NZ Author – Cristina Sanders' blog

Bad Archive – book review

Bad Archive, by Flora Feltham

Here’s another interesting look at how we view history, seems very much the topic du jour (see What We Can Know), this time by local author Flora Feltham, contained in a set of wandering essays that I enjoyed tremendously. Just the title, Bad Archive, tells you that this is going to be an opinionated work with something awry – slanting truths perhaps, ironic labels on ordinary things. Just the way I like my archives.

Empathy – book review

Empathy, by Brian Walpert

Empathy, I think, is one of those words that is overused and misused. It’s often used to express feelings of compassion or pity, though is not the same thing at all. Empathy is not a matter of expressing how you, too, have strong emotions that are similar to another’s. It’s a vicarious thing, it’s about letting go of your feelings and experiencing those of another person. And empathy applies to more that just pity, as Bryan Walpert explores in his intriguing new book, Empathy.

A Different Kind of Power – book review

A Different Kind of Power, by Jacinda Ardern

I didn’t know political biographies could be like this. There’s not a nasty bone in its body. I haven’t read a book so uplifting for a long time but I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, Jacinda Ardern’s signature is kindness. No one was expecting she’d take the opportunity now she has left office and living overseas to get stuck into the dozens of goons she must have had to deal with on a daily basis.

A Beautiful Family – book review

A Beautiful Family, by Jennifer Trevelyan

Lots of hype came with this book, a first novel by a Wellington writer and IIML grad Jennifer Trevelyan: massive publicity, a high profile agent, a two book deal, international sales, film rights. All of it, I think, very well deserved. It’s the story told by a ten year old girl of a summer holiday at the beach. They are a beautiful family, but somehow there is a sense of danger everywhere. Danger either for our girl, her sister, her mum or dad – risk everywhere, some obvious, some insidious. Enough to keep you anxious for the entire book. I had that feeling of early motherhood where I was constantly sweeping the environment for things that might damage my child. Here, at this seemingly wholesome kiwi bach, there are things to watch out for: a difficult sea with rips and big waves, a mother not watching her children because she has another agenda, two sisters looking/not looking out for each other, a teenage hangout at the lifesaving club, bad choices, a creepy voyeur next door, a missing girl whose name is carved into a wall. A swampy lagoon.

My Three Rivers – book review

My Three Rivers, by Shirley Bagnall Metcalfe

This book was a real surprise. Shirley Bagnall Metcalfe’s book on life in NZ’s early outback is subtitled “Jottings of a rural woman 1884-1968”. It sounds like it could be a bit staid. A little bit domestic. Grandmotherly, perhaps. But Shirley is a tour de force, a gutsy and practical woman with a hell of a life story and a cup that is never half-empty, despite the extremes of her life, but always, just like those bloody rivers, filled right to the brim and overflowing. She has gusto, does Shirley, and has a young, friendly voice. I wish we’d been friends. I’d have followed her anywhere.

Pretty Ugly – book review

Pretty Ugly, by Kirsty Gunn

On the strength of this book I am going to build a new bookshelf in the spare bedroom, just for short stories. For guests who stay a couple of nights and might otherwise run off with an unputdownable novel. Let them fill their early mornings or sleepless nights with Kirsty Gunn. That’s what short stories are for; they’re probably not designed to be consumed all at once like I did these. I couldn’t help it. These short stories are terrific.

At the Grand Glacier Hotel – book review

At The Grand Glacier Hotel, by Laurence Fearnley

Laurence Fearnley sure knows how to write. I loved Libby’s voice in the book from the off, assured, authentic, telling a story in a way that fully engaged me. And I love the idea of The Grand Glacier Hotel – we’re a bit low on mountains up here in the north but I pictured the Chateau on Ruapehu and imagined the fading glory of such a place against the backdrop of the Southern Alps. It’s a terrific setting for a story, a touch of Hotel du Lac, a place where people go with baggage that needs to be put down for a while.

Sea Change – book review

Sea Change, by Jenny Pattrick

This is a familiar genre, a story of a bunch of plucky underdogs against big money developers. It reminds me very much of Patricia Grace’s lovely Potiki, of which I wrote: “This is a simple story of good verses evil, weak versus strong, country v commerce, tangata whenua v greedy imperialists… the imbalance of power … lives threatened by the Dollarman who will bulldoze away their traditional lifestyle and smother their ancestral lands with rather obvious bad things.” Jenny Pattrick’s Sea Change is a similar story set a few miles around the coast in a Paekākāriki-ish village, and a few decades later. There are two main changes. The first is that Grace’s Māori community is replaced by a collection of unrelated randoms: retirees, hippies, dysfunctional families, escapists, hermits. This could be a cliché of small town residents, but those of us who have lived up the coast know the truth behind these depictions. They grow into a sort of ‘found family’ with their power not in their iwi identity but in the coming together of a mixed community. The second difference is the tidal wave.

The Mires – book review

The Mires, by Tina Makareti

I always enjoy Tina Makareti’s descriptive writing and here she gives us a real undercurrent of murky rising damp. A swamp pervades this story, running between things and below the surface, always slightly unnerving. Always out, and back, the collective breathing of all the waters flowing through all the channels of the earth. I had a sense of a whole system of communication and connection all around that I couldn’t see. I wasn’t sure it meant me well. This is an unsettling read.

Ash – book review

Ash, by Louise Wallace

I saw a cartoon recently of a woman at the sink with a mop in one hand, a baby in the other, two tugging at her skirts and her man behind saying something like, “You’re not the fun loving woman I married.” Had me chortling with the laughter of ironic truth. In the same vein of misunderstanding, you may think Wallace’s book, Ash, is about the ash that has spewed from the volcano to cover everything and how the townspeople cope with this disaster. But it’s not. It’s about being a mother. And it’s bloody good.

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