that shaped their lives and how does it still influence their lives, even after many decades in Aotearoa New Zealand? The individual interview transcripts often reveal common threads such as a love of Celtic music and poetry; memories of close-knit family get-togethers with cousins and grandparents, and cultural-comfort foods; family traditions of story-telling.
Religion and politics have inevitably played a significant role in the families of many of the interviewees. Some of them were brought up in staunchly Protestant homes while others were very Catholic. Astonishing is the experience of a Catholic who, when interviewed for a job in a Dunedin museum, is asked if he can put his Catholic faith aside to do justice to the city’s Scottish Presbyterian history.
The families range from those who seldom spoke of politics to those who were very politicised, and recount the experiences of ancestors who escaped hanging in exchange for deportation or who immigrated to New Zealand as political exiles.
A thought-provoking part of the transcripts relates to the spiritual-cultural relationship between Celts and Māori. Many interviewees spoke of a feeling of kinship and a strong connection to Māori art and traditional crafts. Oration, extended families and ways of dealing with death are discussed as shared features of both cultures.
At the same time, there is a consistent undercurrent of detachment from England. Hostility is muted but colonisation and subjugation were major drivers of emigration. From the Highland Clearances to the colonisation of Ireland, there is frequent mention of Scottish and Irish immigrants having been oppressed and forced off their land. Interesting debates then ensue as to whether, upon reaching Aotearoa New Zealand, they, as the newly-oppressed, then became the oppressors in their relation to Māori.
In Southern Celts the interviewees’ transcripts seem to be presented in a natural, largely unedited state, so that it is as if the interviewee is really speaking to us. This makes for very heartfelt accounts. It also results in some sweeping generalisations which discerning readers may wish to question or investigate further.
Because it is a selection of unconnected transcripts, Southern Celts is a book to dip into, to read slowly and to digest the opinions and experiences of each interviewee. With an estimation that today over half a million New Zealanders have Irish ancestry (figures for Scottish ancestry are not provided) Southern Celts is a book in which many readers will recognise their own families, while others will gain a deeper understanding of why many of us are the way we are.

Review by Carolyn McKenzie

Title: Southern Celts
Author: Celine Kearney
Publisher: Mary Egan Publishing
ISBN: 9780473634117
RRP: $40
Available: bookhops

Cleverly crafted novel

20/5/2023

The Spanish Garden
by Cliff Taylor

A cleverly crafted and engaging novel built around real events that shaped our modern world.
Sidney does not really wish to celebrate his one hundredth birthday as he struggles to come to terms with the choices he has made in his life and some of the choices that were made for him.
Passionate, well-meaning, and sometimes foolish decisions flit in and out of his ageing memory. Doubt, guilt, regret.
At the same time, to the south of Barcelona, there has been a discovery of a victim of the Spanish Civil War, buried with a silver locket. Taylor skillfully creates a tale that ultimately conjoins both events.
I consumed this novel in three sittings and found it a real page-turner. A fictional life story made real with interesting, subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, political commentary. Also made real by the creation of a centenarian who is really not sure if he has ever done the right thing in his long life, if he has ever loved or been loved.
Truly enjoyable read, Thank you Mr Taylor. I would recommend this work to anyone who appreciates the art of storytelling.

Review by George Hollinsworth

Title: The Spanish Garden
Author: Cliff Taylor
Publisher: Quentin Wilson Publishing
ISBN: 9781991103116
RRP: $37.50
Available: bookshops

Spirit of the time captured

12/5/2023

Howling in the Wilderness
by Diana Harris

This book tells the story of Henry and Marianne Williams, who arrive in the Bay of Islands in 1823, as agents of the Church Missionary Society. This time of early Maori-European contact was not what it later became.
For one thing, the amount of established authority in the land was inversely proportional to the degree of licentiousness in places such as Kororareka and for another, the number of Europeans in NZ wasn’t great enough to worry Maori — unlike, say, the 1860s. This point is well made in the opening chapter, when Henry is physically threatened by a chief intent upon plundering ‘his’ Pakeha’s largesse in what sociologist have come to term a ‘Cargo Cult’.
Like many other members of the CMS, the Williams came with high-minded intentions of bringing the Gospel of Peace to the Māori people, and of stopping internecine warfare by showing the tribes ‘a better way’. In their conviction that the indigenes would welcome the Word with both hands, and with no concept that it was alien to Maori because it wasn’t to the missionaries, the Williams fell foul of customs such as utu and muru, and hence had an uphill task in inducing Maori to ‘reform’.
In fact, even the section dedicated to Henry Williams’ selfless work in transcribing the Treaty of Waitangi shows that the infrastructure of the CMS was, as befitted a product of the 19th century, a Eurocentric one. In truth, the whole concept of the Treaty was alien to a subsistence warrior — as witnessed by Williams’ struggle to put European legalese into forms that would mean something to the Maori. Something, indeed, that continues to bedevil us today.
They persevered, however, and their altruism and dedication won some sort of praiseworthy reputation and following among the tribes of the Bay of Islands, even ensuring tolerance from the fearsome Hongi Hika.
However, Maori were not the only opposition. The author doesn’t gloss over the failings and shortcomings of other members of the CMS, for some had an eye, if not to the main chance, then at least to land acquisition for the maintenance of themselves and their families, and not even Henry was immune to that. Such activity offered ammunition to whites disaffected by missionary efforts to protect Maori from the ravages of settler land-hunger, and the motivations of the New Zealand Company provide a case in point. Also, even among the CMS, jealousies existed that were quite alien to notions of Christian brotherhood.
Diana Harris has captured admirably the spirit of a time that has largely escaped the attention of historians more concerned with the Wars of the Sixties. She shows clearly the at-times slender threshold between peace and war and makes us very aware that the European founders got by very much by leave of the dominant power in the land. She also shows in fine style the religious fervour of Victorian people; something which arguably hung around to shape much of the upbringing of a generation of Kiwis in the 20th century.
Looking at the length of the book, one wonders whether or not there might have been a greater degree of selection, for there are passages much more dedicated to ‘telling’ than ‘showing’, and in these places the text reads more like a textbook than a novel. This impression is only accentuated by a comprehensive and formal bibliography.
Overall, however, Howling in the Wilderness indicates that the years of its gestation were years well spent, and Ms Harris deserves congratulation both for her dedication and its product.

Review by MJ Burr

Title: Howling in the Wilderness
Author: Diana Harris
Publisher: Mary Egan Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-99-117981-4
RRP: $33.00
Available: bookshops

Story of many New Zealanders

5/5/2023

The New Zealand Dream 1, The seeds are sown
The New Zealand Dream 2, Growth and destruction
by Sheila

These two books are the story of a young woman growing up in New Zealand that tourists do not see. It is the side of society that social workers see and it has to be the cause of many a social worker’s heart ache.
I just wish that those in decision making roles could wave a magic wand and give children opportunities that enable them to take part in society feeling as though they belonged and felt safe.
However, it is not like that. Instead, we have young people, like Sheila, uneducated, struggling to find their place and drifting from one crisis to the next.

This is Sheila’s story. It is, she tells us, creative non-fiction. She warns us it is not an uplifting story where the writer lives happily ever after…although we are told the pattern of self-destruction (set in train in Book 1) which we see in Book 2, changes in Book Three. I hope we do because all the pain she experiences is hopefully going to lead somewhere positive.
I found myself despairing at times as she kept looping back to old patterns and behaviours.
This series is worth reading in order to understand how early mistakes can compound and build on themselves until it seems only a miracle can reverse a downward trend. Perhaps that is coming in Book Three.
This is the story of many New Zealanders. I give Sheila five stars for having the courage to talk about her life in a way that lifts the veil and reveals the struggle many people experience.

Review by Suraya Dewing

Title: The New Zealand Dream, The seeds are sown
The New Zealand Dream, Growth and destruction
Author: Sheila
Available: Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08HRNG8YP
or direct from elisebrooke771@gmail.com with free author signing and postage within NZ.

Novel entertains and challenges

4/4/2023

Broken is Beautiful
by Jane Shearer

ON the last but one page, the writer, Jane Shearer, has written Thank you for reading Broken is Beautiful. I hope you enjoyed it.
Yes, Jane, I did enjoy it.
Broken is Beautiful is a novel about a group of mismatched people who have come together for various reasons to work through their obsessions in the self-help group Obsessives Associated.
Obsessions vary from tattoos to doll collections, Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a very obscure desire to eat chalk and plaster board. Our main character, Julie, likes to mend broken objects but until she is forced to restart her business to pay her mortgage or suffer foreclosure she seems to wander through life with no real purpose.
All in the group have life stories that emerge through the telling which lead to these obsessions.
Throw into the mix the Christchurch earthquakes, COVID and the lock down, the day-to-day feelings around the vaccination debate and we have a fabulous insight of what it was like to live in New Zealand during that time. The facts were so accurate I felt as though I had gone back into that time. Remember the teddy bears we saw in the windows of houses as we went for our daily walks? And we all remember those 1pm updates on the television, don't we.
The novel is written with short chapters which I like, and the cover is beautifully designed. Whether we all like mended objects is a matter of personal taste but it makes a good story that flows well.
Readers can sit back with a sigh and be prepared to be entertained and sometimes challenged as the book unfolds to a satisfactory conclusion.

Review by Merilyn Mary

Title: Broken is Beautiful
Author: Jane Shearer
Publisher: 3Eyes Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-473-66988 (paperback); 978-0-473-66989 (epub)
RRP: $38.00
Available: bookshops

Subtle but important message in picture book

27/3/2023

Mama’s Chickens
by Michelle Worthington
& Nicky Johnston

On the surface it’s a sweet little story, but it has serious intent. The dedication at the front gives the clue –
For all the mamas who feel broken but are glued together with love.
What happens when the primary carer needs care herself? Through the simple and straightforward text by Michelle Worthington, children are subtly prompted to relate with understanding.
Anyone who has kept hens will recognize the realistic chooky postures in Nicky Johnston’s pictures. There are other good touches here too that children will like – a boy hanging on a revolving clothesline trying to get momentum to ride around.
There’s more to the illustrations than this though – they are more than just pictures to entertain and amuse little ones. See how the children and the hens are paired within them and you’ll appreciate how they are cleverly designed so the hens represent the children – Mama’s human chicks.
The actual situation of a mother suffering from developing dementia will be fully relevant to only a few households with young children, but the wider message of family relationships underpinned by acceptance and love should be universal.

Review by Emily R

Title: Mama’s Chickens
Author: Michelle Worthington; illustrator Nicky Johnston
Publisher: EK books
ISBN: 9781922539458
RRP: $24.99
Available: bookshops

Stories offer something for everyone

18/3/2023

Transit Lounge: Stories
by JCL Purchase

This collection of nineteen short stories in 260 pages and almost 113,000 words offers something for everyone in the process of demonstrating the interconnectedness of people in a very small society. It does this through an ambitious and largely successful decision to have characters appear and reappear at different stages of their journey.
It needs to be said at the outset that Purchase is an absolute master of description; settings and backgrounds are laid out so that the reader can feel the wind, hear the birds, or get out of the way as hard-driven cars crunch across the gravel. This is not one-dimensional, for she is equally adept at describing people— a terminally-ill drug addict is described as vividly as his girlfriend’s  ‘crooked smile’, while the account of Frank’s living arrangements in Maungaturoto evoke more than a slight wince. The author’s superb eye for character is supported by deep analysis of their psyche, and the result is a cast of players that are entirely credible for by far the most part.
  As befits such a widely-drawn cast, the story settings are themselves eclectic, but most of them concern, in some way, the twin polarities of truth and falsehood. The opening story, for example, is that of an Elvis impersonator who is very good at what he does. However, it is impossible to miss the essential falsity of his life, all the way from the fact that his living is earned from imitation to the fact that part of his stage presence is a large, false penis. And he never quite solves the questions raised by his mother’s assertion that the real Elvis was his father.
  Similarly, the verbosity of the narrator in ‘Apple of My Eye’ evokes the Shakespearean comment, “Methinks the man doth protest too much” and one wonders quite what aspect of her relationship with young Bobby is hidden within her lavish paean of praise for him.
  Other stories owing much to falsehood include the addict mentioned above; a mother living her life through her errant daughter; a policeman owning every prejudice in the book who determines to eschew personal weakness, to focus on his job, to show leadership, to put his personal problems ‘on the back burner’—so that he can get back to Auckland by the weekend when the All Blacks are playing a test. Other stories in the same vein include the teacher who, in tennis terms, rather walks around her backhand in talking herself out of enforcing classroom standards upon closed-minded students who are something more than mildly bolshie, because she is tired, spent and seeking a quiet life.
  While reality cuts in through the story of a capitalist who uses poor people’s labour to enrich himself and an ‘illegal’ nurse who tolerates sexual abuse for the sake of keeping a job, it’s not all negative. There is grim humour in the story of the difference in radicalism between ‘Think Big’ New Zealand and the Third Reich, and the power of love between two siblings, the products of shocking childhood neglect and abuse. Also showing the power of love is ‘Golden Girl’ in which a neglected teenager proves to an aptly-named Lazarus that his existence did not die with his wife, and that he still has a good and useful purpose.
  The author’s use of register is also outstanding, and the stories ‘Queen of the Night’ and ‘Under the Pohutukawa Tree’ indicate mastery of her ability to convey dignity and verisimilitude through tone.
  Are there drawbacks? Not many. Only the story ‘Lucked Out’ disappoints, with its dialogue so redolent of characters in a cowboy movie, and a most unlikely fight scene in the cockpit of a helicopter in flight, for not even ‘Muhammad Ali in his prime could have managed a right uppercut while flying left seat, as one does in aircraft.
  But these are small things, and detract not at all from the quality of JCL Purchase’s searching examinations of the vagaries of the human spirit and the relationships to which they lead. From the stories of others to the autobiographical ‘The Journey’, this is a well-constructed work which will cause the reader to re-visit it as one compelling thought after another kicks in.

Review by MJ Burr

Title: Transit Lounge: Stories
Author: JCL Purchase
Publisher: Lasavia Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-9911605-4-6
RRP: $29.99
Available: bookshops; booksellers, or from the publisher 09-372 6500, rowan@lasaviapublishing.com

Splendid collection of images

9/3/2023

Say I Do This: Poems 2018-2022
by C. K. Stead

This book is a splendid collection of images of death and dying – not the activity itself (no midwinter earthquakes, no incontinence, no nasty surprises) but an acceptance of death as a fact of life. How much the author believes that is his own business; he has given us a variety of shapes and sizes from which to enjoy drawing our own conclusions.
The collection is in three sections: Home, Away, and ...and Friends. The author roams happily in these territories using haiku, tercets, whatever verse style fits the thought of the day, all of them elegantly done. ‘Poem in October (with shades of Dylan Thomas)’ ends the Home section. The first of its six verses makes it pretty clear what’s going on:
It was my ninetieth year to heaven
   woke to my hearing from Hobson Bay neighbourhood
   signals of early fruit on grapevine and plum tree
   and down on the mud-flat our migrant seabirds returning
   while in nearby gardens blackbird and thrush were harassed
   from nests in carport and hedge by their thankless offspring,
   my morning walk
   to take me abroad in a shower of all my days –
   Becoming, Being, and then Fading
   thirty years each, but the Becoming had been slow
   (‘Don’t peak too early’) and overlapped with Being
   as Being slid into the Fade. (pp.31-32)

Away immediately explodes into the wider world: Russell Square, Menton, Afghanistan, religion, Judas, national anthems, the death of Orpheus, flirtations and observations, Cavafy, Simón Bolívar.  The section’s opening poem –  ‘What Next?’ – ends with:
   and time to say my goodbyes to Hammersmith ...
   It could have been a moment of real regret

   and tearful verse – but it brought me to this page
   to say ‘OK that’s done, so what comes next?’ –

   never mind you know quite well there is no Next,
   that next is Nothing. Lean into it, as into a wind.    (p. 35)

... and Friends covers even more territory. Names noted in first grab: Kay, John Berryman, Gerald Murnane, Ian, Roger and Wystan, Keri Hulme, Kevin Ireland, the list goes on. This one is ‘For Fleur Adcock’ (p. 62, quoted in full):
      You teach us how many poems are hiding
   in a small precinct, in the short circuit
   of a garden close to a wood –
   how many small animals, insects and birds
   with their quirks, their colours and behaviours –
   never mind memory that other octogenarian
   storehouse and stumbling-block
   for the sensibility that lives at the last by language
   and the gifts of friendship
   may die alone leaving the front door open.

And at the end of the day? Gathered on the pier, we are watching a stately swan boat start its trip across the Hauraki Gulf, past the yellow buoy and into the unknown – we may hope to witness a return trip, but this is not for us to plan. In the meantime we are left standing by a warehouse of metaphor, all of it a joy to have on hand in a world where people may run out of oxygen but never of words.

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: Say I Do This: Poems 2018-2022
Author: C. K. Stead
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781776710997
RRP: $35
Available: bookshops

Fast paced historical novel

24/2/2023

Dead Before Curfew
by Jenny Harrison

Dead Before Curfew is an absorbing, fast paced novel. It is written in the present tense with new developments coming rapidly, one after another.
Set during the Second World War, the main protagonist, Matthew Flint, is a British soldier with a flair for languages. Flint’s poorly trained and equipped regiment is posted to France. They expect the war to be over by Christmas but are caught off guard when German tanks break through the allied defences. Flint tries to get away but is eventually captured by the German army. The allies retreat through Dunkirk but the prisoners face a long gruelling haul as they are transported by train to a Prisoner of War camp in Poland. This is where the main story begins.
Matthew Flint is assigned to a vehicle maintenance workshop, where his ability to speak fluent German is noticed by the Polish mechanic he is working with. He manages to escape, and the mechanic arranges temporary shelter in various people’s homes, until he and other escapees can be smuggled out of Poland. Flint develops a great regard for the Polish people and decides not to leave but to help the local people and their “underground army”. He gains their confidence, carrying messages at first but over time is given increasingly difficult and dangerous assignments. He also meets and falls in love with Olivia, who is doing equally hazardous work, rescuing Jewish children from the infamous Warsaw ghetto.
The story includes a lot of characters, many of whom do not survive very long, and the reader has to keep alert as to who is who. Flint goes under several Polish aliases.
Both Flint and Olivia are well drawn and empathetic characters, who take great personal risks for the sake of others. The atmosphere of fear in the city under occupation is well defined – the presence of an overbearing police force, ordinary people walking in the streets with eyes downcast, the scarcity of life’s necessities. Despite all this, there is the generosity of people left with little or nothing, risking all for the sake of strangers as well as fellow citizens. Yet many still lived in hope, as represented by the sunflower, the symbol shown on the book’s cover.
The events and atrocities described took place over 78 years ago. Many would wish them consigned to history. But the atrocities did happen and are too terrible to be forgotten. Dead Before Curfew should help ensure they are not.

Review by Ian Clarke

Title: Dead Before Curfew
Author: Jenny Harrison
Publisher: Lamplighter Press
ISBN: 979-8-8353-0396-0
RRP: $32.99
Available: Piako Stationers, Te Aroha, Tea Rose Crafts, Te Aroha, Alo Gifts Morrinsville. Also from author at www.jennyharrison-author.com