Books

The title of this hefty volume is a metaphor for construction – literary construction. These 36 stories – half a dozen each by our most celebrated writers – are chosen to illustrate individual range and depth.

Perhaps Katherine Mansfield and Frank Sargeson could be considered parents of the New Zealand short story. Not that they’d have got on. There was Mansfield living on the other side of the world, mixing with the likes of Virginia Woolf (who admitted to envying her rival’s work) and initiating a love affair with her publisher – and Sargeson, hanging out in a disreputable none-too-clean bach on Auckland’s North Shore keeping company with down-and-outs and sheltering Janet Frame.

What they had in common is that both were sharp observers of the New Zealand society of their times, albeit from different sides of the world. We readers get to sample their rich and varied progeny.

I was brought up to admire Mansfield’s Her First Ball, but a rereading of Daughters of the Late Colonel had me delighting even more in the black comedy dripping from such a sophisticated pen. Spinsters Josephine and Constantia are mourning the recent death of their fierce father, and their post-funeral actions and reactions, a mixture of trepidation and inadvertent giggles, are hilarious. It’s Mansfield at her brilliant best.

At 50 pages, is her Prelude too long to be a short story? Sargeson composed his seminal 500-word Conversations with my Uncle in one sitting, and its subtle social commentary typifies future tales. My other favourite, The Hole that Jack Dug, is a likeable portrait of the – sometimes unfathomable – indefatigability of the New Zealand male when working on a practical task. Sargeson’s appeal is irresistible, originating from his preoccupation with, and protection of, the underdog.

I pay tribute also to the other four writers represented: Maurice Duggan, Janet Frame, Patricia Grace, and Owen Marshall, whose stories contribute equally to the range and quality of the New Zealand short story.

“It was always best, in Darcy’s opinion, to leave a man not only wanting more, but wondering.” Heart of the Sea is the third and final book in The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy by Nora Roberts. I absolutely adore Roberts’ writing style and her consistency with the characters’ personalities. Throughout the trilogy, each character plays a vital role and without each personality, the novel would have probably been very boring.

This novel differs from the other two books in the trilogy though, and it took me a little while longer to read. That does not mean that the book was less interesting, it just wasn’t what I expected. Roberts’ other two books in the series, Jewels of the Sun and Tears of the Moon, were quite romantic and magical, whereas Heart of the Sea is a little more focused on the family business, success, and the potential of blossoming love.

Heart of the Sea continues with the curse of Carrick, Prince of Faeries and his beloved Lady Gwen, and the third part of the spell that must be broken for them to be reunited in love once again. Their fate is in Darcy Gallagher’s hands, but she is not looking for love and certainly not looking to get married anytime soon. Travis McGee, Gallagher’s Pub’s new business partner, is not only handsome, but rich and successful too. He offers the Gallaghers a great business venture and offers Darcy the lifestyle and money that she so desires – but is he willing to offer her his heart?

Heart of the Sea was rather interesting and gave me a more in-depth feel of the community of Ardmore, the bonds between the locals, the excitement of all the business possibilities, and the dramatic changes in two people’s lives. I struggled a bit to relate to Darcy as a character, as she aspires to live a lavish life of luxury. However, her confident and arrogant personality woke up the ‘vixen’ in my own and that was just what I needed.

Ben Spies, a seasoned author at 13, delivers an entertaining and action-packed read with his science fiction novel 2020.

2020 is full of surprises and I can’t help but think it’s all the more on-point and enjoyable for pre-teen readers, having been written by one of their peers. Spies wrote his first book at nine-years-old, and on hearing this particular piece of trivia, I could
see the possibilities unfold before my eight-year-old’s eyes. Impressed he was.

In 2020 the Earth’s orbit is moving precariously close to the sun, with the planet heating up to unsurvivable levels. A spacecraft aptly named Salvos, a nod to salvation, is NASA’s hope for saving the human race. It’s a vessel for transporting them to another more habitable planet, but sadly, Salvos is not meant to be.

All is not what it seems in 2020. There’s espionage, shapeshifting extraterrestrials, and top-secret bunkers, and the plot thickens trying to decipher everyone’s intentions... are they malicious or misunderstood?

Spies sets an exciting pace with alternating chapters between the perspectives of Susan Dawes and her son Jacob as they fight to survive amidst the chaos.

I was remiss not reading the age recommendation of 11+ before reading 2020 to my son, but nevertheless it was very much enjoyed and it was too late to turn back when I realised he was already hooked. “It was awesome cause it was gruesome,” was the general consensus from him, and it is fair to say this sentiment, though a little exaggerated, is spot-on. Some bits are best suited for a slightly older audience. Who would have thought the whole fight for survival in an apocalyptic world would be so entertaining? And it was the bits perhaps not suited to an eight-year-old that seemed to be all the more appealing!

2020 offers lots of suspense for pre-teen readers, and its rapidly moving pace only adds to the urgency. The race is on to save humanity. The only question is, will Susan and Jacob survive?

Instructions for Dancing is an awesome contemporary romance written by Nicola Yoon. It’s told from the point of view of our main character, Yvone ‘Evie’ Thomas, who witnessed her father do something awful, resulting in the divorce of her parents. And with it, her willingness to believe the world isn’t awful and loving someone is fine deteriorates. However, her newfound love of dance and the handsome X she meets soon may change that.

The two things I love most about this book are these: the relatable and complex characters, and the fact that romance isn’t the only subject here. Don’t get me wrong – I love love just as much as the next person. But I also like variety, and Instructions for Dancing has plenty of that. It deals with infidelity, and not just what it does to the partner but also the family. We see Evie’s mum break. We see the toll it takes on her father for his own child to hate and mistrust him. It’s heartbreaking, yes, but also an interesting view. I’d never actually seen the other side of infidelity – it was surprising how much sympathy I felt.

And now onto the second reason why I love this book: the in-depth characters. X (yes, that’s his real name) is not just in the story because it needs a love interest, he’s an actual three-dimensional character. One great thing is being able to watch Evie get over her aversion to love and allow herself to be vulnerable. There’s Cassidy, your typical ‘mean friend’. Behind this, she just wants the approval of her often-absent parents. There’s Fifi, who’s a very scary dance instructor, but one with a heart of gold who just wants her students to succeed. I also adore that there’s plenty of representation. Plenty of the people, including Evie and X themselves, are African American. Cassidy and her girlfriend are LGBTQIA+.

Instructions for Dancing is an amazing book with an important message: love is about the journey and the moments you share, rather than the potential heartbreak you might feel.

This book could be anyone’s story if they followed their passion as Emma Outteridge did. After seeing the harrowing movie Hotel Rwanda, Outteridge’s eyes were well and truly opened and that movie, in effect, changed her life for good. When she told her late Gramps that she wanted to do good works, he said get on with it. So she did.

In her early 20s, Outteridge left New Zealand with a fellow Kiwi as volunteers for St Paul KAASO Primary School in Uganda. Not your usual OE choice, but the author did have a unique childhood growing up on sailing boats.

Seeing the need of orphaned children with no future, they fundraised to build a bunkroom that would be named Kiwi House. The project grew to sponsor many children to attend secondary school. Some secured scholarships!

The six-month trip of a lifetime for Outteridge became a life-long commitment. The juxtaposition of her glamorous life organising Louis Vuitton America’s Cup events versus living in a mud house, bathing with a flannel and muddy water, was not lost on the author. She suffered volunteer guilt; that she wasn’t doing enough. Rose, the woman who set up the school, reminded her, “You can’t do everything, but you can do something.” That became her mantra. The village, community, and ambience sounded magical: “As the sky slowly filled with the streaky red of sunset, we sang and played until night stole the light away.”

Some of the descriptions of the scenes, and certainly the photos, made me cry. It’s a wonderful tale of someone who had conviction and was prepared to work hard and act with integrity to make something happen. Nelson Mandela is quoted: “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” Between Two Worlds sums up the author’s spirit and generosity in life. A joyous read.

In the first of three books about the Gallaghers of Ardmore, Nora Roberts awakens our imaginations with Jewels of the Sun.

Jude F. Murray was a level-headed, stable, and predictable psychology college professor who was stuck in routine life until she abruptly quit her job and decided to take a trip to Ireland, where her roots are. Jude’s husband – oh, correction – ex-husband, had asked for a divorce just eight months after getting married. When she made the life-changing decision to quit her job and travel to a country she’d never been, she felt like she had finally lost her mind.

Jude decided to work on a paper that combined her work and her roots, while taking the time to clear her mind and maybe even find herself.

“You didn’t tell me the cottage was haunted.” Gran had told Jude about Lady Gwen and her Faerie lover Garrick over a set of tapes and letters and shared more Irish folklore that had been passed down from generation to generation. Being logical, Jude brushed it off as just another old story, but thought it might be interesting to follow up on some of the stories from the locals.

One local, Aidan Gallagher, had offered to tell her as many stories as she wanted. Aidan was the owner of Gallagher’s pub, passed down to him from his parents. Little did she know what fate had in store for her and how truly magical the Faerie Hill was.

Jude thought she had it all and had a good life – until she really started living.

Roberts’ book is full of magic, passion, love, friendship, culture, and courage. I fell in love with the magical folklore and the power that it held amongst the locals, as well as the courage of one woman who gave it all up and found herself and true happiness for the very first time. Prepare to be enchanted!

Tears of the Moon is the second book in Nora Roberts’ Gallaghers of Ardmore trilogy. The magic continues when the first of three spells has been broken for Carrick and Lady Gwen to finally be together. Is this an opportunity for the second part of the spell to be broken? “His heart’s in his song.”

I felt like I had been placed under a spell myself when I read this book and instantly got transported to the wonderful countryside of Ireland. Nora’s writing style is easy on the eyes and flows as if she is telling you the story herself. Her descriptions of scenes in the story are so vivid that you can see the vision of Lady Gwen, smell the delicious mulligan stew that Shawn is cooking in the pub, and feel the burning desire of two souls that want to be together. She had me lapping up every word that I read, and I didn’t feel the need to skim a page in case I missed something.

Compared to the first book Jewels of the Sun, Tears of the Moon is a little less dreamy romance and more battle of the wits between Brenna and Shawn, neither of whom want to admit their romantic feelings for the other. The stubbornness of these two characters makes you want to jump into the book and slap some sense into them, however, it is quite amusing to read how they quarrel with each other when jealousy creeps up. There are family matters that also come into play and personally I was rooting for their success in their potential business venture. Having everyone in town involved and keeping family close really got me deeper into the story as it felt close to home for me.

I could not put the book down and found myself smiling and laughing out loud. Magic, wit, and romance next to a warm fire on a cold rainy day was just what the doctor ordered.

Lyrical, eloquent, and impressionistic, Fancy Dancing is a word collage of memories and moments. Bernadette Hall’s life, and the many lives she seems to have lived, find a voice in her poems, this collection acting as a sort of memoir.

At times abstract and labyrinthine, Hall’s poems are very intimate. More than once I felt as though I was looking in on a private moment of remembrance, not unwelcome but certainly an outsider to the personal memory unfolding behind the curtain of allegory, metaphor, and simile. Poetic imagery intentionally lures the reader into the poem, but also renders it more intricate and impenetrable.

The poems in Fancy Dancing walk a narrow line between withholding and exposing moments of Hall’s life. Incongruous images lay side by side, juxtaposed in such a manner that their association is often startling and unpredictable, just like the inner workings of the mind, the fabric of dreams, or the twists and turns of life. In The Holy Ground, a monk’s sandals “flap flap flap,” until they unexpectedly and seamlessly transfigure into a salmon hauled onto dry land, gasping for air. Hall continuously plays with the margins, boundaries, and confines of poetic language and imagery. Perhaps through the incongruity of her images, Hall is able to make sense of the natural disorder of life.

Despite the highly complex imagery however, Hall’s poems are not weighty. In fact they seem lighthearted, sprightly, and even playful. Ironic and rather level-headed, Hall doesn’t seem to take life too seriously. She captures a moment frozen in time. The poems accept what life gives them, no matter how disjointed or unexpected, and make a memory worth remembering, whether good, bad, or somewhere in between. Nothing seems inherently good or bad in the realms of Hall’s poems. Fancy Dancing as a whole is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. The poems are realistic tableaus of life that though complex and perhaps a little convoluted, are also evocative, transient, and inherently beautiful.

In How Do You Live, author Genzaburo Yoshino captures the human spirit and it is both beautiful and confronting. How Do You Live is the poignant story of a 15-year-old boy growing up in 1930s Japan, a boy whose father’s last wish was for him to be a great example of a human being.

Copper is a boy intrigued by the world around him and begins to wonder increasingly about all the human intricacies and life’s unknowns that surround him, all while navigating the friendships and adventures of youth. How Do You Live offers an insight into Copper’s world and the heart-warming relationship he has with his uncle, who stives to mentor him after his father dies.

His uncle writes to Copper in a notebook with words that gently speak to what he knows and feels about life. He wants to explain the complexities of the human condition and what it means to truly live. He speaks as if to Copper’s soul, to encourage him to see all possibilities.

His words are pragmatic and philosophical and implore Copper to view humanity and all it entails with a great sense of pride and connection. Copper begins to consider everyone and everything, from the people who make his clothes, to the farmer who provides his milk. Copper in his wonder learns to see the bigger picture.

His uncle sees the promise in Copper, his greatness and his failings. “It’s hard to admit our mistakes. But in the pain of our mistakes there is also human greatness,” he writes.

Copper takes his uncle’s guidance to heart. When he fails his friends Kitami and Uragawa, he realises he can rise above his mistakes: “still I can become a good person. I can become a good person and create one good person for the world.”

In How Do You Live, the human spirit prevails. There’s a great lesson here: how we treat people will ultimately prove our character.

Hands up, who had no idea that micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) are just as important to the overall health of our brains as macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates, and fats)? In their new book The Better Brain, Julia Rucklidge PhD and Bonnie Kaplan PhD explain how these tiny nutrients help the brain function properly and can treat anxiety, ADHD, and a host of other mental illnesses.

Much like the last book I reviewed titled Mental Fitness, I found The Better Brain quite an easy read. Nothing went over
my head, and I felt both Rucklidge and Kaplan cared about the subject matter they were talking about, as well as the people reading the book.

Their writing is simple to understand and down to Earth, with no technobabble or complicated jargon that gets in the way of the ideas explained in the book. Because of that, I came away with a greater understanding of my brain and how micronutrients play a key role in its wellbeing.

What I most loved about The Better Brain was that it helps to empower readers to take charge of their mental and physical health. Think of it as a guidebook giving you helpful advice on what you need to keep on top. Imagine your brain as an engine, and nutrients act as the fuel that keeps it running properly. What kind of fuel we choose can dramatically change our lives for the better.

While I was surprised that these nutrients could have such an effect on us mentally, what shocked me the most was that a lot of psychiatrists seem to have no idea about the positive contribution they play. Even more shocking was that a majority of medical schools glaze over them in favour of powerful pharmaceuticals. For that reason, I think people owe it to themselves to give this a read. Seriously a must have in any home.

Margaret Atwood’s collection of poems Dearly is unsurprisingly a work of art. Every word is elegant, significant, and intentional, all working together to craft the ethereal world of memory, age, and finality, but also new beginnings. Each poem confronts inevitable finality, whether in death or heartbreak or even just a moment, yet in some way each poem is seeped with the beauty of memory and the life that once belonged to the ineluctable end.

Atwood juxtaposes reality against illusion, playing with both abstractions. In some poems dreams and fantasy are more real than reality. Blizzard for example is a heavy-hearted poem about the unwillingness to let go of a mother, more alive in dream-world than in the material one. In other instances, illusion is ridiculed in its attempts to ward off inevitable and unpleasant reality. In Princess Clothing humans, like silkworms, adorn themselves in decorative things, hoping to become metaphorical butterflies. Atwood wafts away our delusions however, for much like the silkworms we destroy to turn into adornments, our fate is not to become butterflies.

Oh Children mourns the decay and death of nature, the world, and life if human carelessness and destruction continues, but it does so by inquiring as to whether future generations will be forced to grow up (if they grow up) without all the things we take for granted. The poem ends with a final question: “oh children will you grow up?” Foreboding, final, fatal, but beautiful in its glimmer of hope.

Though each poem verges on hopelessness and often cynicism, it is crafted in such a way as to underscore loveliness that shall be lost, in this way imbuing Dearly with a sense of melancholic nostalgia. These endings are often cathartic, and in each one there is the potential for a new beginning. Though inevitable and fatal, beauty in Dearly is in fact found in finality; everything is beautiful precisely because it is doomed, to be reborn some other way.

What I like best about Harry Ricketts’ Selected Poems is the picture they present of the man. The collection is comprehensive, spanning 40 years of experiences and observations garnered from a life of travel, cultural reaction, and scholarship – not to mention personal life. “The unexamined life is not worth living”, noted James Baldwin. Ricketts is a fine example of how such an attitude might demonstrate itself in writing.

He’s warm, he’s generous, he’s able to admit faults, and he thankfully lacks the tendency towards cold intellectualism and obscure referencing that plagues some contemporary poetry writing.

A Peking History Lesson and Tales of Old Hong Kong will satisfy the student of the East, redolent with such images as “Mao’s portrait synthetically benign” and the subalterns who “giggled at the size of their hostess’s feet”. And do look out for The Elephant’s Nest Shuffle!

I could easily have missed the author’s note in which Ricketts confesses to the inclusion in his early poet’s training of limericks composition. Such verses are often sneered at for being lowbrow, so I was delighted that our erudite poet found an exploration of that as well as other literary forms “enormously liberating”. His collection includes several examples, and they provide the added pleasure of having fellow poets as targets. Elsewhere, references to writers Lauris Edmond and Frank Sargeson will be recognised by the general reader.

In more serious vein, we get a metaphor for marriage in Nothing to Declare, a salutary dissertation in The Necessity of Failure, and are invited to share the wistfulness of The unmade bed.

Amongst his new poems, I was especially struck by the starkness of Last day, evoking as it does a sad reality. And Arguments for religion, which aligns old religion with the new, aptly listing “social media, imperial nostalgia, dark money and fake news” as responsible for the questionable morality of the day.

Read Selected Poems and be reminded, admonished, touched, and entertained by this most human of poets.