Tag: Wellington

Wonderland – book review

Wonderland, by Tracy Farr

I really hope this book smashes the awards next year. It’s a damn good story about family dynamics and dealing with life’s ups and downs in a Wellington seaside suburb in the early 1900s. Oh, and for some reason, Tracy Farr decided to stretch belief a bit to invent a scenario where scientist Marie Curie comes to lodge with this very kiwi family. She is hiding out of the public eye as she recovers from scandal and illness. Each of these very different story-lines offers a good premise, the weird thing is to put them together. What was Farr thinking? Whatever madness caused it, we need more of it in our novels.

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Gracehopper – book review

Gracehopper, by Mandy Hager

I think Gracehopper is a lovely title for this book. Grace was born during an earthquake in Taiwan and her kiwi mother is rescued by the New Zealand authorities and brings her home. The mother has some serious issues and is reluctant to discuss the past. Grace, with obvious Asian parentage, hops around her, wanting to know her own history but reluctant to send her mother over the edge (again). She breathes. Jeet Kun Do is her stability. Energy in. Hold. Spread the peace. Energy in. Hold. Spread the peace. It is a graceful martial art.

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Lioness – book review

Lioness, by Emily Perkins

Bypass the weird cover. The book beyond is bright and clever – a story of Wellingtonians not usually open for scrutiny, people with big money and flash houses but still, for all their entitlement, real people with relatable problems: complex families, children, ageing, white-lies that go bad, temptation.

Therese Thorne married money. Trevor was twenty years older, his wife had left him and he swooped in on pretty Theresa, changed her name, got her tooth fixed and folded her into his life with his business empire, his houses, his four children and their accoutrements. He set her up with a homeware business and she built up a chain of Therese Thorne shops selling lovely, darling things to lovely darlings. At their holiday house in the Sounds, a young guest suggests to Therese (as they’re peeling potatoes) they’re like the ‘help’. She’s insulted but it seems a fair comment. “Bunting, strings of lights, fat outdoor candles in glass jars, tick, tick, tick. Booze cabinet housing ancient gin and sweet holiday liqueurs, tick. Beer fridge, crated wine delivery, tick. Kayaks, rowboat, paddleboards, fishing gear, boardgames, tick.” Trevor is in his seventies now and they’re still having good sex. Tick. So far, so PA with benefits.

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Empire City

Empire City by John E Martin

It would be silly to call this a ‘review’ of Empire City, as it will take me a few years to get through this tome properly, but I am so happy to have it, to drool over it and to put it on my desk as a kind of dual use research/paperweight. I bought it last week from Unity in Wellington on a recommendation from an historian without a second thought and then realised it weighed nearly 1.7kg and I was on a trip around the motu with only carry-on luggage. Worth every lug.

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Down from Upland–book review

Down from Upland, by Murdoch Stephens

This is one of those books that is so close to home it hits the cringe spot and makes me judder all over. I don’t mean the bit about the open marriage, but geographically. Kelburn.  This is my childhood and these are my people and not much has changed over the years. Stephens nails it. There were families like this back in the 70s, where the parents thought they were cool and liberal and who massively over-shared with their kids in a way that was hideously embarrassing. Poor teenage Axle is trying to be accepted at Wellington High, (he left College because of bullying, so no change there, either) while at the same time accepting mum’s boyfriend sleeping over while dad’s male lover gate-crashes. And his father, who can down five passive aggressive bottles with his wife’s young squeeze, ‘helps’ Axle negotiate parties and sex and alcohol by lecturing him, grounding him or buying him a shopping trolley of low alcohol beer, so the lad can ‘fit in’ at parties without getting smashed. There are some great scenes where the lads, naturally, run experiments on getting drunk on low alcohol beer.

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Harbouring–book review

Harbouring, by Jenny Pattrick

I’ll admit to being nervous in approaching this book. I love Jenny Pattrick’s rousing stories of colonial New Zealand communities and I’ve walked through the mud with her characters. Like many others I was introduced to her books through Denniston Rose and Heart of Coal and Denniston became part of my mental map. The same thing happened with Landings, and Catching the Current. Pattrick offers lively characters as guides to explore our colonial history.

Her new book, Harbouring, is set amid the NZ Company’s arrival in Wellington and the establishment of the colony there. Hence the nerves. Two years ago I published Jerningham. It’s the same story, wrought from the same material. What would an expert storyteller like Pattrick make of it?

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The New Ships—book review

The New Ships, by Kate Duignan

Stripped bare, this is a book a story about a man stripped bare.

Peter is confronted by a portrait painted by his wife. It’s a naked man, sitting on a chair. Nothing else. He is not even sure it is him. He wife has died of cancer, Peter is in mourning and he finds the painting in a shed at their Castlepoint bach, a exposed place he wants to sell. Even the bach is not what he thought; the field he believed was his actually belongs to a neighbour.

This is a mid-life crisis story if ever there was one. Every concept Peter uses to define himself is stripped away on the turning point of his wife’s death.

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Blindsight—book review

Blindsight, by Maurice Gee

I love the start of this book. It’s the antithesis of the thoroughly modern style where you bang crash into the action and grab the reader by the balls. (I don’t have balls but have a good imagination.) There’s a beautiful story setting: a woman does nothing more than walk down the road but I’m there, with her.

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Te Tiriti comes to town

Quills out for the Treaty in Poneke

180 years ago today the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in Wellington, although Wellington wouldn’t find its name until a few months later and the town was referred to as Port Nicholson. Continue reading “Te Tiriti comes to town”

Edward Jerningham Wakefield

Died 140 years ago today

Dear fellow Wellingtonians

Here is a celebration of Jerningham Wakefield, a founding colonist of Wellington. He died 140 years ago today, aged 58, penniless and alone, in an alms-house in Ashburton.  But before the drink got him, in his early twenties, he had been an extraordinary young man, a journalist, a rip roaring adventurer, the Wellington wild boy of his time. Continue reading “Edward Jerningham Wakefield”