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Memoir is good story and excellent read

21/6/2024

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Tales from the Lucky Generation
by Bob Calkin


As a memoir Bob Calkin’s book is quite unique, in particular for his insights into his own psyche, as he finds himself starting a prison sentence for white collar crime. He also becomes a social scientist, completing a doctorate after doing his stretch, and then tried to turn his insights into practical policy solutions for dealing with young male offenders.
    This is a good story, and an excellent read, with Calkin benefitting from advice on writing it up (there is an unedited PDF version on-line). But his idea is to begin the book as he starts his jail sentence, a businessman in his forties, with a wife and family living in a relatively affluent suburb in Palmerston North. Each chapter on his prison time alternates with a chapter on his life growing up in Whanganui, and then career as a lawyer. So he has almost finished detailing the prison stretch by the time he explains how he got his fraud conviction, and a particularly lengthy jail sentence, which certainly seems to have been rather harsh.
     Although he theorises about his own psychological state, following the writing of Jung, it is his social history that is perhaps more interesting. Calkin provides a vivid account of growing up near Marton, and then in the suburb of Castlecliff, in Whanganui, especially during the war years. His main insight is the explanation of being in the ‘lucky’ generation, those that grew up in time to enjoy the post-war boom, and the benefits of a period of social mobility.
    Nonetheless, Calkin is obviously very proud of his modest upbringing, and his place in a working class, Labour-voting community. He is the first in his family to get the opportunity to attend university, and he then gets a law degree in Wellington. There he associates with the likes of Trevor de Cleene, something of a rogue even before he became a Cabinet minister in the Fourth Labour Government. Indeed, Calkin and de Cleene would share a legal practice, after he started his law career down in Invercargill. As de Cleene veers off into party politics, Calkin leaves the law for business opportunities in the rather volatile 1970s.
    Although this may seem just the story of the working class boy making a small fortune, and then losing the lot, it actually provides a useful insight into the period that preceded the political upheaval of 1984. Just as Calkin comes out of prison a changed man, his former associate participates in economic reforms that are tearing apart communities, both rural and urban, but it was preceded by social dislocation that also created a latent crime wave.
    Some of the observations about the effects of what is called Neo-liberalism may seem familiar, but in writing about his own research into the lost boys from broken homes who became attracted to drug dealing, Calkin provides a unique perspective on sociological issues. Unfortunately, the policymakers were not receptive to his work in the 1990s.
    This book is well written, and based on evident wisdom gained through life experience, and it deserves a reading beyond the main redemption narrative. More could be said about the interaction between business and community formation in post war New Zealand. It is also vital in providing a lesson on the value of research in social science, obviously now on the decline in the universities, and which may never recover from years of official neglect. 

Review by S A Boyce
Title: Tales from the Lucky Generation
Author: Bob Calkin
Publisher: Quentin Wilson Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-99-110332-1
RRP: $45
Available: bookshops
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Horrors of war intensified

14/6/2024

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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

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Lovely package is great value

6/6/2024

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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.

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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
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