New Zealand Books June 2013

The winter issue of New Zealand Books is now on sale.

A new Janet Frame novel is always an event. In the Memorial Room is based on Frame’s time in Menton as the Katherine Mansfield Fellow, 40 years ago. “ The humour,” says reviewer Elspeth Sandys, “which at times hovers close to paranoia, is quintessential Frame.”

Damien Wilkins voices his appreciation for the work of Barbara Anderson, who died earlier this year. And Dale Williams mourns the passing of so many of our native birds, as she relishes the Te Papa Press reprint of Buller’s Birds of New Zealand: The Complete Work of JG Keulemans.

Christchurch reviewer David Round delights in Shelter From the Storm: The Story of New Zealand’s Backcountry Huts, and NZB co-editor Harry Ricketts enjoys Fleur Adcock’s latest poetry collection, Glass Wings.

Otaki writer Renée is taking a neo-Dickensian approach to her next novel by publishing instalments online every Wednesday. Read an amusing print extract from Too Many Cooks, along with Hamish Clayton’s appreciation of Ondaatje’s The English Patient, which he read at 21.

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Contents:

2       Letters

3       David Hill: R L Stedman, A Necklace of Souls; David Hair, Ghosts of Parihaka; Anna MacKenzie, Cattra’s Legacy; Des Hunt, Phantom of Terawhiti

4       Damien Wilkins: “Always something to behave about” (tribute to Barbara Anderson)

6       Dale Williams: Geoff Norman, Buller’s Birds of New Zealand: The Complete Work of J G Keulemans

7       Elspeth Sandys: Janet Frame, In the Memorial Room

8       John Horrocks: Peter Olds, Under the Dundas Street Bridge; Sam Hunt, Chords and Other Poems; Jan Kemp, Voicetracks: Poems 2002-2012

9       Mary Roberts: Chris Elder (ed), New Zealand’s China Experience: Its Genesis, Triumphs, and Occasional Moments of Less than Complete Success

10     Hamish Clayton: “Slow, sure meaning” (Imprints)

11     Eleanor Toland: Phillip Mann, The Disestablishment of Paradise; P S Mokha, The Last Sanctuary; Michael Morrissey, Tropic of Skorpeo

12     Nadine France: Ashleigh Young, Magnificent Moon; Vaughan Gunson, This Hill, All It’s about is Lifting it to a Higher Level; Kerrin P Sharpe, Three Days in a Wishing Well

13     Hugh Roberts: Gordon H Brown, Elements of Modernism in Colin McCahon’s Early Work; Tony Green, Toss Woollaston: Origins and Influence; Rex Butler, Colin McCahon in Australia; Roger Blackley, A Nation’s Portraits

14     Catharina van Bohemen: Edmund Bohan, Singing Historian: A Memoir; Maryjane Thomson, Sarah Vaughan is not my Mother: A Memoir of Madness; Lynette Robinson, Where the Rainbow Fell Down: A New Zealand Memoir

15     David Round: Shaun Barnett, Rob Brown and Geoff Spearpoint, Shelter from the Storm: The Story of New Zealand’s Backcountry Huts

16     Anne Else: Redmer Yska, A Woman’s Place

17     Vincent O’Malley: Felicity Barnes, New Zealand’s London: A Colony and its Metropolis; Lyndon Fraser and Angela McCarthy (eds), Far from “Home”: The English in New Zealand

18     David Eggleton: Simon Sweetman, On Song: Stories behind New Zealand’s Pop Classics
Harry Ricketts: Fleur Adcock, Glass Wings

20     Hugo Petzsch: Geoffrey Troughton, New Zealand Jesus: Social and Religious Transformations of an Image, 1890-1940

21     Francis McWhannell: Ian St George (ed), William Colenso: His Life and Journeys by A G Bagnall and G C Petersen

22     Mark Derby: Ron Palenski, The Making of New Zealanders

23     Simon Upton: Peter Holland, Home in the Howling Wilderness

24     Bookshelf

25     Roger Blackley: Warwick Henderson, Behind the Canvas: An Insider’s Guide to the New Zealand Art Market

26     Desmond Bovey: Ray Ching, Aesop’s Kiwi Fables: Paintings

27     Renée: “Pity about the People” (work-in-progress)

28     Prize cryptic crossword