Blog Posts - Flaxroots Productions

Horrors of war intensified

14/6/2024

Despatches
by Lee Murray

Lee Murray’s book Despatches is set in 1915 in the Dardanelles during the tragic Gallipoli campaign. This is a world where young soldiers, untrained and undersupplied, are fighting another useless battle that will change nothing in the end. And because we know the outcome, we sit in helpless horror.
But there is more. The whole story simmers on the edge of those shaded borders where reality slips into the nightmarish maw of unreality. It twists and threads itself in and around our consciousness until we are not sure what is real and what is nightmare.
Cassius Smythe is a journalist, reporting on the battle for a London newspaper. He hears stories of razor-jawed or slimy worm-like monsters both in the sea and on land who swallow soldiers whole. We are left wondering if they are real or if they are from the distraught and distracted minds of men, “many of whom were barely out of short trousers” and who are facing the unspeakable.
Smythe asks a padre, ‘do you believe Satan is at work?’ The padre answers, “Satan loves war”, and we wonder if evil can manifest solidly on a battlefield or if young men, faced with true awfulness, try to explain the events in the only language they know and understand. Monsters, the bogeyman under the bed. Is there something lurking or is it their imagination? We, the reader, must work that out for ourselves.
The author does not spare readers with her description of dead and dying on the battlefield, the sodden mess of bodies of those young men, our brothers and our sons. Indeed, she paints a brilliantly evocative picture of war and the despair, grief, determination and the pure basic heroism of ordinary men. That we are also faced with an irrational state of paranoia only ups the ante.
I closed the book and left Gallipoli wondering what the heck was that all about, real or frightening vision. And that, I suspect, is exactly what Murray wanted.

Review by J A Harrison

Title: Despatches
Author: Lee Murray
Publisher: PS Publishing, Absinthe imprint, UK.
ISBN: 978-1-80394-322-0, 978-1-80394-323-7
RRP: GBP 18
Available: print and ebook from PS Publishing: https://pspublishing.co.uk
Print book in NZ from Squabbling Sparrows Press, July 2024.
Details on author’s website: https://www.leemurray.info/despatches

Lovely package is great value

6/6/2024

My Nature Stories / Aku Paki Taiao
by Yvonne Morrison, Julia Crouth, Kāterina Te Heikōkō Mataira,
Pānia Papa, Jenny Cooper

It will be a very lucky child who gets this present when I pass it on.
There are six books packaged in this attractive and useful jute kete – three stories each told in both English and Te Reo. Two are by author Yvonne Morrison – Down in the Forest, and Out in the Moana. As well as featuring land and sea dwellers of Aotearoa, they are learning-to-count books – one kiwi and sea lion/kekeno, two ruru and dolphins/popoto, up to ten tuatara and octopus/wheke. In each case the repetitive format of the text highlights a particular attribute of the animal – the weta scratches, huhu squirm, and kea steal!
In addition, the numbers of young sea creatures have been matched with correct information regarding young and parental roles.
In their Te Reo translations – I Roto i te Ngahere nā Kāterina Te Heikōkō Mataira, and I Waho, i te Moana nā Pānia Papa – the same patterning of the text has been followed. Though the rhyming scheme of the English originals isn’t used, the rhythm of the verses is poetic.
The third pair, After Dark /Kia Heke te Pō, are by Julia Crouth and Kāterina Te Heikōkō Mataira, and give more details of the habits of nocturnal forest creatures of Aotearoa – kiwi, weta, Archey’s frog/pepeketua, bat/pekapeka, tuatara, kauri snail/pūpūrangi, ruru, forest gecko/mokomoko ngahere, kākāpō.
The illustrations, repeated in the English and Te Reo versions, are page-sized, detailed, colourful and active. These creatures, whether of the forest or sea, are leaping, hopping, swooping, sliding, singing, fishing, snapping, gripping. Jenny Cooper is the illustrator of two, and Julia Crouth is both author and artist.
What a lovely package these six books in their kete make, and at a price that’s not much more than one of this size, it’s great value!
The publishing team at Scholastic will, rightly, be proud of their work. Ka pai ō mahi.

Review by Bronwyn Elsmore

Title: My Nature Stories / Aku Paki Taiao
Authors: Yvonne Morrison, Julia Crouth, Kāterina Te Heikōkō Mataira, Pānia Papa; illustrators: Jenny Cooper, Julia Crouth
Publisher: Scholastic NZ
ISBN: 9781775438649
RRP: $29.99
Available: bookshops

Work of a really really good poet

30/5/2024

Hopurangi – Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka
by Robert Sullivan

‘Maramataka’ is the lunar calendar: Robert Sullivan picks it up just before the end of one cycle and follows it on a couple more, writing at least one poem each day.  The poems are attached to a particular night, given an individual title as well as the night’s own name, assigned an energy level, and then printed in order of the calendar. This adds up to a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation between the poet and his world, some of it descriptive, some of it asides and meditations.
Sullivan’s earlier Star Waka is impressive for the way he collects/creates a huge variety of separate voices and then puts them together so that they reinforce each other, coming across as a mega-voice. I think he has done something similar here, using poems that add up to being the voice of one completed person in all his individual facets.
The first poem (p.24) from the calendar series is presented below, with the heading and format in the style common to all the calendar poems. And it is in the tone that all the poems dip into to some degree or another.
Mutuwhenua: Te Awa e Rere Nei
     (((((((Medium Energy)))))))
       For Dad

This evening we practised our waiata-ā-ringa with their
   composer,
   Waiariki, at Puketeraki Marae. It was healing at Karitāne

   to hear the beautiful words and learn the moves that speak
   of our places of home, Hikaroroa, Pahatea, Ka Iwi a Weka. It’s
   okay

   to make mistakes and smile about them with others
   who are your relations, and just to carry on carrying the airs

   and graces of our whānau nui. Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha,
   Rapuwai, Kāti Huirapa. I’ve eaten shellfish and muttonbirds

   in the weekend (at Hone Tuwhare’s) and my fill of happiness
   at Puketeraki. This kai is kōrero, from our whenua too.

The collection grows from here, a huge variety of topics and styles. At random: ‘The pūrerehu walk under’ (p.36) is a casual observation of butterflies deciding to come in the house.  ‘The last time we saw each other’ (p.87) is a reminiscence dedicated to and shared with American poet Joy Harjo. ‘Kōauau-Te Wāhi Ngaro’ (p.83) gives us some hard-core musicology. ‘Wet-nosed’ (p.43) is one lone haiku. ‘I drove home last night’ (p.70) alerts us as being ‘((Low Energy, so chillax))’. And more...
Reading through the collection feels like reading through the journal of someone who knows exactly where he’s at and feels easy with it. The voices work together into a complete individual. This is of course because of the content, but also the design. Almost all the poems have a maramataka day label, a title of their own, and an energy level, centred above the text, so turning the pages isn’t the total change of scenery it is in most poetry books. From the beginning, we feel that we are in a carefully designed structure. To me, the typeface also helps glue the text together. I’m of a generation who associates Courier with typewriters – and hence perhaps is a hint that the text is a work in progress, or at the very least, open to change.
The language is wonderful. I don’t think I’ve ever read a poetry book in which te reo and English mooched along so comfortably together. The words and phrases bubble to the surface in whichever language they happen to be bubbling in – there is no sense of a translation going on in either direction, and thus no need to decide who’s in charge.
This may be because Sullivan doesn’t restrict te reo to one major noun per English sentence (as seems to be fashionable). This may be because the thoughts he is expressing aren’t dependent on coming from a particular direction/language and on being identified as such.
And it may be because he is a really really good poet who has written a really really good book.

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: Hopurangi – Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka
Author: Robert Sullivan
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 978-1-77671-122-2
RRP: $29.99
Available: bookshops

Novel based on true story

22/5/2024

Death of a Countess
by Jenny Harrison

It wasn’t until I reached the end of this book and read the author’s note that I realized this novel is more than a work of fiction. The murder around which the story is crafted was a real case that took place close to 70 years ago and has remained unsolved.
Jenny Harrison apologizes she was “never able to find enough evidence to write a non-fiction account” of the murder. Top marks to her for the way she has researched the time and the background so fully, and brought it back to public notice, because the background of the real life event is still important.
It’s also harrowing.
Set in 1957, just a dozen years after the end of WW2, the case to be examined by English Detective Andrew Perry involves delving into details of the inhumanity associated with Auschwitz, Ravensbruck and elsewhere. The subtitle, “Post-war London should have been safe. It wasn’t,” shows the violence and horror didn’t stop there.
Even though I have read much about the background subject previously, there were new facts to be discovered in the reading of this book.
Though Death of a Countess is more than just a detective novel or whodunnit because of its depth, those who want to read on that level will also be rewarded.
Jenny Harrison is an excellent writer and the way she has presented fact, combined with perceptive fiction to produce this well-crafted novel is proof of her skill.

Review by Recenzent

Title: Death of a Countess
Author: Jenny Harrison
Publisher: Lamplighter Press
ISBN: Print edition: 978-0-473-68311-5 E-book edition: 978-0-473-6831-2
RRP: $32
Available: Amazon, Kindle, Piako Stationery Supplies, Te Aroha, or through the author's website www.jennyharrison-author.com

Kaikōura climax for crime novel

16/5/2024

Kaikōura Rendezvous
by Stephen Johnson

This novel is well named because the theme of the book is a rendezvous of many characters.
The human characters include Saffron an elderly Oxford professor with a witchlike ability to predict the passage of storms. A major player is Gita, a tropical cyclone relentlessly moving South and destined to smash into the tourist / fishing village of Kaikōura threatening the town and the nefarious plans evolving within it.
As time progresses the author provides brief updates on the progression of the numerous characters with their individual but interlocking motivations. This technique controls the format of the book as the reader rapidly moves between plot and sub plot caused by the motivations and diversity of the key players.
Within a motor home called Kwozzimoto reporters from Australia searching for a newsworthy story about the impending storm are in the process of uncovering an unexpected series of events with personal implications.
Meanwhile at sea a damaged Cypriot ship called the Hopline was carrying an additional small cargo that wouldn’t be found on any legal inventory. The ship’s master intended dropping this package where a Kaikōura fishing vessel named WOFTAM (Waste Of Fucking Time And Money) owned by a failed commercial fisherman would try to retrieve it and exchange it for a potential payment that would make sense of the remainder of his life. But a tropical cyclone is smashing into the coast with unprecedented ferocity and there’s a group of heavies in town. Others emerge with a more than casual interest in the cargo as well as an investigator, with a history, and a local police force inexperienced, and out of their depth, in dealing with the unfolding events.
As the title of the book implies these events converge to a final and fatal rendezvous in Kaikoura where the complexities and the numerous sub plots become resolved, for good or ill, within a crime based underworld few of us would ever experience in real life. Those interested in exploring these clandestine stories where motivations and personalities clash would probably enjoy “Kaikōura Rendezvous”.
The book is printed in paperback and has been written by an author who clearly knows the area where the novel is set.

Review by Peter Thomas

Title: Kaikōura Rendezvous
Author: Stephen Johnson
Publisher: Clan Destine Press
ISBN: 9781922904454
RRP: $36.95
Available: Paperback and eBook; Clan Destine Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Mighty Ape, The Little Book Shop

3 new voices with interesting spread

9/5/2024

AUP New Poets 10
by Tessa Keenan, romesh dissanayake, Sadie Lawrence; Anne Kennedy (ed)

AUP (here aka Anne Kennedy) has again given us three new voices with an interesting and entertaining spread: one tending towards immersion in the present and blame of the past, one with a multifaceted awareness of language and geographical differences, and one of almost physical revulsion towards a world which gives young people no reassuring ideas about what is coming next.
Tessa Keenan lives in a two-piece world, one in which the past is as significant as the present. She looks from one side to the other – perhaps for patterns? The poem ‘Celesta’ is a universal pattern, an alphabetic poem, which brings us up short at the end with an ending which is not definite at all, forcing us to look to the future. And in ‘Some Other Pā’ we hear:
I map myself.
Even when I’m my stillest, I’m always running between two towns, two maps.
We are people in motion now. We go towards and away from every home. (p 19)
Her poems seem to compare two different stories, both plausible. She tends to speak from one place at a time, but from that perspective, she is looking for alternatives, different levels of meaning, some of them foisted on us by time itself and some of them gratuitously added by ourselves.
romesh dissanayake, however, is a world traveller both geographically and linguistically. While he easily recognises the chaos this entails, he doesn’t seem to find it disconcerting.  In ‘Natasha says we shouldn’t heat our curries too high in the microwave’ (p 45), he ends:
we can do what we damn please
     because this is our poem
     about being on holiday
         just try and catch us and
         like free roaming stray dogs
       we’ll duck out stage right
       whenever we like
But not disconcerting is not the same as understandable. The vase-shaped concrete poem ‘Two gentle strangers’ uses four different writing systems – read the book! (p 34) – to describe the existential impact of not only travelling from A to B but also of arriving, possibly unbroken. The fact that the poet is not thrashing around in misery does not mean that that his worlds are either comprehensible or easy. The geographic spread symbolises the vast cultural differences he is up against.
Sadie Lawrence speaks from the middle of a group. Her titles, such as ‘All Teenagers are Tapestries’ (quoted below) or ‘Girls Against Minimalism >:-)’, focus on the blood and chaos that comes with being a female and teenaged:
       (girlhood is made of blood
       and it blooms just the same) (it spills
       down your thighs, stems from your nose)
       (sharing like teenage girls (p 60)
It’s a very physical world she lives in, full of blood blood blood and all girls together (no ‘young women’ here), and she runs her hands through the physical world as though it were her lovers’ hair. She sometimes leaves aside her revulsion towards her body but not for long. Of the three poets in this collection, Lawrence seems to be most consistent in her views, though the views are all consistent with a horrible scary world – a world seen from an age when the future is totally invisible (but inescapably in front of you, like it or not). She seems to sum it up here, in a very universal ‘heartbreak (living next to the kindergarten)’ (p 70):
       the anger at being perceived as small
       at odds with the knowledge that we are/
       we sing with terror and howl with grief/
       all we have is noise/

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: AUP New Poets 10
Author: Tessa Keenan, romesh dissanayake, Sadie Lawrence
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781776711239
RRP: $29.99
Available: bookshops

Novel believable and informative

1/5/2024

Call of the Kookaburra
by Elaine Blick

When I started this book I discovered it follows two others I haven’t read. But that proved no problem as the story is complete in itself, and the previous stories are revealed easily.
It’s early in the nineteenth century when two young woman return ‘home’ to England from Sydney where they have spent several years in the very young New South Wales colonial settlement. Jane, who is the main focus of the novel, was a teacher at a school for children of former convicts freed to become settlers by the reforms of the Macquarie government.
But it is not too long before the pair, now finding life in England too restrictive, go back to Sydney with the intention of making it their permanent home. Hence the title.
Contrasts between the two countries, their social situations and the different forms of government are woven into the human stories of the women, their friends, their changing lives and loves.
“Often the conversation would turn to ‘home’ and their life in England….
Shaw was quite definite about the rightness of this decision. ‘This is a land of
opportunity,’ he said many times. ‘What future do most people have in England?...
The human stories with their complications fit well into the setting, in terms of time and geography. A basis of sound research make them believable and informative. In this easy way I learned much about life in the new colony.
The book is well designed with an attractive cover and clear type in a size that makes reading easy. Clear sentence construction also makes it accessible to a range of readers.
The back cover tells me this is the Author’s thirteenth book. I may well look for some of her others.

Review by Norma D. Plum

Title: Call of the Kookaburra
Author: Elaine Blick
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-68235-952- 5
RRP: US$15.50
Available: Amazon; elaineblickbooks.com

Travel book full of interest

26/4/2024

The Antipodean Express: A journey by train from New Zealand to Spain
by Gregory Hill

This is the most interesting book I have read for a long time. It’s the story of two Kiwi musicians, Anne and Gregory, who found the exact latitude and longitude of their home in Wellington and then set out to journey to the corresponding latitude in Spain in the Northern Hemisphere.
Furthermore, they resolved to travel there by train. So from the Northerner in New Zealand, across Australia via the Ghan, then through SE Asia, to China, then connecting with Russia railway to Moscow and Western Europe, finally to Spain and their goal.
There are two features that make this book stand out. One is the incredibly detailed notes Gregory took, enabling him to recall almost every meal on the journey. Second is the superior quality of the paper used, which allows many full colour pictures, which I enjoyed immensely. The notes in particular must have taken hours at the end of what often must have been a very tiring day.
It is not a traditional travelogue, but is very easy reading and full of interest. Many details make fascinating reading; one in particular is how Anne (who is a violinist with NZSO), took a cut down neck of a violin, so she could practice her fingering. Another is the travel agent Monkey Business who arranged all their travel throughout China and Russa, and who always seemed to have a driver named Sasha.
The book is complete with numerous maps, and a good index.
The world has changed dramatically since Anne and Gregory made their trip, and it would probably be impossible now.
I can respect the work that must have gone into compiling the notes and index, and I am happy to recommend the book to any reader.

Review by Harold Bernard

Title: The Antipodean Express: A journey by train from New Zealand to Spain
Author: Gregory Hill
Publisher: Exisle Publishing
ISBN: 9781921497155
RRP: $44.99
Available: bookshops

Victorian Dunedin portrayed in novel

10/4/2024

Turbulent Threads
by Karen McMillan

Karen McMillan has captured the 1890s in Victorian Dunedin in an engaging historical novel which is clearly very well researched. Through it run threads of the suffrage movement; betrayal, heartbreak and love; wealth and poverty; and the plight of immigrants.
When Greer Gillies is suddenly orphaned in 1890, she must leave her poor but happy home in the Devil’s Half-Acre area of Dunedin and find work. She is grateful for a post as a maid in opulent Larnach Castle and arrives there with few possessions apart from her violin and sewing machine.
McMillan’s account of life upstairs is well-grounded in the wealthy but ultimately tragic Larnach family story.
The life that Greer enters downstairs is far from her dreams of working in fashion, literature and music, but she is surrounded by kind and supportive people and finds solace in playing her violin. Throughout the book this instrument and the sewing machine will both play important roles in Greer’s future. A playlist at the end of the book will be appreciated by lovers of violin and piano music.
Thus, fact and fiction are interwoven, not only at the Castle but also back in the Devil’s Half-Acre where, on her days off, Greer befriends a Lebanese immigrant family and the Chinese businessman Charles (Choie) Sew Hoy (1836-1901). Benedix Hallenstein, (1835-1905) founder of the clothing chain which still bears his name, also makes a cameo appearance.
As the story unfolds, we gain an insight into the fervour and ferment of the last decade of the 19th century. We follow the growth of women’s campaign to gain the right to vote, and celebrate their victory, although given Dunedin’s prominent role in the suffrage movement, I felt more of the story could have revolved around this unique event.
The 1890s was a decade when determined women were able to pursue their own ambitions and we follow Greer and her friend Jamelie George into their own high-end dressmaking business. In this they both realise long-held dreams.
Then as now, there were often prejudices against non-European immigrants, and a fear of their differentness. Turbulent Threads explores the lot of the Lebanese and Chinese communities, highlighting how the Devil’s Half-Acre was a close-knit and supportive community for them in the face of outside misconceptions.
There are scoundrels in Turbulent Threads, but there is also enduring friendship and eventually love for Greer and her friends at decade’s end.
Having read Turbulent Threads, I was prompted to find out more: this is surely the sign of a successful work of historical fiction. Reading the fascinating stories of the Larnach family and their castle, Charles Sew Hoy, the Devil’s Half-Acre, the founding Lebanese families and the Dunedin suffrage movement all added extra, thought-provoking depth to the people and places that feature in this book.

Review by Carolyn McKenzie

Title: Turbulent Threads
Author: Karen McMillan
Publisher: Quentin Wilson Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-99-110333-8
RRP: $37.99
Available: bookshops

Novel about world events

27/3/2024

The War Photographers
by SL Beaumont

The War Photographers is an interesting juxtaposition of life in WWII London and then four decades later during the fall of the Berlin wall, as seen through the eyes of Mae and her granddaughter Rachel. Rachel is a war photographer, inspired to take up photography by her grandmother’s stories of Jack, Rachel’s grandfather, who died during WWII. The narrative is told in alternating fashion by Mae and Rachel.
Jack is a New Zealander who ended up in a senior, secret, role in the British war effort. Mae is working at Bletchley Park in one of the teams decoding German messages, after the Enigma code was broken. Neither Jack nor Mae can talk about their work, including with each other. The crux of the story is the identity of a supposed traitor who is handing Bletchley Park information to the Russians. Jack is run over in the street, Mae is sure the traitor killed him and carries this story to New Zealand as she thinks her life is in danger so needs to escape London to protect the daughter with whom she is pregnant.
We meet granddaughter Rachel in New Zealand, about to return to her job in London where she is struggling to be recognised as a photographer in a male-dominated industry where the men get sent to the exciting jobs and women are kept safely at home. Rachel is determined to be a success and finds a way to get to Hungary, to see an early breakdown of the separation between east and west, and then to Berlin, where momentum to cross the divide is gathering. Rachel is determined to document events in Berlin and also use the opportunity of being in East Germany to discover who killed her grandfather as her grandmother believes the killer escaped there after the war. Rachel achieves both her goals, although what she discovers is not what she nor her grandmother hoped for.
The War Photographers is well researched and detailed in its descriptions of two major world events. The connection between the two women and their related experiences of political divides at different times make for an interesting story one wants to keep reading. Mae’s adherence to keeping the secrets of the war, many years afterwards, is a reminder of how strong people can be when they feel they are part of an important common cause.
In summary, the War Photographers is an entertaining and informative read about historical events which should not be forgotten, particularly at a time when the world is becoming more fractured.

Review by Jane Shearer

Title: The War Photographers
Author: SL Beaumont
Publisher: Paperback Writers Publishing
ISBN: 9780473696436
RRP: $32.99
Available: bookshops