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What’s not to like?

24/7/2026

Parrot Heaven
by Jessica Howland Kany

Maudie’s back! Maudie. You know, the one who ran pushing a pram containing her possessions down the South Island, crossed over to Rakiura, and stayed.
Some years later she’s still there, having married and put the pram to more appropriate use, twice. So are many of the other Stewart Island residents – Vil, Dogbox and Clutha, Snatchblock, Strom, Pete, Sally – a whole island full of oddbods. Plus an evil goat called Bathmat, with Moji the parrot’s footprints stamped indelibly on the house on Penguin Lane.
It pleases me no end to think a community of such oddball characters live in this country – must take another trip to the far south!
The island hasn’t changed much. The running tracks aren’t as pounded this time, but there’s plenty of movement between museum, library, pub, and wharf as Maudie’s life revolves around parenting, wood-chopping, books, and solving the odd mystery or two. Throw in childhood bullying at pre-school level, silicon toe protheses, rats eating [censored], multiple munted cell-phones, cuneiform lettering and bird-tracks, notions of immigrants from space and a doughnut-shaped earth, with much discussion of The Epic of Gilgamesh. If all that and more is enough to send you racing to board the ferry to Rakiura, a warning – watch out for bollards and marlinspikes.
The author’s skill has incorporated into early pages of the text all necessary information from the previous book about Maudie and mates [A Runner’s Guide to Rakiura, see FlaxFlower review December 2022], so this one can stand alone – but it’s much better to do yourself a favour and read that first.
The prose is lively throughout, particularly when the dialogue between the locals is peppered with colloquialisms and crammed with references to various things and happenings, seemingly incidental when reading but which come together in time.
At one point, when reading, Maudie thinks “Boats, storms, dreams. Hot guys with axes. What’s not to like?” It could well describe Parrot Heaven.

Review by Bronwyn Elsmore

Title: Parrot Heaven
Author: Jessica Howland Kany
Publisher: Rakiura Books
ISBN: 9780473766061
RRP: $38
Available: bookshops

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Rip-roaring, fast-moving novel

17/7/2026

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Vice, Virtue and Villainy
by Bob Richmond

Debut author, Bob Richmond, has just had his first novel published, and what a corker. Vice, Virtue and Villainy by 78-year-old Richmond is a rip-roaring, fast-moving tale of gangs, drug-dealing, sex-trafficking and police corruption that doesn’t let the reader go until the climax of warring gangs and an exciting police shoot-out.
Police officer George Sumpson is in a murky police operation that sees him injured and out of the Force. Never one to let a good crime go unpunished, he is soon back in the fray, without gun or badge but with his beloved fiancée Josie and friend Gail by his side.
When Gail’s sister vanishes from a sleazy nightclub owned by gangster, Alf Robson, George is hellbent on finding her and along the way the truth about who actually shot him and ruined his career. And, of course, end the criminal activities of the gangs.
Richmond’s characters are likeable and real, his villains are stock characters whom we can easily hate (especially when body parts begin to show up) and his police a mixed bag of goodies and baddies. The story races along until, almost winded, we arrive at the denouement where everything is satisfactorily explained and sorted.
There are times when I was aware of Richmond’s ‘newness’ to the game of writing, especially the final chapter which I felt was unnecessary and merely there to stitch up and resolve the lives of the protagonists rather than further the story. Having said that, it is a brave, confident and well written debut and I look forward to Richmond’s second, and maybe third, book.

Review by JA Harrison

Title: Vice, Virtue and Villainy
Author: Bob Richmond
Publisher: McKenzie Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-473-78618-2
RRP: $37.99
Available: bookshops

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Striking images in poetry collection

4/7/2026

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Portrait,
by Jackson McCarthy

This is an interesting first poetry collection by a young Kiwi of Lebanese, Māori and Pākehā descent.
Interesting because it took me repeated readings of many poems as to glean their genesis and grasp the guts of what the poet is ‘saying’. It is as if – in several examples – there is a thin, semi-opaque veneer covering them and I had to wipe clear the veil of what he nominates as ‘My elliptical conversation’ (The Truth). For example, the prose poem titled The Window, while replete with striking imagery – a feature throughout this book, which I will return to – reads like a hallucinogenic hangover. It is as if McCarthy mounts a persona throughout, whereby he seems to be shielding and yet seeking his essential self, something he alludes to in Uniform, as here –
      ‘Behind us, watching, was Jackson McCarthy, noted homosexual. Eater of olives.
      Writer of poetry.’
  These toikupu stir me to select several features.
  There is a continuous stress on ‘me/my’ and ‘you/your’ in these pieces, and indeed the poet writes, ‘I made pacts with myself, my best subject’ in the first of the four poems titled Santa Monica. Which leads to my first pātai, why are there four distinct poems with the same title? Then again, why not, eh?
  The tenuousness of relationships, the poet’s seeming insecurity about the multifarious ‘you’ in these poems, is a repetitive strain, and several such culminate with lines such as, ‘you lean in to kiss me for the last time’ (Louis, August), and, ‘as you move to leave’ (Three Mysteries 2). Meanwhile, ‘lost’ and ‘loss’ reverberate amongst this at times found verse, as exemplified in the Notes.
  Which leads back to a point referenced previously, namely that the poet is striving to firm himself, here via these relationships, as for example, ‘Who was I before I met you’ (Night train). After all, the overall collection is titled Portrait.
  Relatedly, there is a yearning here, ‘I want so much to be consumed by something’ (Moonlight spell).
  Death and its son death, pervade these pages too. The very first line in the very first poem is, ‘Funerals happen’ (Prelude). McCarthy and his sometimes seeming surrogate, pen, ‘not a day passes, not an hour or even a minute I don’t think about dying’, in the poem ironically titled Happiness.
  Then there are the word echoes, whereby certain kupu recur, as indeed do some word pictures. Such as, dream/dreams; blond/blonde; swans in the back of his truck/fifty white swans asleep in the back [of] his country truck; ass/ass; naked/naked; hair/hair; yellow/yellow, and copious other mirrors. Such replication establishes a thread of connectivity between poems, between the stages and stratifications of the young poet’s life up until present day events and affairs.
  Returning to the striking images mentioned earlier, here are just some examples of this poet’s somewhat Personist lyrical predilection –
      ‘sleep’s black wealth’ (Mahuika as a boy)
      ‘where cars sleep heavy like bullets’ (Portrait)
      ‘cutting the dusk in skinny jeans’ (Halloween)
      ‘smalling me with distance’ (Arthur)
      ‘my mind an antonym for my body’ (Archery)
      ‘I was licking the moon like a streetlamp’ (Song)
These what I term ‘interlinked McCarthys’ can certainly craft fine verse.
  Interestingly again, in a couple of poems, namely The Lake and Song, the poet snaps the thin ice covering most of his other poems and writes about more manifest events, suicide in the former, the constant bombardment of Lebanon in the latter. It will be stimulating to see if his future mahi grounds itself further, as will his possibly employing some reo Māori – e pīrangi ana ahau ki te kite i tēnei.
  Now, I could and certainly will, write more about this collection. Suffice to say that I look forward to the follow-up, and to muse that McCarthy reminds me of Genet, a toned-down Sam Te Kani, and Burroughs all stewed together into a sapid repast replete with urban spices and nocturnal salts.
  I like McCarthy’s pensive mien, his is a divergent voice, and my tastebuds await the next course. I hope that its results are unike how he describes Maya’s gazpacho which, ‘turned out gray’ (in the poem Moon). Given Jackson McCarthy’s rather classical autodidact styling, I am sure they will not!

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana
(Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Te Whiti)

Title: Portrait
Author: Jackson McCarthy
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781776712304
RRP: $24.99
Available: bookshops

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What’s not to like?

Rip-roaring, fast-moving novel

Striking images in poetry collection

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