Booknotes Issue 169

bringing books & people together Number 169 Winter 2010

dylan horrocks on Superman, Mickey Mouse and owning cultureamy brown on startling new talent stephen dailsley An exclusive extract from his debut novel Traitorcraig sisterson on New Zealand’s underrated crime writingPlus fiona farrell, paula green and sue orr

FINAL.indd 1 23/07/2010 9:59:46 a.m.

2 / Booknotes ISSUE 169 WINTER 2010

Book News & Reviews

Read about it in a magazine ! Subscribe to your favourite Magazine. Select from the best in , Art and Design, Contemporary Culture, Book News and Reviews, and World News and current affairs.

Go to www.magmag.co.nz to Subscribe online or ph 0800 624 634.

BLUE MESSIAH

A NEW BOOK by Peter Finlay

“ If you have ever wondered what it would be like to suffer from

schizophrenia, this book is for you. I couldn’t put it down. Peter describes

frightening events, real and unreal. Bizarre ideas lead to strange

behaviour. Somehow Peter hangs on to his wry sense of humour...”

Cindi Wallace, Past President, Schizophrenia Fellowship (NZ) Inc.

Blue Messiah by Peter FinlayPublished by Toi Ora Live Art TrustISBN: 978-0-473-16000-5

Order on-line at www.magmag.co.nz/bluemessiah or call 0800 624 634.

Art & Culture Current Affairs

Art

& A

ust

ralia

Ne

w Z

ea

lan

d G

eo

gra

ph

ic

Va

nit

y F

air

Th

e G

ua

rdia

n W

ee

kly

Th

e N

ew

Yo

rke

r

Ga

rnta

Ne

w Z

ea

lan

d B

oo

ks

Sp

ort

Tim

es

Lit

era

ry S

up

ple

me

nt

Th

e N

ew

Yo

rk R

evi

ew

of

Bo

oks

Waitakere Trust Art Awardsincorporating Lincoln Green Sculpture Awards 2

4th

CALL FOR ENTRIES

Entry Form available from: www.waitakere-arts.co.nz(09) 838 [email protected]

Entries close 15/10/2010 Exhibition 4-14 NovemberNO DIGITAL SUBMISSIONS

$12,000 PRIZES to be won

WTAA : Work must be 2-dimensional maximum size 1220mm x 1220mm including frame

Lincoln Green Sculpture Awards: Free standing only maximum size 2000mm in height & 1500mm width/depthSupported by: Homestead Picture Framers, DRAW Art Supplies, FALLS Restaurant & Gallery, Gordon Harris Art & Graphic Store, Greg Presland, Sudan Hairdressing, Xpress Stationery, Revell Family Trust

Wai

take

re T

rust

Firs

t Priz

e 2009: B

ang

Zhe

n D

eng

Mem

orie

s of

Ota

go

The Magazine Marketing Company is the New Zealand agent for publishers and distributors of magazines from around the globe - from the largest mass market weeklies like TV Guide through to highly specialized magazines. The Magazine Marketing Company offers the largest range of New Zealand and

international magazines to individual subscribers, business customers, schools and public libraries.

TMMC-MagMag advert.indd 1 26/07/2010 10:07:42 a.m.

http://www.magmag.co.nz/shop/Art+%26+Photography/Art/Art++Australia.html

Booknotes 169 2010 / 3

NEW ZEALAND BOOK COUNCILTe Kaunihera Pukapuka o Aotearoa

Booknotes

Dame Fiona Kidman

Peter Biggs

Owen Marshall

Lincoln Gould

Sandra NoakesJenny PattrickPeter QuinVlasta Shanahan

Noel Murphy

Sarah Forster

Emma Gallagher

Bianca Cornford

Susanna Andrew

Booknotes is the quarterly magazine of the

Level 7Alan Burns Insurances House69–71 Boulcott StreetWellington 6011

(04) 499 1569

(04) 499 1424

[email protected]

www.bookcouncil.org.nz

Editorial & advertising queries to: [email protected]

Whitireia Publishingwww.whitireia.ac.nz

PMP Maxum Ltd

Sarah Maxey

are those of the authors and do

the New Zealand Book Council.ISSN 1176-8851

Owning Culture / 4Dylan Horrocks discusses copyright and wrong-doing as books enter the digital age

A BOOK THAT CAUGHT MY EYE Alan Deare / 6

/ 6

SOAPBOX Craig Sisterson on New Zealandcrime writing / 7

The Pen and the Sword / 8Debut talent Stephen Daisley talks with Amy Brown about his forthcoming novel Traitor

New Fiction An exclusive extract from Traitor by Stephen Daisley / 10

MY SPACE Martin Edmond / 12

SEARCHING THE BOOKSHELVES Sue Orr / 13

Writing in Tandem Penelope Todd / 14

HIDDEN TREASURES

Fiona Farrell on Madras Cafe Books / 15

CHILDREN’S CORNER Sarah Forster / 15

Masterclass: Paula Green / 16

FROM THE BOOK COUNCIL / 17

BOOK GROUP COMPASS Alison Wong / 18

Contents

FINAL.indd 3 23/07/2010 9:59:49 a.m.

BOOKLOVERS’ TRIVIA

Subscriptions

New subscription rate for Booknotes available from $29.00 for four, quarterly issues. Subscribe at www.magmag.co.nz/booknotes.

Join the NZ Book Council - go to www.magmag.co.nz/nzbookcouncil.

... or call 09 304 0321 for details.

Issue 169 Page 3.indd 1 26/07/2010 9:32:56 a.m.

4 / Booknotes issue 169 winter 2010

But there’s another side to the Superman story, which reveals an-other equally destructive aspect of copyright. Superman’s popularity led to a boom in ‘superhero’ com-ics, with dozens of new characters introduced by every publisher in the business. One in particu-lar, the red-costumed Captain Marvel (created by C C Beck and Bill Parker for Fawcett Comics), became so popular it eventually overtook even Superman in sales. Captain Marvel was witty and clever, with distinctive and playful art, and helped push the young American comics industry to new heights of quality and sophistica-tion. But National, searching for a way to crush its biggest competi-tor, sued Fawcett for copyright infringement.

The case dragged on for years before Fawcett finally gave up, set-tling out of court and promising to shut down the Captain Marvel line. Many comics fans remem-ber the end of Captain Marvel as the day their favourite hero was finally slain – not by alien invaders or supernatural powers – but by copyright lawyers. Looking back today, National’s lawsuit looks weak indeed. But in the battle between Superman and Captain Marvel, the better comic lost.

Mickey and the piratesSuperman wasn’t the only cartoon character to be fought over in court. Another landmark case took place in the 1970s, when underground cartoonists Dan O’Neill, Bobby London, Gary Hallgren, Shary Flenniken and Ted Richards wrote and drew Air Pirates Funnies, a series of comics starring none other than Mickey and Minnie Mouse, with plenty of sex, drugs and subversive politics. The Air Pirates served as a commentary on the sanitised corporate dominance of our culture. Naturally, Disney sued for copyright infringement (and won), much to O’Neill’s glee. The courtroom battle soon turned into political theatre. Some of Disney’s own cartoonists

obliged to sign when that first story was published in 1938 granted exclusive rights to the story and characters to the pub-lisher forever, for the princely sum of $130. From that moment on, Superman was the property of National/DC, and Siegel and Shuster were nothing more than hired hands working on whatever stories the publisher assigned them. As Superman spawned countless comics, radio shows, films and toys, the two young creators eventually took their grievance to court, suing Nation-al for the rights to their creation. But a contract is a contract, and so the court ruled against them. And for much of their lives Siegel and Shuster lived in poverty and bitterness, as Superman went on to make DC (now owned by Time Warner) many billions of dollars.

From this, I learned the central problem with how copyright works: it’s treated as a form of property. And like any property, it can be bought, sold or stolen. And as often as not, it ends up in the hands of corporations whose sole purpose is to exploit their property portfolio for maximum profit. Even when the author still ‘owns’ the copyright, he or she may be obliged to license the management of that property to a syndicate or publisher, who will often behave like a ruthless slum landlord, doing their best to fleece both the author and their readers.

A spectre is haunting the world of publishers and authors – the spectre of the ebook. The iPad, Kindle, Google Book Search, digital piracy – if the prophets of doom are to be believed, these new technological developments herald the imminent death of all we hold dear: books, writing and civilisation itself. In reality, of course, we simply don’t know what these new technologies will mean in the long run. Perhaps it’s that very uncertainty that has us so worried. Some of us are already mourning the smell of paper, the spidery cracks along an old book’s spine, dog-eared pages and marginal notes.

But perhaps the greatest fear for many editors and authors is the ease with which digital books can be copied. We’ve all heard plenty of horror stories about how the music and film industries have been affected by illegal download-ing. Are we about to become the internet’s next victim? Terrified at the thought of bankrupt publishers and dwindling royalties, many of us are turning to the only weapon we have in the fight against pirates and thieves: copyright. Urged on by those seasoned copyright war-riors, the music and film industry lobbyists, authors are wondering whether copyright laws shouldn’t be rewritten for the digital age – strengthening and extending our ownership rights, criminalising infringement and handing out ever harsher penalties.

Before we jump on the Hol-lywood lobbyists’ bandwagon, however, let’s take a moment to think about how copyright affects writers and readers. Is ‘intellectual property’ the best way to describe our relationship to our work? Does

copyright protect creators and artists – or can it also be used to disenfranchise and exploit us? Is it correct to say someone can ‘own’ a story, an image or an idea? And what does that do to the culture in which we all live?

The birth of SupermanGrowing up obsessed with comics, I learned from an early age that copyright was important. That strange little ‘c’ in a circle was prominently displayed on many of my favourite comics, and I soon understood it somehow stood for ownership – like the flag waving over government buildings. As I grew older, however, I noticed

Owning CultureAs books follow music and video onto the internet, Dylan Horrocks warns that the law may end up stealing the rights of both writers and readers

Siegel and Shuster lived in poverty and bitterness as Superman went on to make DC many billions of dollars

something odd about those copyright notices. Many weren’t in the name of the cartoonist or author, but instead named a newspaper syndicate, a publisher or even a mysterious corporate ‘owner’ such as Disney or Warner Bros. It became clear that these ownership flags could be a mark of conquest, planted by an occupying power. When I finally heard the true story of Superman, I began to understand why.

Superman was created in 1934 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two young science-fiction fans from Cleveland, Ohio. It was several years before they found someone willing to publish their story and Superman became the lead feature in National Allied Publications’ Action Comics #1. At the time, National expected Superman to flop, but to every-one’s surprise he took off, mak-ing National (or DC Comics, as it’s known today) the dominant publisher in the business. Unfor-tunately for Siegel and Shuster, the brief contract they’d been

FINAL.indd 4 23/07/2010 9:59:50 a.m.

Booknotes issue 169 winter 2010 / 5

quietly supported O’Neill’s fight. After all, Disney had a reputation for treating its artists badly, among them Floyd Gottfredson and Carl Barks, who produced some of the greatest comics of the 20th century – all of them signed with the name ‘Walt Disney’.

In comics, then, we see that copyright has often been used to shift control of creations from artists to corporate ‘owners’. But it’s also the means by which those same corporations prevent others from creating new – and often in-novative – work. At the same time that National was using copyright law to destroy its greatest rival, the company was also using it to disenfranchise Superman’s crea-tors. Similarly, Disney ensured its own artists remained anonymous and unacknowledged, while vig-orously protecting its own ‘intel-lectual property’ from a group of wild young cartoonists seeking to make a political point.

Now, by the time the Air Pirates put pen to paper, Mickey Mouse had been part of our shared cultural vocabulary for nearly two generations. Like Superman, Mickey had become ubiquitous in the culture. These iconic figures have entered our children’s games, the metaphors we use and the mythological nar-ratives our society builds around itself, just as stories and images from the Bible and folk stories once shaped the way we spoke about and saw the world. The dif-ference is that now such cultural landmarks are private property, owned by corporations who seek to exploit them for financial gain and vigorously police unauthor-ised attempts to use them.

Tarzan in the copyright jungle In 2004 Nigel Cox’s highly ac-claimed novel Tarzan Presley looked set to make a big splash – not only here in New Zealand, but around the world. It was nominat-ed for awards, had rave reviews and was selling like crazy. But then Cox’s publisher, Victoria University Press (VUP), received a threatening letter from none other than Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB Inc.), the private company that oversees Edgar Rice Bur-roughs’ literary estate, including Tarzan. Of course, by the time Cox’s novel was published, Bur-

roughs had been dead for more than 50 years (the first Tarzan story came out in 1912), which in most of the world puts his work in the public domain. But not in America, where corporations like Disney have repeatedly – and successfully – lobbied congress to extend copyright terms.

So even though Tarzan has been a part of our shared mytholo-gies, daydreams and fantasies for nearly 100 years, shaping stories and art around the world, he’s still – as far as ERB Inc. is con-cerned – the company’s exclusive private property. And Nigel Cox was trespassing. VUP’s lawyers advised that ERB Inc.’s case was weak (at least in New Zealand), but fighting it in court would cost a fortune. There was nothing VUP could do. ERB Inc. insisted that Tarzan Presley never be reprinted or sold overseas. Cox’s master-piece slipped out of sight, becom-ing a great lost treasure of New

phor: that of copyright as private commercial property.

This shift from public good to private ownership has encour-aged the repeated extension of copyright terms, and the erosion of such communal rights as fair use and public domain. And now, as we try to work out how to adapt to the new challenges of digital reproduction, the property meta-phor is only making things worse. The music and film industries are waging war on their custom-ers (and all too often their artists as well) in the name of protecting their property at all costs. Will the book world make the same mis-take? Or can we find another way of looking at copyright? Maybe a metaphor that better reflects an author’s relationship to their work and their readers?

When we’re honest, most writ-ers will admit that our work is not entirely ours. We don’t invent our stories out of nothing. The truth is, we make them out of what’s come before and what surrounds us every day: the world we live in, people we know, stories we’ve read and images we’ve seen. We swim in a deep ocean of culture, and in a very real sense, every-thing we make is made from that vast, shared sea. We are part of it, just as we are part of the world in which we live. If we treat that ecosystem as nothing more than raw materials to be torn up, exploited and sold in the marketplace, then sooner or later the whole system will fall apart. And if we draw water from the shared ocean – as all writers do – we must also learn to give something back. The relationship between a writer and their work is vitally important and must be respected. But we must also respect the countless other relationships that form around our stories and ideas: those who read them, share them and respond by making something new.

This is the lesson of sustain-ability and reciprocity: the shared environment doesn’t belong to us; it isn’t private property. In art, as in life, we ignore this at our peril.

Dylan Horrocks has written and illustrated numerous graphic novels, comics and children’s books. His graphic novel Hicksville was recently republished in New Zealand by VUP.

Zealand literature, buried in the depths of the copyright jungle.

The ecology of culture Copyright law evolved out of efforts by governments to censor and control the explosion of sub-versive literature brought about by the introduction of printing. It did this by granting monopoly rights to trusted printers. The Statute of Anne in 1704 turned this into a monopoly right granted to authors themselves, limited to a period of 14 years. The inten-tion was to encourage learning: the monopoly allowed authors to benefit financially from publish-ing new work, while the time limit ensured that others could freely build on those ideas after a reasonable time had passed. Over time, however, the notion of copyright as a monopoly with a time limit intended to serve the public good has been replaced by a simpler but very different meta-

FINAL.indd 5 23/07/2010 9:59:57 a.m.


a book that caught my eye

Alan Deare

Recently I was stuck at the Auckland domestic terminal for four hours. I immersed myself thoroughly in the airport book-store for an embarrassingly long portion of the wait. I gener-ally start in the New Zealand biography section, but that day I skirted the far wall mindful of a project I’m working on at the moment. So much foil and embossing. Cover after cover, images photoshopped to an nth of their lives, leaving little space for the reader to project their imagination. Collectively overwhelming. ‘Airport covers,’ I mused, knowing I was in the process of committing a similar crime.

A graphic designer can spot a print embellishment from 20 metres, but the book that caught my eye that afternoon did so for the opposite reason. There, nes-tled among the other titles, was Sam Hunt’s memoir, Backroads: Charting a Poet’s Life. A beauti-fully simple cover that gave me a sense of … inner peace, I guess.

The cover had a grainy black and white of our man in a slightly dishevelled domestic context. This photographer, John Savage, has a knack for images that are not overly constructed or portentous. The title was in a gregarious serif with playful idiosyncrasies, sug-gesting the presence of the hand. All set in lower case, which I read as colloquial. Perfectly pitched. The poet’s name across the top measure in solid red, simple as you please. There it is, black and white with a bit of red: classic. Commanding yet affable, real,

passionate. Sometimes the re-straint and subtleties of selection are the most important aspects of a design.

Next, I flick through the book to see if it delivers on its promise.

A creamy uncoated stock, a single column with perfect line length, point size and leading well proportioned. The generous outer margin, pleasing and restful. What seals the deal, though, are the images of Hunt’s artifacts and ephemera well paced throughout. It’s one of my favourite types of book: a privileged access into the life, albums, folders and filing cabinets of the subject. In Hunt’s case I imagine there would be some genuine patience and foraging required. The material pictured often shows this: crumpled, creased, ripped, dog-eared, tracing 40 years of a character who has lived all too true to his poetry. There are some gems: a signed letter from Baxter, telegrams, notes, set lists, gig posters, early drafts, broadsheets illustrated by Robin White

and a selection of strangely contemporary seventies covers. I’m sold.

I now scan for the designer’s credit. It is absent, with no author credited either. For something so beautifully put together, this is incredible. From the foreword I learn not only that Robbie Bur-ton was the publisher, but the book was based on transcripts of his interviews with Sam Hunt. Familiar with some of his previ-ous work, I deduce he is also the designer. I know he is modest about this, but he clearly has a good eye. It all makes sense now. I leave with a copy purchased, a clearer idea of my own task pend-ing and a plane to catch.

Alan Deare is a designer based in Hamilton. He has won numerous Designers Institute of New Zealand best design awards. He has also won several Publishers Association of New Zealand book design awards, including the supreme Nielsen Award for Best Book in 2009.

It is a truth not universally acknowledged by readers, but always secretly hoped for, that a book will begin with a spectacular opening. A knockout first line or paragraph isn’t mandatory. Plenty of classics start with a whimper rather than a bang. War and Peace is usually judged a more worthy book, but it’s the opening of Anna Karenina – ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ – that everyone remembers. Other novels never live up to their opening pyrotechnics. Jack Butler’s Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock starts with a starburst: ‘Howdy, I’m the Holy Ghost. Talk about your omniscient narrators.’ before fading away into a smoky nothingness.

Unnecessary, often misleading, but the perfect opening can be the making of a novel. ‘Call Me

Ishmael’, the most concise line in a book otherwise short on brevity, has done as much as anything to make Moby-Dick part of the popular imagination. For many, those three words are all they will know of the book; and for many they will be enough. Like other compelling openings, these three words have taken on a life beyond the novel that spawned them. They have become part of a small but distinct literary genre – the classic opening.

It’s a genre for those in a hurry. You can, as I’ve just found out, read all the opening paragraphs of Maurice Gee’s 17 adult novels in less than 10 minutes. While this sounds disrespectful, even blasphemous, zooming in throws up surprises often overlooked as we press on into a novel. For example, the naughty playfulness of Meg’s opening: ‘The priest phoned to tell me Sutton was

dead. It was all I could do to stop myself crying, ‘Goody,’ and clapping my hands.’

A random search of other New Zealand novels (to keep things manageable) led to the deceptively simple first sentence of Witi Ihimaera’s Tangi, which bends around on itself like a koru: ‘This is where it ends and begins.’ A quick dip into The Bone People, reveals that it starts with an unexpectedly jaunty clip: ‘THE END AT THE BEGINNING: He walks down the street. The asphalt reels by him.’ And the dozen words that open Alan Duff ’s Once Were Warriors prove to be just as powerful as the memorable first scene of Lee Tamahori’s film: ‘Bastard, she’d think, looking out her back kitchen window. Lucky white bastard …’

Then there’s the first sentence of an almost unknown novel

by one of New Zealand’s most famous writers: ‘Timothy Harold Glass woke slowly from a dream of crocodiles.’ This is how James K Baxter’s only novel, Horse, begins. Who knew?

Once you start, it’s hard to stop looking, or inventing new categories, such as the much-rarer ‘novels with both classic beginings and endings’ (A Tale of Two Cities, The Great Gatsby, Brighton Rock).

Endings, which are often much trickier than beginnings (who, for example, remembers how Pride and Prejudice ends?), are the subject for another time. For now, it’s enough to beat against the current of the novel that sweeps us on to the end, and allow ourselves to be borne back to those magical beginnings.

booklovers’ trivia

John King explores one of literature’s neglected genres

John King is a freelance writer who lives in Wellington.

FINAL.indd 6 23/07/2010 10:00:01 a.m.


soapbox

Kiwis love crime fiction – but what about our own? When will New Zealanders embrace locally penned tales of mystery, murder and mayhem, wonders Craig Sisterson

The Kiwi stuff not only holds its own but betters many of the popular international offerings. We should feel no cultural cringe

New Zealand readers love crime fiction. Just ask any bookseller, publicist or librarian. Or take a look at the weekly bestsellers lists: during the first four months of 2010, crime and thriller books topped our International Adult Fiction list almost 80 per cent of the time, and dominated the Top 10 titles every week.

It’s not surprising. Globally, millions of readers have been enthralled by such tales since a Baker Street-dwelling sleuth popularised the genre more than a century ago. And with crime writing having grown beyond the pure detective fiction of Christie-esque whodunnits or Chandler-esque mean streets – modern crime intertwines with everything from literary fiction to horror, comedy to social commentary – there’s pretty much something for everyone.

With such diversity on offer – entertainment, enlightenment and escapism – it’s no wonder the

genre remains hugely popular with Kiwi readers. Well, at least the offer-ings from overseas, that is. Because there’s a stark difference between how we treat crime fiction from beyond our shores and how we treat our own. (Calling local writers ‘second-class citizens’ would be a euphemism.) But why? Why have we failed to embrace locally-penned tales of mystery, murder and mayhem?

Plenty of reasons are given for our lack of support for Kiwi crime writing. But do such excus-es really hold water or are we just blithely accepting false percep-tions? Let’s take a look.

Reason one: We’re a small

country, so of course we won’t have many crime writers, or we can’t put our scarce resources into supporting them. Okay, yes, we’re small compared to say England or the US. But globally there are small countries where local crime fiction thrives in great numbers, strongly supported by media, booksellers and readers. Sweden (9 million) and Scotland (5 million) spring to mind. Both countries produce several dozen crime novels each year. And by the way, it’s not like being small stops Kiwis from accepting (even expecting) that we can excel on the world stage in other arenas, from sports to science to film-making.

Reason two: We’re too peace-ful to have believable crime fiction set here – for instance there has never been a real-life serial killer in New Zealand. But even ignor-ing the crime-rate elephant in the room, there has been plenty of great crime writing set in peace-ful countries or settings. In fact, a classic tenet is to set murder

where it’s unlikely or rare, thereby upsetting the social order (such as country village tales of the Golden Age). More recently, relatively peaceful Scandinavia has become a hotbed for crime fiction. Oh, and it’s crime fiction, anyway.

Reason three: We ‘don’t do genre fiction well in New Zealand’ (for example, we don’t have any or many crime fiction writers or they’re not very good). This may be the biggest, and most troubling, misperception of all. I used to believe this myself, and I was flat out wrong. I just didn’t know about the authors we do have, historically and now. Dame Ngaio Marsh was of

course one of the biggest names in the business in the mid-20th century, although even then she was celebrated here more for her work with local theatre than her detective fiction. Paul Thomas won Australia’s first crime-writing award in 1996. (We’re possibly the only English-speaking country in the world that doesn’t have an award to celebrate the best of its own crime writing.) On its release last year, the German translation of Paul Cleave’s third thriller, Cemetery Lake, jumped straight to the number two spot on Amazon Germany, just behind Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, and ahead of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. And that’s just a tip of the Kiwi crime iceberg.

I review international and Kiwi crime fiction for publications here and overseas. Over the past year or so I’ve read 80–100 crime novels. In my opinion, plenty of the Kiwi stuff not only holds its own but betters many of the popular international offerings. We should feel no cultural cringe.

There are other reasons given, all standing equally firmly on quicksand. But what it comes down to is that some ‘book’ peo-ple don’t think much of crime fiction – and that attitude can flow through influential parts of our literary world.

The reason a large number of Kiwi readers who do enjoy

(overseas) crime and thriller fiction don’t buy, read, talk about and support local stuff is that they haven’t been exposed to it. So they haven’t given it a go and discovered their own favourite local author(s). Just like the genre in general, the Kiwi crime landscape is fascinatingly diverse, from feisty young policewomen (Vanda Symon’s Sam Shephard) to fast and dark thrillers (Paul Cleave) to mysteries set in the equestrian world (Lindy Kelly), in archaeology (Dorothy Fowler) or on the colonial-era high seas (Joan Druett). And much much more. There’s something there for any crime fiction fan.

At the moment, what local crime and thriller fiction we have isn’t talked about enough (though things are getting better) and often isn’t highlighted by bookstores, libraries, literary festivals or awards – it simply isn’t out there in the wider public consciousness. We do have the writers. Just not the support. It’s time that changed.

craig sisterson is a lawyer turned journalist who writes news, reviews and features for newspapers, magazines, and websites in New Zealand, Australia and internationally. He is also the creator of Crime Watch, a blog focused on New Zealand and international crime and thriller fiction.

FINAL.indd 7 23/07/2010 10:00:03 a.m.


The Pen and the SwordAt the age of 55, father-of-five Stephen Daisley sees his debut novel published next month. He speaks with Amy Brown about his much-anticipated story of war and pacifism, love and loyalty.

Stephen Daisley is a 55-year-old father of five who lives in Western Australia. He has worked in a shearing gang, as a truck driver, on a cattle station and, for five years during the seven-ties, in an infantry battalion of the New Zealand Army. Now he has ‘a bloke’s shed out the back, but there are no drills – just a desk, computer and bed’ – where he spent last year writing Traitor, the book about which I call to inter-view him 20 minutes later than we planned. ‘I’ve been sitting by the phone like a teenager, waiting for it to ring’, he says pleasantly. This is his first interview.

The traitor of the title, David Monroe, is a shepherd in his sev-enties. He is called into the Rua-tane police station in Whakatane, to provide information about the recent shooting of a man he has never heard of: El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, or Malcolm X. Why is Monroe, whose mind keeps wan-dering back to the lambing, being questioned? He is the local koro pōrangi – mad old man – also known as Mohammed Monroe; a prayer mat hangs on his living room wall and 50 years ago, at Gallipoli, he befriended a Turkish doctor, Mahmoud.

doomed to fail, earns Monroe a death sentence. It is only due to the shortage of stretcher bearers in France that he survives to tell the tale to police inspectors 50 years later.

Weaving between 1915 and 1965, Traitor tells in visceral detail of Monroe’s experiences during the First World War, and how they left an indelible mark on the rest of his life. Reading the third-person narrative, filtered through Monroe’s perspective, one forgets that this character is, technically, a villain – disloyal and untrustworthy. From his empathy for Mahmoud to his tenderness towards the young soldiers whose stretchers he bears at Passchendaele, David Monroe is a sympathetic character. Yet, in the context of wartime, his ac-tions are blameworthy, preventing him from receiving the returned soldiers’ plot of land and mak-ing him unwelcome at the first ANZAC Day march. By 1965, he is no longer seen as an enemy in the Ruatane community, but the past 40 reclusive years have prevented him from leading the ‘normal’ family life that might have otherwise been possible. If it weren’t for his passionate decision

Daisley manages, with a deftly light touch, to suggest the far-reaching effects of war on the whole town and on New Zealand

whole town, and in turn, on New Zealand. A soldier’s experience of marriage, land ownership, occu-pation, religion and children were influenced by his experience at war – an obvious observation, but one that is presented in the novel with such finely judged atten-tion to detail that its significance seems fresh. Daisley illuminates the importance and tragedy of these years with a vivid specificity that makes the book difficult to put down. That it is his debut is all the more impressive.

Traitor is the result of a single year of full-time writing, but has the benefit of 20 years’ practice before it. When asked whether there are unpublished novels and stories in his bottom drawer, Daisley said, ‘Hundreds!’ Some of this work he ‘cannibalised’ for Traitor, which was originally much longer. ‘For instance’, Dais-ley says, ‘Catherine and her moth-er, Sarah, began in a 5000-word

story,’ but that plot thread had to be condensed when Daisley real-ised the novel was predominantly about a First World War soldier. As Daisley is well aware, this is not a unique subject. ‘While writ-ing, you don’t censor yourself; it just comes from somewhere. But, having sent the manuscript to Text [Publishing], that’s when I started worrying that they’d think, “Oh, no, not another First World War novel,”’ Daisley said.

One way of avoiding the cli-chés of the genre was, as Daisley puts it, the ‘modernist conceit’ of weaving between the novel’s vari-ous time frames, connecting the fragments of narrative with the associations made by Monroe’s shell-shocked memory. Initially, this too concerned Daisley, who thought ‘the William Burroughs cut-and-paste approach would be too dislocating, too elliptical’ until his publisher assured him that ‘it worked’, not least because

Mahmoud is a Sufi, that is, he explains to the young New Zealand soldier, a man who wears wool and believes in God. The two are caught in an explosion and taken to the same military hospital on Lemnos, where, as their wounds heal, they come to love each other. The night before Mahmoud is due to be sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, Monroe organises a fishing boat to take them both away. The plan,

on Lemnos to escape with Mah-moud, he wouldn’t be a traitor, and if it weren’t for another pas-sionate decision back in Ruatane, Monroe would be able to tell Catherine McKenzie, the owner of the sheep station where he musters, how he knows her hair is the same shade as her mother’s.

Through Monroe’s story, Daisley manages, with a deftly light touch, to suggest the far-reaching effects of the war on the

FINAL.indd 8 23/07/2010 10:00:04 a.m.


The Pen and the SwordAt the age of 55, father-of-five Stephen Daisley sees his debut novel published next month. He speaks with Amy Brown about his much-anticipated story of war and pacifism, love and loyalty.

it complements Daisley’s subtle references to James Joyce’s Ulysses and TS Eliot’s The Waste Land.

Another element of Traitor which raises it from the generic is the level of specific, memora-ble detail: donkeys are dropped overboard and swim towards the gunfire ashore; a mother burns a notification of bereavement and drinks the ashes mixed in a glass of water; a stretcher bearer is punished by spending the night shackled to a willow pole on a hill in the line of fire. The last of these details is from the letters of Archibald Baxter [James K Baxter’s father], which Daisley first found in Michael King’s New Zealanders at War. The horrify-ing account of a conscientious objector sent to France to carry stretchers emphasised to Daisley the fact that, during the First World War, Australia’s was the only army to not execute its own soldiers. Stretcher-bearing was, for New Zealand soldiers like David Monroe, an alternative to the firing squad.

Daisley grew up in Raetihi, near Jerusalem, and remembered ‘people talking about James K Baxter as a condemned man, because of his father. I loved “The Lament for Barney Flanagan”, but, of course, never told anyone.’ At this time, Daisley was at ‘one of those brutal Christian schools with cold showers and lots of caning’ with Leigh Davis. ‘I often wondered,’ Daisley said, ‘what would have happened if things had been different after leaving high school.’ Leigh Davis went to Victoria University, wrote Willy’s Gazette, which won the Best New Zealand First Book of Poetry Award in 1983, and became a suc-cessful investment banker. Daisley joined the shearing gang and later signed up for the army. He had a friend wounded in Vietnam and saw ‘what we become capable of ’. Pacifism ‘wasn’t an epiphany, more a gradual growing up,’ Daisley said, suspecting the reason that armies recruit 19-year-old boys rather than 30-year-old men is that ‘most 30-year-olds have enough brain in their head to say no’. Daisley said that his sons were never allowed toy guns, but still managed to play war with sticks. Traitor’s overt pacifism tempers this ‘natural impulse to fight’ – the pen rallying against the sword.

While in the army, Daisley be-

gan reading RAK Mason, which was, he said, ‘a transformative experience’; perhaps like David Monroe’s discovery of Sufism. Daisley describes his decision to introduce Monroe and Mahmoud on the battlefield as ‘that question of “what if?”’ What if a Christian shepherd from Ruatane started visiting the hospital bed of a Turkish doctor? What if the iconic ‘man alone’ dervish-dances in his top paddock? As Daisley points out, there is a parallel in the behaviour of the man alone and the Sufi or Buddhist who retreats from the world, disconnecting from society and neglecting his family, whether from cowardice or spirituality. Monroe’s reclusive-ness seems to be due to both of these, which makes his character compellingly vulnerable.

On researching Sufism, Daisley says, ‘I’m not a Muslim but I read Sufi poetry – Rumi – and I believe it has the power to transform people.’ He has a Sufi friend, whose family chose to stay in In-dia instead of moving to Pakistan after the 1947 partition. ‘When we were together in a market one day, I had something stolen. I told my friend about this and he replied, “Maybe they needed it more than you.”’

Many elements of Traitor ap-pear to have such a story behind them – a benefit of preceding one’s debut novel with several decades’ experience.

When I mentioned an excerpt (‘Ken’s sister Louisa was just mar-ried last week. Beautiful looking girl. Expecting by the shape of her walk, springing … We used to laugh about such gossip. Now it doesn’t matter’) as an example of how the war affected a com-munity’s moral code, Daisley interrupted, laughing. ‘Louisa is my mother,’ he said, ‘and Ken my uncle.’

His brother too, a shepherd, contributed to the realistic mustering details, such as the scene in which Monroe cleans a ewe’s carcass, throws the heart and kidneys to his sheepdog Floss, then watches the dog lying happily, stomach distend-ed with offal. Monroe’s three horses (the John, the Layla and the Majnun) are described just as convincingly, perhaps due to the fact that Daisley’s father was a horse breeder.

From Taranaki, Daisley’s father was an acquaintance of Ronald Hugh Morrieson, but

knew him as a drinker rather than the author of Came a Hot Friday. This coloured Daisley’s impres-sion of New Zealand authors, making writing seem too scandal-ous to be a real vocation. It wasn’t until Keri Hulme’s success with the The Bone People that Daisley considered writing a serious prospect. Michael Morrissey’s short stories were also an exciting encouragement. One in particular impressed Daisley, for its sense of humour and weirdness. ‘It was about a woman who tries to kill herself, but her car runs out of petrol before she’s finished. That night, she dreams she’s pregnant with a Volkswagen.’

Finding himself out of work, and seeing study as a preferable alternative to the dole, Daisley completed degrees in literature and philosophy at the University of Western Australia, where he also worked in administration.

‘Aussie academics are so generous; I haven’t met any New Zealand academics, but I’m sure they’re the same,’ Daisley said, naming in particular Gail Jones and Marion Campbell, who

read early drafts of Traitor, and Dennis Haskell, who ‘carved up my 30,000 words of theory but was kind about my creative work’. Daisley has considered return-ing to study, perhaps a PhD in creative writing, but for now is happy being a househusband and working on the next book which is ‘coming together’.

Before letting Daisley get back to writing in his shed, I ask briefly about the Swiss literary agents Paul and Peter Fritz: one of the hits when you search ‘Stephen Daisley’ online. ‘I have no idea,’ Daisley replies. ‘I have started Googling my name – it feels so indulgent – but I hadn’t seen that. Is it a good thing?’

I think it bodes well for Traitor, which deserves to be the start of an exciting and successful writing career.

amy brown’s poetry collection, The Propaganda Poster Girl, was a 2009 finalist for the NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award. She is currently working on a PhD at the University of Melbourne.

Step

hen

Dai

sley

© D

arre

n Jo

nes

FINAL.indd 9 23/07/2010 10:00:09 a.m.


new fiction

An exclusive extract from the novel Traitor by Stephen Daisley

What would make a soldier betray his country?

In the battle-smoke and chaos of Gallipoli, a young New Zealand soldier helps a Turkish doctor fight-ing to save a boy’s life. Then a shell bursts nearby; the blast that should have killed them both consigns them instead to the same military hospital.

Mahmoud is a Sufi. A whirl-ing dervish, he says, of the Mevlevi order. He tells David stories. Of ar-riving in London with a pocketful of dried apricots. Of Majnun, the man mad for love, and of the saint who flew to paradise on a lion skin. You are God, we are all gods, Mahmoud tells David, and a bond grows between them.

A bond so strong that David will betray his country for his friend.

He was being touched by hands from out of the darkness. Rolled over by many hands, cold scissors along the inside of his right leg. Someone asking is that you Julia? And for the rest of his life he would never know what this meant.

The light in the surrounding darkness smelled of kerosene and Condy’s crystals.

A nurse was holding his wrist. He could feel his pulse against her fingers. He looked at her face as she studied the watch in her other hand. She glanced at him, smiled. Looked back to the watch.

A few moments passed in silence. She put his wrist down, patted the back of his hand. Picked up a clipboard and said as she wrote, hello there Sergeant David Monroe.

She was purple and gold and ivory coloured in the light. He couldn’t speak.

She leaned forward and smiled. You are a very lucky young man. A few scars is all you will have now. Make the girls love you even more. She looked at him with grey eyes. Winked and turned away.

He wanted to say, you are Irish. And, can you sing to me?

Then the wind moved the white canvas of the tent walls. They buckled like wet bedsheets on a washing line. The suspended hurricane lamps swayed. Shadows swayed.

Coughing and the creaking of cots. A groan and someone called out in their sleep muster the Darling ridge down to the bottom Melodies. A hushing sound.

David closed his eyes. Clink-ing noises of metal instruments in enamel bowls. A hissing of lamps.

Somebody was answering a question he didn’t remember ask-ing. He is badly wounded but will be all right.

Papanui Station New Zealand 1965 Mr Monroe?

Catherine reached out and held his arm. Tugged at the cloth of his jacket.

Mr Monroe? She shook his arm. The old man had closed his

eyes and had his head back. He opened his eyes and looked at her. His head was still back. He was looking at her from a great height.

Are you all right? But it was already too late. Yes,

he began to say when he felt the spiral screwing sensation come from his ring finger up and into the biceps of his left arm. He could feel the wet swishing of his urgent heart. The quickening.

A daily heartbreak, he whis-pered. He smiled as he whispered to himself. Began to fall to his knees.

He felt them, the waves, hiss-ing into his left arm and shoulder. Like the love thoughts of a young man. A daily betrayal of who we are. Almost laughed.

The words of Mahmoud. Always the words of Mahmoud.

He saw both knees fall into the earth.

When we are in love we think our hearts will burst. That we can fly. Our heads on fire.

He tried to say, I loved your mother Catherine more than I can say to you, but as he spoke he was gripped by a pain which doubled him over and made him cry out with no sense except his pain.

He heard her calling to him as he fell forward.

The earth was black and green and it rushed up towards him. There in the middle, far off, a circle of the brightest light.

So it was that he began to die.Often the beckoning and wail-

ing sound of ten thousand voices.The sound of bees. Everything

he has known coming towards him as he rushes through the darkness at unimagined speeds.

And nothing will be as it was. And that which was will echo in us like the whispering of that companion who was always with us and will always be with us.

Exquisite delight, our hands touching once again as if for the first time.

For there are talismans that only we will recognise.

These are the strange and wonderful words which came to him as he fell into the earth with the weight in his chest, like that young horse falling on him in the summer of 1947. And, he thought, why should I the he of this dying and remembering re-call that young horse called the Layla, which translates as Night of Obscurity; a small white mare with hairy ears and a fondness for Bartlett pears coming back on him with such clumsiness, cleaving his pelvic bones, that if it wasn’t for her sweet eyes and evocative name he would have sold to Clementine Fabish the man who wore a black raincoat even in summer.

Mahmoud is sitting on a white block of stone in the shadow of the wall. Behind him, in bright sun, there is an arch covered with a grape vine. The leaves turning orange and red in the autumn. The colours in such contrast to the white arch whose keystone mortar was crumbling. One of the stone segments had slipped, giving the arch a slightly skewed look. Small lizards sunbake and dart across the stone. Rosemary bushes and wild thyme grow among the flagstones which form a curving path into the ruin. Jerusalem rock roses, tiny and blood red, flank another low wall.

He is smiling in welcome.Salaam w’alykum, brother.

Peace be upon you. You are com-ing home.

He who dies before he dies will never die. Welcome.

David is raising his hand but is unable to speak.

New Zealand 1965 He walked into the small police station at Ruatane with one of the Government Communications Security Bureau men in front of him and the other behind.

Inspector Ogden led the way and said Mr Monroe sit here thank you. Indicated the chair with his

Lemnos 1915 He moved his leg and the cloud which covered him moved. And then he thought perhaps it wasn’t him but the cloud that was mov-ing his leg.

Then he knew he was on a hospital barge, crossing a white sea. A thousand bandages unravelling in its wake.

Sea gulls and the shadows of sea gulls followed the barge. With wings as sharp as razors they crossed above them calling come away with us …

Children come away with us.

FINAL.indd 10 23/07/2010 10:00:11 a.m.


hand as he walked and did not look back.

The old man sat and looked through the high window at the passing clouds. There were two iron bars across the window. Painted white.

We have asked you to come here today Mr Monroe to clear up a few matters in relation to your service during the First World War.

The old man nodded and said yessir. He had removed his hat and was holding it in his hands.

As you probably know New Zealand has, in accordance with the ANZUS Defence Treaty, com-mitted combat troops to Vietnam.

No sir, Vietnam?Yes, Inspector Ogden said.

He had sat at the desk facing the old man. He reached into his coat pocket. Took out a packet of Camel cigarettes and a Zippo cigarette lighter.

Cigarette? He offered the packet.

No sir thank you. Inspector Ogden extracted

a cigarette from the packet and flicked open the lighter. Lit the Camel and drew the smoke into his lungs. Snapped the lighter shut.

We are, as a precaution and on advice and as a matter of routine national security, examining and questioning all those who have a cross reference to trials by court martial and or with known links to the Communist Party, consci-entious objection, pacifism and Islam. You Mr Monroe tick the box, as it were, on at least four counts. Perhaps all. Smoke was trickling from both nostrils. The inspector placed his palm on a pile of yellow files. The top file was open.

I do?Yes you do, the inspector said

quickly; he had continued to stare at the file as he spoke. He looked up at the old man. His lips pressed together. I realise Mr Monroe that this occurred some time ago. Nev-ertheless let me assure you that what we have here is still of some concern. Considerable concern actually.

The old man nodded. Yes sir.Very good then. The inspec-

tor moved his hand and looked down. Your service record states that in October 1915 you aided a prisoner of war to escape from detention in a camp on the island

of Lemnos. That you also deserted with the said prisoner, when you were later recaptured and imprisoned you claimed to have become a conscientious objector and a paci-fist. You would not take up arms against the enemy. In that case the Germans. Is this true so far?

The old man looked at his hands. His fingers holding his grey felt hat. Said yes sir. He kept looking down. Thumbs just start-ing to touch above the brim of the hat. His head beginning to shake, gently, from side to side.

Inspector Ogden drew on his cigarette and looked over his shoulder at Sergeant McMillan who was standing behind him with his hands loosely clasped, fingers intermeshed. Big hands and big fingers. There was black hair on the backs of his fingers and on the side of each hand. Flat broken knuckles. Sergeant McMillan raised his eyebrows and then pulled his lips in to form a thin line across his teeth. Tilted his head slightly. His nose had been broken at least once. There was a scar across the bridge.

Inspector Ogden turned back to the old man with a smile. His own father was about the same age. Said all right then, and picked up the cigarette lighter. He turned the lighter over in his fingers and frowned as he examined the emblem.

Is there anything you would like to tell us Mr Monroe?

The old man stared at the inspector. Shook his head, no sir. There is nothing.

Inspector Ogden stared at him for a moment and then looked down and opened the yellow file again, turned over two sheets of paper.

Sentenced to … The inspec-tor paused as he read. Death. He looked up from his reading. A finger marked his place.

The old man was looking above his head out the small window with the two bars.

You were sentenced to death Mr Monroe. He tapped his finger on the page. To be shot. Is that right?

The old man barely moved his head to nod, blinked, still staring out the window. The brim of the hat moved between his fingers.

The inspector looked down and continued to read. Desertion and aiding the enemy to escape.

Pretty serious stuff. Treason. Traitorous conduct it says. You were a traitor to your country Mr Monroe is that right?

The old man made a noise in his throat like a father would make to a child who asked him a question he couldn’t answer. A why is God question.

Is that right Monroe? The inspector smacked his hand down flat on the files. Is it? What do you have to say for yourself?

The old man looked at him. They were both quiet for some time.

Nothing, he said.Nothing?No.They waited. Then the old man

said, I have been called that. Trai-tor. That name. Moved his gaze away then to his left.

Really?The old man closed his eyes.

Nodded.The inspector smoked and

squinted at him. You were almost shot Mr Monroe. Executed.

Yes, the old man said, cleared his throat. His eyes were still closed. They were short of stretch-er bearers. There were some other considerations. The Australian boys refused to carry it out. It was a different time. The sentence was commuted to twenty years hard labour and I served out the War as a stretcher bearer. France, then Belgium. Another six months in Germany with the occupation force. I received a full pardon. And I came home then.

The old man spoke as if recit-ing something rehearsed. Lost all privileges, he said. Pensions or grants. Medals. All that.

Then he opened his eyes and nodded towards the yellow files. Should all be in there.

The inspector paused, looked at him for a while, nodded. Your file, Mr Monroe mentions a prob-ability of you converting to Islam. I suppose you have heard of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz?

The old man sat back in his chair. Who?

El Hajj Malik El Shabazz.No. No sir.Also known as Malcolm X.No sir. I am a shepherd. I am

getting older now. I have worked on Papanui Station since I came back from the War. It was forty-five or something years ago. 1920. Sir, I have to get back. At the moment

it is lambing, the early ewes are all along the river flats. There are over five hundred head of the earlies.

He was shot to death this year. By his own people, fellow Muslims. They used a sawn-off shotgun and pistols. A mess. But you would know all about those things Mr Monroe. You and your fellow Muslims. Is that your name? David Monroe?

The old man recognised these questions, it had been years but he had been asked such questions before. What was being asked was different. How was the same.

The old man looked out the window. The clouds were build-ing. It would be another wet night. Bad for the lambs. Some blue sky appeared between the cloud mass. Early afternoon sun broke through and shone on the glass.

Inspector Ogden was still speaking.

Malcolm X as you may know was a member of The Nation of Islam. Americans with a hatred of America. Inspector Ogden cleared his throat. We are in a defence treaty with the United States of America. ANZUS. And we are committing to a war with America against the communist threat in South East Asia.

The old man was looking above the inspector’s head. He could see the sun coming through the window and illuminating a rectangular piece of wall. Two bar shadows lay across the rectangle.

You must understand Mr Monroe why we would wish to ask you a few questions. Given your service record. Are you also a communist? As well as every-thing else Mr Monroe?

The old man was silent.I am speaking to you Mr Mon-

roe or is it Mohammad el some-thing or other I don’t want to say what? Do you hate America?

The old man thought about saying it is unusual how wide you open your mouth to speak Inspec-tor. I am sure you could touch the end of your nose with the tip of your tongue. You move it a lot. You have a very mobile tongue.

Instead he said, not yet.Inspector Ogden stood up.The atmosphere in the room

became still. Sergeant McMil-lan moved his head around his shoulders as boxers do. Watched.

(continued on page 12)

FINAL.indd 11 23/07/2010 10:00:11 a.m.


Inspector Ogden stared at the old man as if taking in what he had just said. He looked down and squeezed his lips together. Then he laughed. You are probably right. The old man was looking out the window above the inspector’s head.

Not yet, the inspector said.I don’t know anything about

America.The inspector came out

from behind the desk and was standing in front of the sergeant. He said something quietly.

The sergeant nodded. We are stepping out for a

moment Mr Monroe. They left the interview room.

The old man heard the door lock behind them. He sat there quite still. Looked at the glass of the window. In his small muster-er’s hut, when the afternoon sun hit a certain angle, he could see himself reflected in the glass.

Do you see the glass, what is beyond the glass or yourself in the glass?

It was Mahmoud who had taught him to ask such questions. Such is the way of learning how to know, he had said. Who is

my space Michael King Writers’ Centre writer-in-residence Martin Edmond

The room I write in is a serially shared space that is mine only for a season – eight weeks of Auckland’s autumn. It’s a con-verted washhouse out the back of the old signalman’s cottage halfway up Takarunga in Devon-port; rectangular, quite narrow, with a peaked roof and small, faceted windows on three of its four walls. Outside is the garden and, beyond that, the harbour, the city and the sky. Inside, a chair, desk and lamp, a couch that folds out to make a bed, a set of book-shelves and a red armchair. When I arrived here the desk was placed against the long south wall, before the window that looks out over the water where harbour traffic comes and goes. I left it there but, to avoid being blinded by the light, distracted or just unable to see the computer screen, keep the blind on that window half down while I’m working. Out the west window I see part of a stone wall, a flax plant, the fence, a slope of brown grass, trees and a corner of sky that goes McCahon yellow in the evenings; while the window behind me reveals more wall, the washing line, a jacaranda and, in the brown volcanic earth, fragments of white shell from an old midden. A good writing room is a place to forget the outside world; this room grants that for-getfulness, and when I return is both anonymous and welcoming.

Then there is the garden. I watch the birds: sparrows, blackbirds, mynas, chaffinches gleaning the lawn; silvereyes, speckled doves, rosellas and tūī keeping mostly to the trees. A swan plant where black and yellow caterpillars are beginning to spin their preternat-urally green chrysalises, which they sew up along iridescent gold seams. There’s an old peach tree, beneath which there must once have been a Hill’s hoist, because a concrete path goes a little way that way then stops. Sometimes at night, when the day’s work is over, I hang out here anyway, doing nothing much; and then the ghosts gather. Not the ghosts of those who’ve used the writing room before but older entities who came and went upon the mountainside in earlier times. I listen for the whisper of their voices, the creak of their foot-steps, the muttering of their minds. I don’t always sense them, and even when I do it’s probably an illusion; nevertheless I listen and sometimes I hear.

asking such questions? Is it acquired? Or revealed? David, he would say, raising his voice, pointing at him. You David. Is this acquired knowledge or revealed knowledge? I ask you so because I love you so.

The mirror always made him remember the second time he had seen Mahmoud. It was always the second time that came to him first.

He saw his face in the mirror and sometimes his face became Mahmoud’s face. It transformed before his eyes. Now isn’t that the

martin edmond was born in Ohakune and now lives in Sydney. His works of literary non-fiction have been published in New Zealand and Australia. His book Chronicle of the Unsung won the Montana Award for Biography in 2005.

strangest thing? The words were almost like a song. Or an invoca-tion. The second time. It was on the Island of Lemnos; Mahmoud was sitting on a hospital cot, gently rocking back and forth, reciting verse. He was watching where the sun and shadows came into the tent entrance of the Wounded Turkish Officers Lines. Fifty years ago.

Mar

tin

Edm

ond

© M

ark

Smith

Stephen Daisley was born in New Zealand in 1955. He now lives in Perth. Traitor, his first novel, will be published in August.

FINAL.indd 12 23/07/2010 10:00:18 a.m.


searching the bookshelves

Sue Orr extols the delights of short stories – and good chocolate

‘So, you’re a writer. What do you write?’

‘Fiction.’ ‘Really? What novels have you

written?’‘Um, none. I write short stories.’ ‘Oh.’

The ‘oh’ means oh, I don’t like short stories. In the pursuit of politeness, it’s verbalised as: ‘Oh. I just don’t get them. I always think they’re not finished.’

I’ve tried various ways of explaining what, for me, makes a good short story. I’ve described them as snapshots of a moment; the life of the story continuing after the final word, hence the sometimes-unresolved ending. I’ve stolen writer Anne Enright’s great description. She says, simply, that in a short story something shifts, or changes.

I’ve also used the chocolate technique. To begin, you need at least three Cadbury Creme Eggs, and a little book called Stories by O Henry. Read the first story in the book – ‘The Gift of the Magi’. As you read, eat the first of the Creme Eggs. It’s a short short story, so you must eat the egg quickly.

Oh it was good, just what you wanted! Poor man sells fobwatch to buy long-haired wife new combs for Christmas! Gooey bit in middle of egg! But the poor wife sells long hair to buy husband chain for fobwatch for Christmas! What an ending! What a twist! All

those exclamation marks totally justified!

Have another egg, and another O Henry story. The second one, whichever you choose, will delight you in exactly the same way. I mean exactly. Feeling a little ill with the cloying, sweet predictability of it all? You might manage a third, but probably not.

You know what you want now. You want a good short story – something with a plot to it, definitely an ending, but less of the predictable instant gratifica-tion. You want better chocolate (yes, you do).

Eat a Cadbury Fruit and Nut bar (the one with six sections) and read a story from Bad Dirt by Annie Proulx. Or something from Dubliners by James Joyce. Or Winnesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. The increment in satis-faction is quite something. There’s the fruit, for a start, which must be good for you. Also good is the sparse, raw writing and the won-derful descriptions of characters and their everyday predicaments. The loose ends are sometimes tidied up, but never conveniently. You’re left with a pleasant after-taste; you can imagine, with their emphasis on character rather than plot, that these stories could go on past the final page.

It’s on the top shelf. It has caught your eye before, but you thought you weren’t ready for it. You’ve heard others talking about it. Now you’re curious.

Lindt Excellence chocolate, 85 per cent cocoa. Dark. Noir.

Buy as much as you can af-ford, then go home and open my favourite short story book, Cos-micomics by Italo Calvino. Turn to the first story, ‘Distance of the Moon’. Not just a different type of story, but a whole new landscape. A main character called Qfwfq? Story setting: space, in a boat, collecting milk off the moon?

Hang on. It’s science? It’s a love story, you discover,

and you are utterly seduced by the imaginative brilliance, the superb writing and the enchanting nar-rator. Oh, and the chocolate, that first mouthful. Bitter, fathomless, like nothing you’ve tasted before. Hard to believe the whole bar’s gone.

A wonderful thing about the best short stories is that they leave you wanting more. You begin to crave that mastery of words and the beauty of their arrangement. Before long, nothing less will do.

You read your first story where you don’t know what happens in the end. You discover you don’t want to know, because the possibilities have been crafted so carefully they are already playing themselves out in your mind.Not knowing makes what you do know precious and rare – a jewel.

The good news is that top shelf short fiction is as varied as life itself. Some of my favourites are Tim Winton’s The Turning, Raymond Carver’s Where I’m

Calling From, John Cheever’s The Stories of John Cheever and anything by Anton Chekhov, Grace Paley, Richard Ford and Alice Munro. All these writers walk alongside their characters – ordinary people – for just a short time, record and depart. The result is sublime, contemplative storytelling.

I’ve just discovered Elizabeth Strout’s superb collection Olive Kitteridge, which crosses the genre boundary between short fiction and novel with effortless élan – a dark chocolate (85 per cent cocoa) mudcake, if you like.

New Zealand has a proud roll-call of writers who have specialised in the short story. Anything by Frank Sargeson, Katherine Mansfield, Owen Marshall and Charlotte Grimshaw is terrific. Anna Taylor’s Relief, Sarah Laing’s Coming Up Roses and Paula Morris’s Forbidden Cities are captivating first collections. Watch out, too, for new author Craig Cliff ’s forthcoming collection A Man Melting, due out in July.

Cooking chocolate, it is not.

Sue Orr’s first book of short stories, Etiquette for a Dinner Party, was published in 2008. Her second collection, From Under the Overcoat, pays tribute to early short story masterpieces and will be published in 2011.

Mar

tin

Edm

ond

© M

ark

Smith

FINAL.indd 13 23/07/2010 10:00:23 a.m.


Writing in TandemPenelope Todd describes an unusual collaboration with her Spanish amiga

Scanning the introductory list of residents for the 2007 Iowa International Writers’ Programme, I saw right away who my friend would be. Elena’s smile is a light-house beam. My Argentinian amiga across the corridor would become the hub of our wheel, the rest of us the 30 spokes. She and I were age-mates, older sisters to the many 30-somethings, and we mothered one another when we had to, when the other was overcome with the strangeness of living in a hotel for three months in the heart of mid-west America.

We laughed together always, sang songs from the seventies, and discovered the many coinci-dences that peppered our lives: the frogs our partners had carved for garden statuary; our last-born sons, J and J, born within 12 hours of one another; our identi-cally broken and tangled sewing kits; our same red reading glasses. I spoke no Spanish and Elena’s English was, and remains, frac-tured and pintoresco.

Via language we could receive only an abbreviated version of the other, but we followed the cues of facial or bodily expression, and we joked that we were sisters; so much was readily intuited between us. We made our own generous interpretations.

One evening as we sat with our feet on her windowsill and a bottle of cheap rosé between us, Elena said that we needed a proyecto to hold us together aft er the residency. Emailing was pos-sible, but hard work. We should write a novel together.

Two months later, back home, I received my orders. I was to write the first chapter of what would become Amigas, where two teens meet during a strike in the international airport in Rome in 1969. We would share the sec-ond chapter – a series of letters between the two girls now in their respective countries of Argentina and New Zealand. The letters would span the 10 years leading into the Argentinean military dictatorship’s ‘dirty war’ and the

‘disappearances’. Th irty years later, my character and a new Argentin-ian woman, with connections to the fi rst, would relate their recent histories before meeting up in the airport in Rome during a terrorist alert.

We each wrote in our own language and had all the chapters translated until we each had an entire manuscript – almost certainly the only New Zealand–Argentine, English–Spanish collaborative novel in existence.

Creative New Zealand agreed to fund my trip to Argentina last year, paying for travel, translation and living costs over six weeks. In a small house 400 kilometres south of Buenos Aires, Elena and I went through the novel chapter by chapter, each examining the text in her own language, querying the other over uncertainties and working on improvements.

We set up our laptops on the living room’s circular table where we also ate our meals. We’re lucky in having a similar tolerance for clutter, and would usually reach the point at the same time when we suddenly had to clear the kitchen benches and sweep the Atlantic sand dunes back out the door. We also have similar attention spans; sometimes we’d simply look up and laugh. It was time to head down the road for a coff ee. Several times, sick of our

four walls, we took our laptops and notes in a taxi to the next town where we moved from café to café.

Our novel is about friendship and its power to surprise, to alter, to soothe, uplift, spur on – to bring about what the best of human interaction brings about. Amigas has had a dual role. Sometimes I would rise early in the morning simply to have some time alone. Hot on my heels would come Elena. I would take a deep breath. Was it possible to sit again at the small table with the woman I’d sat with, eaten with, worked with and drunk mate with yesterday and the day before and the day before that? ‘In Argentina, we go fi rst to our friends with trouble or happiness,’ Elena told me. ‘We know we can wake our friend in the night if we need to.’ I was practising, learning to be fi rst with a friend and then with myself. Th ese were some of the most joyous days of my life.

Now I’m back home and our interchange has reduced again, but we’re continuing to act col-laboratively, each asking our best readers to read and comment. Th e feedback is being amalgamated, digested and acted upon as we see fi t. As Elena and I each receive from the other new highlighted portions of text by email, we make new translations; I hunker down

in a café with a friend whose Spanish remains limber enough to help me out. Th en we exchange our newly revised chapters.

It should have been hard, but it’s been easy – too easy, I some-times think. What happened to the sweat and the angst? Th e process is liberating because each of us gives our best but neither claims full responsibility; neither of us is certain that the other language version says precisely what we in-tended; we stand or fall together with our work. Th ere’s been a high level of trust involved, but trust is the essence of our friendship. We’ve had a wonderful time; and, some say, we’ve written a damn fi ne story. Penelope Todd & Elena Bossi

Elena Bossi of Argentina (fi ction writer, essayist, playwright) has written novellas including Otro Lugar (Another Place), and a story collection, Seres Mágicos que habitan en la Argentina (Magical Beings of Argentina).

Penelope Todd’s novel, Island, was released in May by Penguin. Her previous work includes seven YA novels and a memoir, Digging for Spain: A Writer’s Journey. She lives in Dunedin. Her website is www.penelopetodd.co.nz

www.bookcouncil.org.nzBe the first to hear about book events, happenings and new releases. Tap into our online encyclopedia of New Zealand authors, find a writer for a school visit or explore our Booknotes archive.

e-newsletterThe latest literary tidbits del ivered to your inbox every month. Subscribe at http://bit.ly/cfp7SU

children’s book newsOur e-publication The School Library has new children’s book reviews, plus news and views on chi ldren’s l i terature. Read it here: http://bit.ly/9ZdPRA

Be part of the story

FINAL.indd 14 23/07/2010 10:00:24 a.m.


hidden treasures

Writer Fiona Farrell recalls visits to bookshops past and present, including her current favourite, Madras Cafe Books

There’s a postcard in the shop at the Christchurch Art Gal-lery of a painting by Evelyn Paige. It’s all shadows and chestnut tints and it’s called The Old Bookshop, Christchurch 1922. A figure hovers over counters filled with books: dusty, mite-filled, allergy-rich, the kind of place you suspect might have a wainscot – whatever that is – inhabited by clubbable mice in waistcoats. It’s my favourite postcard. I buy it in multiples to post when emails won’t do.

It reminds me of bookshops I’ve liked, beginning with New-bolds in Dunedin. A big dusty barn of a place with shelves buckling beneath the entire contents of libraries once owned by professors of theology, back when professors were eminent and grey and not Harvard MBAs discoursing on the intricacies of real estate. The owner was tweedy and I believe he took snuff. My dad took me there whenever we went to Dunedin. He bought books with leather covers and maps that folded out and smelled of mouse wee. They had grey im-ages of mighty waterfalls or camel trains in Arabia or reports on the economies of African colonies. I

remember one that included lists of farm animals: so many sheep, so many cattle and at the end so many male Hottentots, so many female Hottentots. The list had been gnawed by rats to a delicate lacy doily. I liked Newbolds, as I later liked Blackwells second-hand department in Oxford: dusty places run by the kind of dysfunctional men parodied by Dylan Moran.

But I don’t go to second-hand bookshops any more. I find them faintly depressing in the same way that I now find museums and antique shops and academic conferences about dead writers depressing. All that effort dedi-cated to what is past when we can scarcely keep up with what is new! So much is happening, so much is changing, shouldn’t our intelligence be applied to writing and reading about the present instead of picking over the past? We can’t just leave the commen-tary to ephemera and the internet. Because I also find blogs faintly depressing: I mean, does anyone actually read them, keep them for reference later, go back to them for affirmation at crucial mo-ments? Or is everyone just scrib-

bling in a vast empty room?No – what I want are books

written now or at the most last year, and I want them from book-shops like Madras Cafe Books in Christchurch which is tiny, but the owners read novels and they’ll order things in. They also launch local books and turn up at festivals to sell books and stay open for evening poetry read-ings with 27 open-mike readers and they play good music while you’re browsing that you haven’t heard before. And most of all,

Mad

ras

Caf

e B

ooks

© D

avid

Aul

t

Madras Cafe Books foregrounds New Zealand writers instead of franchised fast fiction targeted at children, stationery with deft messages for every possible hu-man rite from birth to death, and the product of American and British writers who are no longer proper writers but brands as slick and inoffensive as shampoo.

A new style of workshop the Book Council offers schools is giving young writers the chance to learn from six top authors in one exciting morning.

The inaugural Speed Date an Author event was held last September at Island Bay School in Wellington. Authors Gavin Bishop, Tessa Duder, Maria Gill, Ruth Paul, Mandy Hagar and Melinda Szymanik each ran a 15-minute session on various aspects of the writing craft, such as rhyme and rhythm, charac-terisation and how to come up with ideas.

The students who took part were aged 10–13. You could see them soaking up the ideas ef-fortlessly. It is always thrilling to

watch young writers as they start to think critically about how sto-ry, character and tone are crafted. By just being in the presence of these authors, the possibilities of a creative life opened up. The students were encouraged to en-ter the writing competition after the workshop and we could see first-hand that their work had re-ally benefitted. The winner of this competition, Aimee Penman, had her story published in The Domin-ion Post. This wasn’t pre-arranged – the story was simply so good that editor Sue Green jumped at the opportunity to publish it in the Indulgence magazine.

A Speed Date event now hap-pens every term somewhere in New Zealand. Taranaki schools

took part in one in February as part of the Book Council’s Word on Wheels tour of the region. The writers were amused to find that David Hill taught the students to steal, Duncan Sarkies taught them to lie and Briar Grace-Smith taught them to stalk! Janet Hunt had them thinking about non-fic-tion in interesting ways, Virginia Winder had them critically re-viewing books, and Alison Wong taught them how to construct a good poem. The rush of questions at the end was evidence that they were thinking about their writing in new ways.

In June we ran Speed Date for intermediate schools in Mana-watu. The demand for this event was such that we could have run

it twice if we had the resources. We had some marvellous writers involved in this, and have too for the event for high school students which is to be run alongside The Press Christchurch Writers’ Festi-val in September.

The community and school support already garnered for Speed Date means we are in a fantastic position to continue promoting the growth of this wonderful event. We foresee that Speed Date an Author, in conjunction with our long-running Writers in Schools programme, will inspire young writers for a long time to come.

children’s corner

Speed Date an Author writing workshops are proving popular, writes Sarah Forster

fiona farrell’s latest novel Limestone has been shortlisted for this year’s New Zealand Post Book Award for Fiction.

Sarah Forster is the Book Council’s Education Manager.

FINAL.indd 15 23/07/2010 10:00:28 a.m.


Paula Green is an Auckland poet, reviewer and children’s author. Her new poetry collection, Slip Stream, is due out in October, and she is the co-author of 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry, due out in September.

MasterclassPaula Green explores features that can bring a poem to life

Sylvia Plath talks about ‘the smallish, unofficial garden-variety poem’. She says it is a bit like a door opening and then shutting, offering a miniscule space to see any number of things. Or, she says, it is like a self-con-tained globe, pure and perfect until you tip it upside down and let the snowflakes drift. All is now changed. This is a poem coming to life.

How can we write poems that appear humble on first glance, but upon the shake of the globe, are recast in glorious new lights? When we consider how a ‘smallish’ poem resonates, it is important to remember that some poetic effects are accidental rather than deliberate. Poetry relishes possibilities, intuition and playfulness rather than unbreakable rules. Nevertheless, we can learn much about the technique of writing poems by absorbing what other poets do.

I want to explore three features that might help you bring a poem to life: things, sound and movement. Bill Manhire’s poem ‘The Lid Slides Back’ provides the perfect starting point for such a discussion.

ThingsMaking a particular thing the central focus of a poem can be a bit like writing a snow-globe poem. With carefully selected words, you can make an object seem physically present, sharp in the mind, activating the reader’s senses. Manhire’s pencil-case is made of ‘native woods’ that are ‘light and dark’. A handful of details make the object take shape before your eyes.

Choosing to make an object the centre of attention can be a celebration of the thing itself, but it is also a way to signal (not tell) other layers. A particular thing might help you write about tough emotional topics without becoming sentimental or an overflow pipe. It might be a way of recycling memory, anecdote, nostalgia, philosophy, politics – the list is endless. A particular

thing might allow your poem understatement rather than overstatement.

Manhire’s poem offers many things. Shake the globe and it becomes a miniature autobiography. The pencil-case is not just a beloved object but also an opportunity for activity. Now the poem, in showing us that private moment of drawing, conjures a sense of intimacy. Picture the young boy lost in the coloured-pencil rendition of a sunset. There is a subtle echo here of the adult lost in the private occasion of making the poem. Shake the globe again and the pencil case is a little bridge to nostalgia (the native woods, the Lakeland pencils, the sliding lid); to the object you made in woodwork that was once seen on every school desk and now rarely.

It is worth thinking about the way your poem sits on the page (in itself a thing to behold). Manhire’s poem (whether deliberately or not) mimics the poem’s title. In the first stanza the lid (the second and third lines) pokes out, whereas in the second stanza the pencil-case (first and fourth lines) hides the shorter middle lines (the lid). The way your poem looks on the page can relate to the content of the poem in any number of ways.

SoundFor many poets the way a poem sounds is paramount. The sound effects can be obvious (particularly in the case of rhyme) or subtle. There are countless ways to approach this, but it can be useful to think of a poem as a piece of music. This could be anything from the musicality of everyday speech, the composition of a song, sonata or symphony, or the experimental sounds of an avant-garde musician. You can think of words as musical notes. You need to listen to each line, to the way the sound of a word rubs up against the sound of the next word. Piecing these sounds together – just as a musician

might – can make harmonies, disharmonies and everything in between.

Manhire is the consummate musician-poet. He is not afraid to use rhyme, but in this poem the musical treats are less appar-ent. The line breaks sound out the visual imprint of the pencil-case on the page. Certain sounds (both vowels and consonants) make connections that build the musi-cal texture of the poem. In the first stanza there is the ‘t’ sound in ‘native’, ‘light’ and ‘bits’. Then scat-tered throughout the poem are ‘i’ sounds as in ‘light’, ‘slide’, ‘I’, ‘quiet’, ‘beside’.

The trick here is to pay atten-tion to the way your poem sounds. Consider what happens when you put single syllable words in a line-up (‘The lid slides back’) or what happens when you add a longer word (‘I could draw a sunset’). You can use rhyme at the end of the line, and alliteration in between, but you can also scatter (or hide) a particular sound throughout the poem (a piece of music often reveals itself over time).

MovementPoems gain remarkable life from an injection of movement in both sound and content. You can think about how you move through the poem in terms of line lengths, white space to navigate and the size of stanzas, but you can also

write poems that move you in different ways. A poem might move you sideways as well as emotionally and intellectually.

Manhire’s first line (‘Let me open’) is a little trill at the start. He holds off telling us what he wants to open and for that split second it could be anything (perhaps the poem?). The poem’s simplicity matches the simplicity of the pencil-case, but both open out to so much more (excuse the pun!). There is the sliding lid that also slides back on the past. We can leapfrog from a particular echo to another (from ‘Lakeland’ to ‘water’; from ‘sunset’ to ‘stars’). We move from the hypothetical drawing (‘I could’) to a drawing that seems specific: to ‘this’ quiet tree.

If Manhire’s poem is like peeking through Plath’s door opening and shutting, I didn’t just see the pencil-case. Therein lies the delight of this poem. What will the reader experience when they meet your next poem? What will be obvious and what will be less so, deliberately and unconsciously?

The Lid Slides Back

Let me openmy pencil-case made of native woods.It is light and dark in bits and pieces.The lid slides back.

The seven pencils are there, called Lakeland.I could draw a sunset.I could draw the stars.I could draw this quiet tree beside the water.

Bill Manhire, from The Victims of Lightning

FINAL.indd 16 23/07/2010 10:00:28 a.m.


from the book council

Noel Murphy

It is fair to say that the past 18 months have been a challeng-ing time for the New Zealand Book Council. In common with organisations across New Zealand, and the world for that matter, we have been weathering an almost unprecedented period of financial turbulence. Managing our busi-ness with reductions in revenue and tighter cash flow was certain-ly an interesting experience but we have survived, and in some sig-nificant senses we are a stronger organisation because of it.

The economic downturn coincided with a broad change in the direction of the Book Coun-cil: away from an administrative focus toward an organisation geared to promoting books and reading at a strategic level. Obviously the financial situation impaired our ability to move as far and as fast as we would have

liked and we were compelled to be highly cautious in our cost control. But, forced to think hard about our future, we were determined to build some robust foundations that would stand us in good stead, to not just survive but thrive in coming years. In this we have been successful.

We now have a much clearer idea of the purpose of the Book Council in the 21st century. With Peter Biggs and the Book Council Board, we have a body that can provide leadership, ambition and focus to our core mission of in-spiring New Zealanders to engage with reading, writing and ideas. We are building increasingly im-portant high-level partnerships with the publishing and booksell-ing industries, the library sector and Creative New Zealand.

We have a renewed infrastruc-ture, having rebuilt our website

and redesigned Booknotes. We have innovative new education programmes, having introduced new ideas such as Speed Date an Author and the online publication for teachers, the School Library. Our email newsletter is now published monthly and continues to gain in popularity and reader-ship. We now have a dedicated staff member based in Auckland, which will help us grow our pres-ence in New Zealand’s largest population centre.

We have a stable and talented staff who have helped me weather the rough economic times with good humour and dedication. I would very much like to acknowl-edge their work and their com-mitment to the future of the Book Council.

As the economy moves out of recession, we are moving towards better use of the tools, such as

the website, that we have built. Our goal for the rest of this year is to develop a new set of pro-grammes that focuses on reach-ing out to and developing read-ers throughout New Zealand. It will mean rethinking some of our current schemes and finding methods by which we can bring these to the widest possible audience. It will mean a much more collegial approach with our industry and sponsorship partners and a sharper focus on the impact of our programmes.

Your support has been es-sential in helping us to rebuild the Book Council in these very difficult times. We hope you will continue to support us now, as we seek to grow our work and above all to inspire those yet to discover the power and richness of reading.

The New Zealand Book Council acknowledges the generous support of all its funders, partners and supporters.

FINAL.indd 17 23/07/2010 10:00:37 a.m.


‘People died, he told her, be-cause they were afraid. They did not go out at night on dangerous water. They did not see the earth as it turned overnight to silver.’

Beauty and danger sit at the centre of this novel about fearless love, loss and the power of per-sonal transformation. The story’s main setting, early 20th-century Wellington, with its mix of ethnicities and social practices, is a body of ‘dangerous water’, a place where the forces of cultural difference and prejudice seem inescapable. But are they? What could happen if you were brave, emboldened by love?

When mother-of-two Kather-ine McKechnie is suddenly wid-owed, her strong independence of thought, kept in check up to that point by her oppressive husband, is allowed expression. What Kath-erine chooses to do – to begin a secret love affair with Chinese im-migrant Yung – imperils her and those she loves at the same time as it seems to free them.

Yung and Katherine’s behav-iour forces a reconciliation of sorts between the private, secret world held in one’s head and the outside world in which everyone is watched and their place in society set.

This historical novel presents in vivid detail the place and existences of people living last century, but it’s not a work trapped under amber: the themes of racism, cross-cultural love and sexism in As the Earth Turns Silver are contemporary issues. Wong’s novel speaks from an imagined-real past into the now.

For discussion:

This is Alison Wong’s first novel, but not her first published work: she is an award-winning poet. The requirements of a novel are very different from those of poet-ry. However, in talking about this novel, she has said, ‘I write space and silence for the reader to fill.’ This statement could equally apply to poetry. Where can you see the poet’s pen at work in the novel, and what are some of the effects of this?

The power of language, or language as power, features strongly in the story. Katherine’s husband, Donald, uses language as a means of control, while Yung, who can’t express completely the complexity of his thoughts in English, offers Katherine freedom through it: ‘He’d given her language: his language, a new opening into her own.’ Think about the different ways each of these men uses language. What might you be able to understand about the cultural differences between Yung and Donald by their use of language? What is the significance of Katherine burning her husband’s dictionary? Think about how the other contemporary writers explore the idea of language as power. J M Coetzee (Waiting for the Barbarians, Foe) and Lloyd Jones (Mister Pip) are two examples.

The fruit and vegetables that Yung sells and handles in his shop are more than mere props of place in the novel – they are used repre-sentatively. What is the signifi-cance of the onion, what might its rings and its sting represent? What does Wong’s repeated use of these products do for the novel’s structure?

Passing one’s culture and beliefs down to the next generation and the need for a new generation are ideas returned to many times throughout the novel. Compare the Pākehā characters’ actions in this regard with those of the Chinese. Think about Edie’s and

Robbie’s relationships with their parents and role models.

Notice how, in the chapter ‘Better than a Dog’, Katherine’s side of the conversation remains unwrit-ten, just suggested. What do you think Wong is trying to convey by writing the dialogue like this?

Some of the novel’s characters are real historical people – Lionel Terry being one. How do they compare with the fictional char-acters? Who is more believable – the real or fictional? What does the presence of real characters in the story add?

The Chinese characters have a different relationship with death and the dead than the Pākehā characters do, but near the end Katherine’s thoughts on death align more closely with those of the Chinese characters. Discuss how each culture’s ideas about death are represented and the significance of Katherine’s altered perspective.

There are many short chapters in the book. How does this help Wong tell her story? How does it

book group compass

As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong

affect the progression of time?Compare the different voices that convey this story and the way Wong writes each. Katherine and Yung’s Chinese wife ‘sound’ differ-ent from each other, but so too do Shun’s concubine and his wife in China. How do these voices create landscape, or place?

Alison Wong’s poetry and fic-tion has been widely published in journals. Her first collection of poetry, Cup, was nominated for Best First Book of Poetry at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. She has lived in New Zealand and China, and recently moved to Geelong, in Australia. She has been awarded a number of key fellowships for her work, including the 2002 Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. As the Earth Turns Silver, her first novel, was published last year. It was one of the the New Zealand Listener best novels of 2009 and has been shortlisted for the New Zealand Post Book Award for Fiction.

FINAL.indd 18 23/07/2010 10:00:41 a.m.

Congratulations to the Winners of the PANZ Book Design Awards 2010

Gerard Reid Award for Best Book sponsored by Nielsen Book ServicesRandom House New Zealand Award for Best Illustrated Book

Cameron Gibb for The Life & Love of Trees by Lewis BlackwellPublisher: PQ Blackwell/Hachette (NZ)

Sarah Laing for Magpie Hall by Rachael KingPublisher: Random House (NZ)

HarperCollins Award for Best Cover

Keely O’ShannessyAwa Press Young Designer of the Year

Grant Sutherland, Mission Hall (interior), Robyn Sivewright, Afineline (typesetting), Neil Pardington (cover) for Art at Te Papa edited by William McAloon

Publisher: Te Papa Press

Pindar Award for Best Typography

Keely O’Shannessy (cover), Katrina Duncan (interior) for Mirabile Dictu by Michele LeggottPublisher: Auckland University Press

Hachette New Zealand Award for Best Non-Illustrated Book

Book Design Ltd for Year 9 Graphics by Paul BourdōtPublisher: Cengage Learning

Pearson Award for Best Educational Book

Michael Greenfield for Old Hu-Hu by Kyle Mewburn, illustrated by Rachel DriscollPublisher: Scholastic New Zealand

Scholastic New Zealand Award for Best Children’s Book

Art at Te Papa reveals and illuminates New Zealand’s great national art collection.

This book spans the entire art collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa – from its superb early European prints to its most exciting contemporary acquisitions. International artworks by Rembrandt van Rijn, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Barbara Hepworth and Robert Mapplethorpe feature alongside iconic New Zealand art by Charles F Goldie, Rita Angus, Colin McCahon, Frances Hodgkins, WD Hammond and many others.

Over four hundred key artworks are beautifully reproduced here, accompanied by brief essays. Written by the museum’s own curators and other leading art historians, these give expert and engaging commentary on every work. A revealing full-length introduction by editor William McAloon provides further engrossing background to the collection, its origins and its changing fortunes over the centuries.

The history of the national art collection is part of the story of New Zealand itself – its landscapes, its people and its developing national identity. The first book to tell that story, Art at Te Papa will surprise and enrich its readers, becoming a treasured resource for New Zealanders, international visitors and lovers of art.

Contributors

Christina Barton, Roger Blackley, Ron Brownson, Tyler Cann, Jillian Cassidy, Roger Collins, Brenda L Croft, Joanne Drayton, Michael Dunn, Helen Ennis, Michael Fitzgerald, Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Deborah Hart, Charlotte Huddleston, Julie King, Mary Kisler, Aaron Kreisler, Bronwyn Lloyd, Ian Lochhead, William McAloon, Athol McCredie, Tony Mackle, Sean Mallon, Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, Debbie Martin, David Maskill, Marian Minson, Lissa Mitchell, Gregory O’Brien, Rebecca Rice, Victoria Robson, Damian Skinner, Mark Stocker, Lara Strongman, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Elena Taylor, Jill Trevelyan, Jane Vial.

Editor

William McAloon has worked at Te Papa since 2005, where he is curator, Historical New Zealand Art. With Jill Trevelyan he was co-curator of the exhibition Rita Angus: Life and vision, and co-editor of the accompanying catalogue (Te Papa Press, 2008). His other books include Victoria’s art – A university collection (Adam Art Gallery Te P-ataka Toi for Victoria University of Wellington, 2005), Gordon Walters: Prints and design (Adam Art Gallery Te P-ataka Toi, 2004), and Home and away: Contemporary Australian and New Zealand art from the Chartwell Collection (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T-amaki and David Bateman, 1999). He has written for numerous periodicals including Art New Zealand, Art Asia Pacific and Art and Australia, and from 2000 to 2004 was a regular art critic for the New Zealand Listener.

‘There

were two rumours surrounding my great-

great-grandfather Henry Summers: one, that his cabinet

of curiosities drove him mad; and two, that he murdered his fi rst wife.’

Rosemary Summers is an amateur taxidermist and a passionate collector

of tattoos. To her, both activities honour the deceased and keep their memory alive. After the death of her beloved grandfather,

and while struggling to fi nish her thesis on gothic Victorian novels, she returns

alone to Magpie Hall to claim her inheritance: Grandpa’s own taxidermy

collection, started more than 100 years ago by their ancestor Henry Summers. As she sorts through

Henry’s legacy, the ghosts of her family’s past

begin to make their presence

known.

MagpieHallCVR_FNL.indd 1 21/9/09 3:13:12 PM

PANZad_white.indd 1 26/07/2010 9:10:27 a.m.

Celebrating contemporary New Zealand writers and thinkers over three days of discussions, debate and entertainment.

FeaturiNg Dames Anne Salmond and Joan Metge • Roger Horrocks • Bill Direen • Bee Dawson • Angela Lassig and Doris De Pont • Max Cryer • Albert Wendt

PLuS Special tributes to JC Sturm, Paul Reynolds and Bill Pearson

Book LauNCh Words Chosen Carefully

Book at tiCketMaSter 0800 111 999

WWW.tiCketMaSter.Co.NZ

25-28 AuguST 2010glen eden PlAyhouSe TheATreSTrICTly lIMITed SeASon

Written by Miria George and Jamie McCaskill, directed by Hone Kouka with original music and waiata

A bittersweet story of childhood sweethearts as they fall in love, part and then find each other again through music

theatre SeaSoN

Book MarketIn the year 373, Saint Ambrose was considered a bit oDD for reading in SiLeNCe. He’d be right at hoMe with us

Discover SPeCiaL treasures • DeLVe into history • Escape with a NoVeL• Displays Demonstrations • On-the-spot market valuations • Great Coffee • SnacksSat 4 SePt 9aM-2PM titiraNgi War MeMoriaL haLL

PoetrY SLaMPut your rhyme on the line and slam it out with the best.FINALS: SAT 4 SEPT 7PM • $10 ENTRY titiraNgi War MeMoriaL haLL

PeCha kuCha out WeSt [PkN_akL_20]Presented by Pecha Kucha Nights Auckland in collaboration with the NZ Book Council

Fri 3 SePt 7.30PM Waitakere CouNCiL ChaMBerS, $9 ENTRY ON DOOR

WWW.goiNgWeSt.Co.NZ

BOOK AT TICKETMASTER • 0800 111 999 • WWW.TICKETMASTER.CO.NZ

FINAL.indd 20 23/07/2010 10:00:42 a.m.

Documents

Booknotes Issue 169