Before we were yours – book review

Before we were yours, by Lisa Wingate

This novel contains two stories that we know will connect. We can guess, but don’t know the full details until the end. It is based on shameful historical fact that makes us keep reading through the slightly klutzy text in the hope that, bloody hell, if this is true let’s make sure it never happens again. It goes on my “good holiday read” shelf. Probably wouldn’t take it to book club.

The interesting story is the one of a twelve-year-old river kid in Tennassee in 1939. Her mother is birthing twins on the houseboat and the black midwife walks out because she doesn’t want a dead white woman on her hands. When her father leaves for hospital in the skiff, the girl and her 4 siblings are kidnapped. This is a retelling of a bogey story as old as the hills (stabs me in the heart every time), with an orphanage, cellars, beatings, gruel, death and starvation until the cute blond kids get sold off to wealthy but infertile couples. The kids’ past disappears like the river and there is no psychological help for them ever apart from what they can cobble together themselves. It’s horrible.

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The Adventures of Tupaia – book review

The Adventures of Tupaia, by Courtney Sina Meredith and Mat Tait

Tupaia has shot to fame these last months as the pin-up boy of our history. Neither Māori nor Pakeha, the Tahitian ‘ariori (priest) and navigator who travelled with Cook bridged two very different cultures in 1769. If we approach the study of Aotearoa/New Zealand history through his eyes we develop a fresh understanding of our first encounters.

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Call Me Evie – book review

Call Me Evie, by J P Pomare

Generally speaking I avoid books with red and black covers and an image of a traumatised girl. So much crime/horror treats murder, rape, kidnapping of young women as entertainment.

But I met the intelligent and likeable J P Pomare at the Hawke’s Bay Arts Festival and realised all the fuss about his book might suggest I have my genres confused. “A top-rate psychological thriller,” said a friend in the know. “Literary suspense” said another. I decided to overcome my prejudice. I picked up red-and-black Evie.

I realised at once I had opened an unusual book.

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Boy Swallows Universe – book review

Boy Swallows Universe, by Trent Dalton

Oh my God. It’s true. This extraordinary story of Eli Bell growing up in suburban Brisbane amid drug addicts and gangs and criminals and the poignancy of children making sense of the mess…this is based on his life. Trent Dalton’s. The mother he loves so much he breaks into prison to be with her at Christmas. The best friend, Slim, who shares his stories of Boggo Road prison and may (or may not) have murdered a cabbie. The Vietnamese Golden Triangle heroin dealers and their hit men. Might be easier to read not knowing these things were based on a real life.

I SO love this book. It has that rare bit of genius that I search for in fiction: a mixture of quirky but believable characters, a story that grows, an unusual setting (actually, I hated the setting), and writing so sharp it makes you bleed.

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Cook’s Cook – book review

Cook’s Cook, by Gavin Bishop

Cook’s Cook is a picture book story of James Cook’s journey on the Endeavour, told through the eyes of his one-handed cook.

I’ve just come off a voyage on the replica Endeavour, sleeping in a hammock next to the stove where much of the action in this book takes place, so it all seems very real to me. We heard the stories of the salted meat being dragged behind the boat to wash off the salt and soften the meat, and we checked the barrels for remnants of rum. There was none. It had been licked clean by sailors long ago. Cook’s men subsisted on a diet of poorly packed supplies from home—by today’s standards—and things they scavenged on the way. Gavin Bishop has uncovered recipes that filled bellies. Along with the inevitable pease pudding hot or cold, treats included:

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Hammocks & Futtocks

Life on the Endeavour

When Captain Cook set out on the Endeavour he probably worried about provisions, storms at sea, shipwreck, mutiny, navigation, cloud cover during the transit of Venus. Dysentery. Malaria.

Me? I worried about the hammocks. I didn’t know about the futtocks, then.

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Our History

Learning through stories

Its so exciting to get two Opinion Pieces on this topic within days of each other in the Dominion Post. Are we beating ourselves up about this, or what?

Karl du Frense (19.09.19): “I remember almost nothing of the history I learned at Secondary School.”  That’s because your teacher was bored witless, Karl! Brian would rather go off topic than do the dull stuff about what Governor George Grey did.

Lana Hart (23.09.19): “New Zealand history is boring, says my daughter” Lana explains that her poor child, by year 8, has done nothing other than the Treaty of Waitangi four times, which really is the wrong place to start.

Always start a history lesson with the people. Continue reading “Our History”

Taking the Long Road to Cairo – book review

Taking the Long Road to Cairo, by Ann Balcombe

Ann Balcombe’s story is of a fearless young woman who gets on a boat in Auckland and ends up, a couple of years later, in Cairo, via lots of big seas and a whole lot of road. It’s the 1970s.

There is a special place in history for intrepid women who sail across the world into the unknown and go exploring with open minds and courage. I’m in their boots in spirit.

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See you in September – book review

See you in September, by Charity Norman

I was so pleased to win this last week (and thank you Wardini Books, I’m sure you give donations all the time for fundraisers, and I want you to know this one ended up in appreciative hands). Charity Norman lives up the road. She’s quite famous but I’ve never read her before. Where have I been? This was great.

Some books are page-turners because of the writing, some for the plot or the characters, and some books just have a magic hook that drags you through the night (just one more chapter, just one more) because you are in so deep you just have to know how it ends. Arrggh! I put my life on hold while I gripped this book in my clammy hands. Continue reading “See you in September – book review”

Less – book review

Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

I liked Less a lot.

Arthur Less is a white middle-aged, gay, American man walking around with his white middle-aged, gay American sorrows. Well, that is the character in a novel Less is writing. “It’s a little hard to feel sorry for a guy like that,” says a friend. True that.

But somehow we do! Arthur Less is a lovable white middle-aged, gay, American man. All the boys say he kisses like he means it.  And Less is nursing a broken heart. He is confused and struggling to understand the depths of his emotions. His much younger ex, Freddy, is about to marry someone else. Less lets him go, because he loves him so much and doesn’t believe he can make him happy. Less leaves town to escape the despair of loss. Continue reading “Less – book review”