Flaxroots Productions - FlaxFlower

Quartet for literary readers

13/11/2025

Angel Train – Four Novellas
by Elizabeth Smither

The novella form, in my opinion, should be selected by authors more often. Longer than a short story, much shorter than the novel, they can pack as much meaning and effect into this reduced form with the advantage of avoiding the padding, tedious detail, and surfeit of characters that detract from many longer works of fiction.
That comment aside, the four stories that make up this 216-page volume are not told simply. It is a quartet for literary readers; each is rich in language, imagery and allusion, with references to literature, art, music, theatre. They reflect the wide reading and knowledge of their author.
Each of the stories – between 43 and 59 pages – could have been lengthened to become novels, but this would have been to their detriment. What is told is enough.
They shift in their settings.
In ‘The Glass-sided Hearse’, an English author and a visiting New Zealand poet combine in a literary tour.
‘The Highwayman’, reveals the lives of the title character as well as three women in Tasmania – a bereaved shop owner, a single woman who nursed her mother to her end, and one who resumes a childhood friendship with the ‘highwayman’ after being seduced into crime by another man. Though I wondered about the timing of Kiwi-produced products instant coffee and hokey pokey ice cream appearing in this location in the period, the characters are well-drawn and believable.
Then in ‘Castle Nevers’ we’re in France, and England again, with twin tales of couples whose marriages are tested by his infidelity, with different outcomes.
In the fourth, ‘Kidnapped’, we come closer to home – to the village of Triple Peaks where the Northern Explorer stops for refreshments at the station café. Three regular visitors to the town find themselves intrigued by an unlikely couple next door.
Together, the stories have common themes of literacy, the reading of classics and poetry, relationships of different kinds, while favouring the lives of women. People portrayed are mainly honest, relying on good values to guide them on their journey through life; and here, I assume, lies the key to the unexplained title of the collection.
The novellas are not light reading, concentration is needed to avoid going back to recheck details. (Are Millie and Minnie the same person?) However, they are admirably crafted and worth any effort made.

Review by Bronwyn Elsmore

Title: Angel Train
Author: Elizabeth Smither
Publisher: Quentin Wilson
ISBN: 9781991103383
RRP: $37.50
Available: bookshops

Biography of idiosyncratic musician

23/10/2025

Chris Knox: Not Given Lightly
by Craig Robertson

If ever one could judge the content of the book by its cover it would have to be this biography of Chris Knox. First there is the photograph of the subject, involving one of Knox’s most impish and silly grins. Then there is the title, with “Not Given Lightly” being his most well-known song, devoted to the mother of his children. The inside of the cover has Knox’s cartoon depiction of life up to the age of 47: in this he draws a highlight in a box for each year of his life, but most seem to involve females.
So if Knox portrays himself as a musician and artist who does not take himself too seriously, do we get a book that should be taken seriously? It certainly is a comprehensive catalogue of all of Chris Knox’s artistic endeavours and pop cultural criticism. From the early 1980s to his catastrophic stroke in 2009, Knox cultivated an iconic status in local popular culture.
  Craig Robertson is an enthusiast for the Flying Nun label, and has diligently examined all of his subject’s prodigious recordings, it might even be an oeuvre. Robertson could have been more analytical, if not critical, but doesn’t really want to detract from the creativity. So what we get is an aesthetic package of Knox’s life and times.
  Robertson’s main interest is obviously the music, especially with Knox being a key player in the Dunedin sound, and a major figure in the Flying Nun Records story. Knox is indeed a Southern man, having grown up in Invercargill, and gravitating to the cold Dunedin student flats that spawned the ‘indie rock’ that became iconic. Knox was a punk with attitude in The Enemy; an effective songwriter and frontman for Toy Love; and the mainstay of the duo Tall Dwarfs with long-time collaborator Alec Bathgate. But this is not the same as being a professional musician. Robertson quotes Simon Morris, then working for Radio With Pictures, saying in 1982 that the Dunedin music was “badly played through horrible equipment.” It was, of course, seen as ‘underground’, and was not intended to be fully professional, but just being “interesting and alive” doesn’t make it artistically successful.
  Knox had always seen his “shambling amateurism” as a virtue, in contrast to slick professionalism, but he still had to make a living. And his timing was good, as he came back from Sydney in 1980 to settle in Auckland. Although he was working for Flying Nun Records, he also had to find other gigs to get by, especially after his two children came along. Luckily, his pop cultural cachet and connections meant that he was able to get regular music reviews in mainstream publications, like The Listener, after being anointed by Gordon Campbell as the rock music columnist, and then the author of the “Rant” column. He also published regular cartoons in the New Zealand Herald, and for music publications like Rip It Up. Robertson adds Knox’s contributions to other, short-lived, music and cultural magazines, and later appearances on some forgettable TV art magazine-type programmes.
  So Knox has been given many opportunities in local media outlets, in the era when music and pop culture activities were significant. His dogged enthusiasm and iconoclastic status also received some recognition from international musicians, as highlighted in the photograph of a grinning Knox in between Deborah Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie fame. But his combative personality, and what Robertson calls his “bullet-proof ego”, also included irascible and sometimes harsh criticism of his peers, and personal insensitivity to friends. But all was forgiven in the end, and Knox continues to create art, including the cartoon depicting the experience of his stroke, as idiosyncratic as ever.

Review by S A Boyce

Title: Chris Knox: Not Given Lightly
Author: Craig Robertson
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409838
RRP: $59.99
Available: bookshops

10 poets produce stimulating read

15/10/2025

Te Whāriki: Reading Ten New Poets from Aotearoa
Anna Jackson, Dougal McNeill, Robert Sullivan (eds)

I found this a stimulating read, a read that I recommmed dipping into, sampling a variegated potpourri of pieces, of poets per se. Rather than attempting to view through from go to whoa, eh. More of which later.
      Who are the ten ‘new’ poets selected here? Sam Duckor-Jones, Tayi Tibble, Claudia Jardine, essa may ranapiri, Rebecca Hawkes, Chris Tse, Oscar Upperton, Joanna Cho, Ruby Solly, Nafanua Purcell Kersel. The editors make it quite clear early on that this is a somewhat arbitrary selection of contemporary Aotearoa poetic talent, ‘Other poets...could as easily have been selected’ page 8).   They further note that, ‘The ten we have chosen began publishing their work relatively recently and have done so to significant acclaim’ (pp. 8-9), although I could quibble and state that Chris Tse is hardly a ‘new poet’, given that the editors do rationalise his selection in their He Kupu Whakataki/Intoduction.
      For each of the ten an essay extolling and – to various degrees of intensive critical analysis – exemplifying via extracts, has been prepared by a further ten aficionado critics, primarily academics based in two of this country’s universities. Indeed, paralleling the critics’ employment locale, the vast majority of the poets’ collections have been published by either Te Herenga Waka University Press or Auckland University Press.
More, each poet themselves has penned – at different lengths – a sort of vision encapsulating their own motivation, and each of these is mounted in a much larger font after a selection of their poetry, and just prior to the critical scrutiny. All the poets except Tayi Tibble that is. Just like the examinatory essays, these poets’ statements of intent vary in size and style. I really like essa may ranapiri’s sparse and sincere spiel – ‘All my words are just some more bullshit to deny the colonial destruction of our culture’ (page 90). Others meander somewhat.
The critical exegeses also vary in tone. Several are intense, intensive line by line x-rays of a poet’s – sometimes sole - collection and may well require more than one reading of a passage as to understand exactly a classical reference that has been employed, and why. Others are less scholarly and fully adhere to what Robert Sullivan so clearly states is the overriding purpose of this significant collection, namely, ‘The intention of this book is to draw literary and scholarly attention to new and young writers’ (page 60). Sullivan does exactly that in his own personalised approach to the toikupu of Tibble, whereby he draws in his own life as impacted by the poet, ‘reading poetry personally runs the risk of subsuming a more interesting text to the mundacity of one’s own expetriences’ (page 64). A couple of other critiques do likewise, such as Robin Peter’s nuanced appraisal of Ruby Solly.
       What we have then, as noted above, is a somewhat variegated array of poets and their voices, and commentators and their critiques. A bit of a lucky dip. All good, though, because a reader will freshly discover a poet they know little about, or a review that makes them want to read a poet much more, such as David Eggleton’s illuminating essay about the powerful poetry of Nafanua Purcell Kersel. An essay which, by the way, references the recent collection of contemporary Pasifika poetry titled Katūīvei published by Massey University Press, but which is  not mentioned earlier by the editors on page 14 where they adumbrate several ‘recent fine anthologies that have gathered diverse communities, diverse voices’.
      Penultimately also, I want to praise the two chapters which precede the individual poet perambulations, namely on Potlucks and Poetry: the New Generation of Aotearoa Poets by Amy Maguerite, which is a cogent exposition of recent journals, and the excellent viscerally viewable Visual Poetry: Between Feeling and Form by Tru Paraha. Well-done, I say.
      This then is a gallant gallimaufry worth sampling. For the editors are honest in their statement, ‘This is not a map of poetry in Aotearoa now, nor an encyclopedia or any other sort of exhaustive coverage. This is one account, and there will be dropped stitches we have missed along the way’ (page 14). Fair enough, given that the exponential explosions of small poetry presses have not been referenced much throughout. Te Whāriki, aka the entire carpet mesh of contemporary New Zealand kaitito, would have to be at least the double the size, and it is to everyones’ credit that this anthology is at the very least, an invigorating skinny-dip.
      Which is where I began.

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana
(Te Ātiawa)

Title: Te Whāriki: Reading Ten New Poets from Aotearoa
Editors: Anna Jackson, Dougal McNeill, Robert Sullivan
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781776711314
RRP: $39.99
Available: bookshops

Fantasy tale for junior readers

6/10/2025

Zephyr Follows the Stars
by Linley Edmeades

Witches (good), wizards (bad), abducted women held captive in a castle – the storyline is heavy though this fantasy tale for junior readers is told simply.
Ten year old Zephyr, her father and uncle, with help from the witches, hitch the horse to the wagon and set out on a quest to find and recover her mother and other women taken by force by the Wind Wizards.
Throughout their journey they must repel attacks by giant sea hawks, wind storms of glass sand (both agents of the wizards), then navigate further hazards such as cave, volcano and more which impede their progress. But there’s positive magic also to help the trio, in the form of crystal talismans, a dog, plant, and magic key provided by the witches.
Despite the fact that the women, when rescued, appear to be relatively unharmed and the only reference to any reason given is that they had to cook for the wizards, the subject of women’s abduction is a very disturbing one, particularly in a book for junior readers.
This book of 115 pages is very nicely presented. It is marked as Book One so there are apparently more to come in a series.

Review by Jacqui Lynne

Title: Zephyr Follows the Stars
Author: Linley Edmeades
Publisher: YourBooks
ISBN: 9781067017705
RRP: $18.00
Available: bookshops

Timely book on immigration

26/9/2025

Edges of Empire: The Politics of Immigration in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1980-2020
by Francis L. Collins, Alan Gamlen and Neil Vallelly

With the growing controversy and protest about immigration, especially in the northern hemisphere, this seems a timely contribution from academic specialists. While migration issues in New Zealand are ever-present, we haven’t quite seen them reach the crescendo of protest that has emerged in Europe. Indeed, since the infamous ‘Dawn raids’ of the 1970s, successive governments have moved from a discriminatory policy to what the authors call ‘economic multiculturalism’.
So, while the sub-title of the book refers to the politics of immigration, the substance is really about the policymakers, and primarily in the role of the Minister of Immigration. The authors are careful to set out the political context for the changes in policy, and while specific controversies are addressed – remember the long running saga of the Algerian MP Ahmed Zaoui – there is more detail on the moves to a points systems; and to specific policies such as the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme, that are essential to the economic linkages with the Pacific nations. Of course, the multicultural basis for immigration policy also has to be reconciled with Māori perspectives as well.
   However, there are issues for a more ‘liberal’ immigration policy, especially where the emphasis is really on the economic aspect. The policy no longer discriminates between countries and the ethnic background of migrants, but the focus on the economic credentials of the migrant applicants is problematic. The authors choose to discuss this using the framing concept of ‘Neoliberalism’, an overarching theory that explains the economic basis of policy across government, post-1984. There is a conceptual problem with this approach, and its specificity for immigration policy issues, in assuming it was actually a blueprint for the systematic change that academic critics describe.
    In particular, if the change in macroeconomic policy was as inexorable as the authors seem to believe, there would seem to be very little scope for action by individual politicians of any party. This is seen in the argument that neoliberalism is embedded in the policy institutions, and therefore everyone involved becomes a ‘neoliberal’. However, this assumption is not such a detriment to the book, when it focusses on interviews with successive ministers in the Immigration portfolio. The interviews provide lengthy quotes (though not referenced) which suggest ministers did have agency.
   Almost all of the relevant ministers, apart from two, participated in the interview and obviously got their views across. This included some of the former ministers who practised in the immigration field after retiring from politics, and some even got themselves in legal difficulty after pursuing that career change. Indeed, these legal cases not only affected the politicians, but certain immigration departmental officials in this period also made career-ending mistakes. One notable participant is the late Aussie Malcolm, whom the authors repeatedly refer to as Anthony, and who has been the subject of serious criminal allegations. Nonetheless, he provides the most colourful comment, in referring to the shift to an ‘economic’ policy basis as “total Friedmanite bullshit.” While interesting, the problem with this view is that it assumes that the policy is always based on economic doctrine.

Review by S A Boyce

Title: Edges of Empire: The Politics of Immigration in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1980-2020
Authors: Francis L. Collins, Alan Gamlen and Neil Vallelly
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781776711123
RRP: $49.99
Available: bookshops

Life in forestry makes interesting reading

17/9/2025

Once A Forest Ranger
by Chris Nelson

This is an enjoyable book, it kept my interest high, and I read it in two sessions. It was that interesting. It tells the life story of a young man growing up, and forging a career in the forests of New Zealand.
Initially it deals with the issues around growing up with a father who drank too much, and who moved his family countless times during the author’s formative years. He attended at least 12 schools, and despite this obtained a good education. His mother did her best to give her children a happy, loving home, even while struggling with type one diabetes.
    At age 18 Chris began training at Gwavas forest in Hawkes Bay, the first of many forests he worked in for the next four years of his training. He formed many life-long friends in this time, while learning about the sustainable cropping of trees. He learned about controlled burn offs, planting, thinning, pruning, and measuring the volume of timber in a forest then, when the crop was fully grown, the roads, and infrastructure needed to harvest the timber.
    When he finished his training he obtained one year leave without pay and with a mate, David, left New Zealand for the UK and Europe, returning via the USA. His experiences in this year are quite entertaining, as they had introductions to some of the wealthiest land owners in the UK. He visited his father’s family in Scotland, and then equipped with a battered VW combi named Rusty, visited many countries in Europe.
Rogernomics saw the privatisation and sale of much of the forests in NZ, many to overseas buyers, and the staff in these forests found that their future was very uncertain.
Chris married Debbie and they had two children, Amanda and Ben. All was well until Ben had a fall, and suffered brain damage. This was to change the family forever. With Chris away working much of the time, Debbie had to deal with the demands of a young baby who needed her total attention. The strain this placed on the marriage led to Debbie returning to her mother in Kaikoura, where she could get the support she needed. Chris at this time was aged 53, and the rest of the book tells of his rise in responsibilities in the forestry industry until his retirement. It was in this time that Chris re-ignited his love for motorcycles, which led to him making numerous road trips both in New Zealand and Australia. He met and married Suzie, suffered a heart attack, which needed bypass  surgery, and he retired aged 65, travelling with Suzie to many countries, as well as camping and motorcycling in New Zealand.
I was particularly moved by the effect Ben’s brain damage had on the life of the family. I was disappointed that the matter of slash, the waste from clear felling of forests, was not mentioned in the book. Moreso as Chris was an expert witness in the environment hearing in which granted his company the right to log in the East Coast region.
The book is well printed, with good quality paper, which allows many photos of Chris’ life and family. I would have liked more captions showing which was Chris in the photos.

Review by Harold Bernard

Title: Once A Forest Ranger
Author: Chris Nelson
Publisher: Chris Nelson
ISBN: 9781067089405
RRP: $45
Available: bookshops

Entertaining reading in new novel

10/9/2025

Zoe & Mila,
by Jodie Shelley

Zoe and Mila – BFFs to the extent they refer to themselves as Zola. Even when their situations diverge – Zoe being a successful business owner, Mila mother to a growing family, reluctantly in her case.
Then there’s immigrant Layla, who’s a handy person to have around when a job needs doing, even if it's a tiny bit dodgy; Owen, Zoe’s nightmare of a PA; Cleo, even more of a nightmare to Mila’s husband – literally, to his concern. Throw in a few more oddball characters to the mix for good measure. Perhaps offensive Owen and callous Cleo will get together as they deserve, I wondered, but you’ll have to read it to find out if that happens.
Add to all that, references to cosmetic surgery, face-lifts, boob jobs, vaginal rejuvenation (is there such a thing?), and more. Images of a foosball table and a pregnancy tester on the cover are there for good reason.
My own working life has been nothing like Zoe’s, I can't help thinking. Is this really how office mates relate and speak to each other now? Mila’s situation, too, is thankfully not relatable to my experience either. I guess it’s a younger readership that’s intended here. But the exploits of this group as they interact are fun to read about, so it’s something of an educational text for older ones too – those of us who “were cool before they were even born” in the words of Mila.
Short chapters give the viewpoints of the different characters, each reflecting their personalities well.
It's entertaining reading throughout, no matter your age – 16 and above.

Review by Bronwyn Elsmore

Title: Zoe & Mila
Author: Jodie Shelley
Publisher: Bank Street Publishing
ISBN: 9780473728328
RRP: $35
Available: https://www.jodieshelleywrites.com/product-page/zoe-and-mila

Memoir hard to put down

1/9/2025

Nine Lives of a Soldier and Sailor
by Kelvin Davis

The cover says this is a memoir of war, sea and survival, and indeed it is. It is the story of a 17 year old boy who enlisted in the New Zealand Navy and, after basic training, chose to be a medic. He grew rapidly both in size and maturity then rank, until he was posted to Vietnam and served as a combat medic, treating Vietnamese civilians as well as soldiers from both sides.
It’s here that the book is most intense, with scenes of jungle patrols, ambushes, and attacks, interspersed with horrible experiences in operating theatres where, with little modern equipment, medical staff struggled to save the lives of those horribly mutilated by war. I should give a warning here. There are a number of gruesome photographs of real patients – their shattered limbs and mutilated torsos do not make easy viewing.
During his time in the navy, Kelvin graduated from the navy dive school, and this became the second stage of his life. He contends that, like a cat, he came close to using up all of his nine lives both in Vietnam and in the difficult conditions he was needed to dive in around New Zealand. He gave diving support to a number of the ‘think big’ projects, including the Maui gas field, and the Marsden Point oil refinery.
In October 1977 Kelvin was injured when a steel cable came off a bollard and caught him across both legs. The resultant injury meant he was not fit to dive again, so the third stage of his working life began. He started a business repairing plastic automotive parts. This grew rapidly due to the adoption of new technology and due to sharp acumen, branched out into other fields, creating a significant business with several divisions. He thinks his navy training helped a lot during this time.
The book finishes with a plea for information regarding three members of the American forces who served with him in Vietnam.
The book is very easy to read, being well laid out and printed in a reasonable font size. The story flows very well and is hard to put down. I would repeat the warning given regarding the gory photos of damaged limbs and intestines. I did note a number of spelling mistakes, but they did not detract from the way the book gripped me.

Review by Harold Bernard

Title: Nine Lives of a Soldier and Sailor
Author: Kelvin Davis
Publisher: IMRI Publishing
ISBN: 9780473743680
RRP: $40
Available: bookshops

Poetry vivid and vital

23/8/2025

No Good
by Sophie van Waardenberg

In structure as well as content, this debut poetry collection has fully joined in the game on all sorts of levels. Many of the poems fall naturally into groups, and the various qualities of the groups work and develop together to become a rambunctious whole.
The language is vivid and three-dimensional. We can run from superglue to strawberries while ‘…held inside a duck’s bill, weighed/ against a slice of bread for softness’     (Sticky, p 12)
Or, in the ‘Love Poem’ sequence,
On one side of the highway: sun. The other
is for the deer, their feet glued down by snow.
It’s dusk.     (p 41)
We come to life again in one of the ‘The Getting Away’ shorter poems
Sweeping the porch. Beating the rugs free
      of skin and hair and scent, and peeling and shrinking
      and tripping and laughing at what?    (p 61)
The language covers a huge territory with a sense of immediacy and physical reality. And to fill the space even more, many of the poems are presented as groups. A twenty-page series of ‘Cremation Sonnets’ is the centre of the book; there are a half-dozen sonnets labelled ‘Love Poem’ in which even the adjectives (try ‘green’) pop in and out of the text depending on whether they are needed – to give a sense of growth, perhaps, or just to face down a Valentine’s heart.
And the series ‘Getting Away’ is made up of what we could call demi-sonnets, seven to nine lines each, with the tone of a finally judged conclusion after a great deal of experience, most of it not worth worrying too much about any more and therefore dropped out of the present text. They’re an interesting form to experiment with and fit nicely with the full-length sonnets in the book.
Love? Absolutely – but approached in careful increments, in full awareness of how something we are afraid to call ‘love’ can actually hurt. The ‘Love Poem’ sequence (six unnumbered sonnets) gradually introduces the lover’s body, and the expression of love, parallel with increasing the amount of furniture in the room and the number of colours introduced in passing. And I note that the last sonnet in the sequence has only 13 lines…possibly to avoid total commitment?
The third sonnet is here in full, and to my mind is about as ambivalent as you can get without giving up entirely!
      I hated her the first time we went away
      and we didn’t even go far. Took the only road
      to the opposite shore, took a raw cabin
      with a no-colour television, phone signal up the gravel path
      or none. I almost hated her, but it was terror:
      it was the Queen’s birthday, the long weekend,
      it was the outdoor shower, the gorge that dropped
      straight down, the wet fur of ferns’ curled fronds,
      fresh eggs and windows cleaned for us,
      and the woman in the big house who called us partners
      more easily than we knew how ourselves. It was May.
      Never hated her. Afternoon, red car to the sea.
      We forded a thick inlet to find the second cover.
      She held me by my legs, I held her shoulders, held my shoes.
Most of the poems are in perpetual motion – vivid and vital and in your face, full of enthusiasm for the act of being alive, regardless of whether it feels at any given moment like the good or like the no good. It’s still part of the equation, and well worth having, as of course is this book!

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: No Good
Author: Sophie van Waardenberg
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781776711789
RRP: $24.99
Available: bookshops

Forceful writing in novel

16/8/2025

Fatima Downunder
by Julie Ryan

The third book of a trilogy is almost always the payoff. It is the book the author wanted to write, but the many pages of setting up the story were never going to be accepted by a publisher. So the two preceding books, no matter how good, do not contain the point the author wants to get across.
With Fatima Downunder, the point Dennis Bogdanovitch and the author Julie Ryan are making is driven home. This book does not start slowly, it is a car that is already in motion and as it moves, it accelerates towards that denouement. It brings Dennis home to New Zealand, where he reunites with his wife and brings Fatima and her son along with him.
This book is a rush, with a direct and forceful writing style that makes it difficult to stop reading. It turns the odd path and life decisions Dennis makes into a vehicle that delivers us to a conclusion where predestination becomes more of an afterthought of the creator than a profound philosophical concept. While I liked Swimming with Big Fish and Swimming with Crocodiles, I loved Fatima Downunder, and Fatima Downunder enters the “must-read” category with a bullet.
No, I am not going to discuss the point being made. That would prevent you from properly enjoying the book, but I do insist that you read these books in order. Nor should you read the first and then decide to stop because it was merely entertaining, because that would miss the point entirely. Entertainment is the vehicle, but the destination is someplace else entirely, and well worth the journey.

FlaxFlower reviews for Swimming With Big Fish and Swimming With Crocodiles appeared on 28 January 2025 and 30 May 2025. Locate them via the Archives function at right.

Review by BJ Chippindale

Title: Fatima Downunder
Author: Julie Ryan
Publisher: Orakei Press
ISBN: 9780473738211
RRP: $40
Available: bookshops; or online www.copypress, www.ketebooks.co.nz, www.thenile.com.au/