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To be savoured time and again

23/7/2015

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New Zealand Mountaineering -
a history in photographs
by John Wilson

   This beautiful book covers the history of climbing in New Zealand decade by decade, highlighting the climbers, the mountains they climbed, and the equipment they used. The progression and improvement in gear, techniques, and the way mountains are accessed, is highlighted decade by decade.
   Climbing in Europe was a sport, chiefly undertaken by the upper classes who often saw guides as servants. The mountains were generally accessible by road, or even railway, and huts and shelters were always there as starting points or shelters.
    In New Zealand climbing is largely an amateur sport, and guides are treated as friends or equals, often leading to life-long relationships as seen in the famous pairing of Freda de Faur and Peter Graham in the 1920s and of Harry Ayres and Sir Edmund Hillary in the 1940s.
   The way to a mountain in New Zealand often requires days of walking carrying large loads of food and equipment. In the early years help for injured climbers could be days away, as there were no radios to call for help, and no helicopters to answer a call.
   It is really interesting to see the progression in equipment as the decades progress. Long handled ice axes, used to great effect in cutting steps up icy slopes, gave way to front-pointed crampons and short ice axes, hobnailed boots to high altitude climbing boots. Pitons, ice screws, and other aids improved safety and enabled much more technically advanced climbs. Huts and shelters, replaced rock bivouacs, roads running deep into the mountains made access easier, aircraft able to land on glaciers, and the introduction of radio and cell phones transformed the sport decade by decade.
  The endurance and skills necessary to spend long hours cutting ice steps produced mountaineers such as Sir Edmund Hillary and others who found their skills really stood out when they climbed in Europe or the Himalayas. Strangely, no mention is made of George Lowe, who should appear in any book on a history of New Zealand mountaineering. Surely, at least, he should be included in the Introduction where several others who achieved climbing prominence overseas are named.
   The strength of this book lies in the more than 200 photographs it contains. Magnificent, gorgeous photographs illustrating climbing history, and bringing to life the written words they accompany. The author makes the point that even if a climber fails to reach the peak he is striving to attain, the sheer joy of being in the mountains surrounded by such beauty is ample compensation for failure. This is one of the reasons climbers return over and again to the mountains.
  This is a large format book, printed on quality paper that reproduces photos well. Rather than a book that one reads cover to cover, following a plot, this is one to be picked up from the coffee table and savoured time and again. It will transport the reader to the Southern Alps and fill him or her with pride to be living in such a magnificent country. 

Review by Harold Bernard
Title: New Zealand Mountaineering - a history in photographs
Author: John Wilson

Publisher: Bateman
ISBN: 978-1-86953-823-1
Available: Bookshops
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Author to be congratulated

16/7/2015

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Whatever Happened to Ishtar?
by Anne Frandi-Coory


    This book is a memoir of the life of Anne Frandi-Coory the daughter of an Italian mother and a Lebanese father.
     Having spent a childhood, peppered with abuse and harassment, between a Dunedin orphanage for the poor and her father’s Lebanese family Anne was regarded as a backward child. She describes the panic she felt as a toddler as her father departed after one of his visits, and goes on to relate episodes from her strict upbringing in the orphanage where she was segregated from her two brothers once the boys turned five years old. Memory of the order of happenings in her early life is sketchy and this is aptly conveyed in her narrative.
    She was not well received by her father’s family though she lived with her father at his family’s house intermittently, but never feeling at ease there and alleging various kinds of abuse.
    Married in her teens Anne gave birth to four children and devoted herself to nurturing them during which time her marriage failed and she struggled to avoid a mental breakdown.
    Later in life Anne devoted herself to researching the Lebanese history of her father’s family and the Italian forebears on her mother’s side, hoping to understand her relationship with her Italian mother who was shunned by Anne’s father’s family and who couldn’t look after her children except for very short periods.
    The account of the arrival of the Frandi family as assisted immigrants to New Zealand in 1876, as opposed to those arriving in a self funding capacity, makes interesting reading.
    The poems and quotations at the beginning of each chapter have obviously been chosen with care and sensitivity and give an added dimension to the book. The same can be said for the inclusion of family photographs mostly lent by other family members. There is a certain poignancy here as Anne had few, if any, family photos while she was growing up; thus emphasising what she refers to as ‘her paper-thin sense of identity’
    There is a freshness about the author’s style and she succeeds in conveying emotion about the lack of emotion and caring shown to her in her formative years.
    Having, as a child, lived in fear of dire consequences if she didn’t follow strict rules and try to emulate the saints she may have developed the discipline to achieve a good education which, no doubt, helped in her later endeavours to track her forebears and learn the history of their migration to New Zealand.
    The bibliography includes useful references and illuminates the paths she travelled.
    With regard to the publication the title is apt and the cover is eye-catching. The paper edition is perfect bound but the biggest drawback is the lack of an adequate gutter making the book difficult to hold open for any length of time. There are three very minor identical grammatical inconsistencies plus an odd discrepancy about two rivers.
    The author is to be congratulated on her enterprise in producing a valuable resource for her family and an interesting and instructive read for the rest of us.
    It seems Ishtar has risen from the ashes!


Review by Irene Thomas
Title: Whatever Happened To Ishtar?; A Passionate Quest To Find Answers For Generations Of Defeated Mothers.
Author: Anne Frandi-Coory
Publisher: Sid Harta Publishers Pty Ltd. 23 Stirling Crescent, Glen Waverley, Victoria 3150 Australia
ISBN: 1-921642-95-5 
Format: Paperback
Obtainable via Amazon Books Worldwide, and website frandi.wordpress.com

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Engrossed in story

11/7/2015

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A Step Too Far 
by Peter Thomas

 When I picked up this book and perused it I was struck by the cover photo and the idea of a novel set in New Zealand.
    The blurb was equally intriguing and I had to read it a few times to get an inkling of what it was about. As the story unfolded and I reread the back cover I began to get glimpses into the story.
  It wasn’t long before I became utterly engrossed in the story and found myself becoming impatient to find out how it ends.
  The story involves a young woman who, for the best of reasons, becomes a people smuggler, and it wasn’t hard to feel some sympathy for her involvement and actions. At one stage it seems to wander off in another direction, but both her thoughts and adventures are loosely woven together and come together quite nicely at the end.
    Throughout the story there were comments such as “But that explanation comes later.” I found these rather disconcerting as it stopped the flow of the story but I also came across some gems, one of which I read 2-3 times and marvelled at its brilliance.
  I quote: “I guess my memories are a bit like river water. They start as random drips on some misty mountain-side. In my early days it gathered into rivulets and streams that chuckled unconcerned between lichen covered rocks. Then within the deep sided gorges of my teenage years I rode the rapids and explored forbidden tributaries and as a result I’ve had to build beaver dams in an attempt to hold back a possible deluge from those treacherous side creeks. Perhaps in married middle age there will be no more wild water and my mind will be content to meander across the valley floor in peaceful meadow land between well defined and rounded hills.”
   Such pieces of prose made reading this book a joy.
   There is a follow up story, The Dancing Gypsy, and I look forward to one day reading it.

Review by Merilyn Mary
Title: A Step Too Far
Author: Peter Thomas
Publisher: Good Hope Publishing House
ISBN: 978-0-9941188-0-6
Available: bookshops or directly from Good Hope Publishing House
PO Box 596 Picton, 7250; [email protected]

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Language both delicate and robust

4/7/2015

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Whale Years
by Gregory O’Brien

    Gregory O’Brien is both artist and poet (among other skills and talents) so it is not surprising that the images that accompany his words in Whale Years are his work, too.
    I’ve always had a fondness for whales and dolphins and those other lumberous creatures that inhabit the oceans, excepting those with sharp teeth and a taste for human flesh. Perhaps because in the sea, clad in matronly swimsuit, I’m a bit of a lumberous creature myself. I also like the multiplicity of smaller species that inhabit sea and shore.
    So I did want to go on this voyage with O’Brien and find out for myself how he measured not only the length of his journey, but the discoveries he made. The structure is helpful, and it reads like a journal. Some of his language is exquisitely delicate and I responded to it almost viscerally. Much is robust. I liked the enigmatic, semi-mystical that sometimes lingered beneath the exact description.
    If your business is to watch and follow the whales, to observe and record, O’Brien’s poems offer an ideal antithesis to purely scientific speak and have their own value in explaining the world he is exploring. Some of the stuff he writes about is known to me, and what he did with it never disappointed. So I took the unknown on trust.
    I must ask, is the prose allowed to be poetry, too? Ah, we could have an interesting discussion on that. It’s ingenious. What has O’Brien borrowed to make it so? Perhaps he needed nothing.
    A jolt when he talked of the lost, when:
                       ‘…the black sand went about
                       its daily work, releasing the bones
                       of Moriori, centuries buried,
                       trussed and seated, as was custom,
                       facing the ocean…’
    I shivered, though we’re not in the Antarctic. Does any Moriori DNA remain discernible in unknown descendants? I was grateful for the playfulness of the poems that followed.
    Reading Whale Years is to go on a journey of discoveries generously shared, a perfect menu for dipping into, postcards from lands not all of us will visit. The ebb and flow of this and that, the death of a king, the flora and fauna, reverberations of the ocean underlying all…
    Could you ever have imagined a conversation between the monolithic stone heads of Easter Island and a weather balloon? Me neither. So hurrah for the unexpectedness of much that is here, too.
    I’m resident in Tauranga, and read the poems about the Rena catastrophe (from which we still suffer) with close interest. With all I’d heard about it, including a detailed and intelligent discussion among local kaumatua, I had never realised how far the oceans could carry the debris; the extent of the despoilment and the demise of so many ocean-dwellers.
    You know, I think I’m right in believing poems can illuminate and enlighten us on almost any topic. (And wouldn’t a subject index of New Zealand poetry be a great idea?)
    I shall continue to read Whale Years for my own pleasure, silently to myself, aloud to others. And I wish I was back in classrooms where I could use this fine collection for teaching purposes, too.
    A well-worth investment, then?
    Yes, indeed.

Review by Jenny Argante
Title: Whale Years
Author: Gregory O’Brien
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 978 1869 408329
Available: Bookshops

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