Book Review

Oklava: Recipes from a Turkish-Cypriot Kitchen, by Selin Kiazim (Hachette/Octopus, $39.99)

Reviewed by Alex Beattie

Globalisation is a funny thing when it comes to food. These days you can get a decent ramen in Auckland, a passable flat white in London, and a tasty curry just about anywhere. This was on my mind when I chose to review Oklava, a modern Turkish-Cypriot cookbook, in my hometown of Wellington, New Zealand.

Oklava is Turkish for rolling pin — and is also the name of Selin Kiazim’s popular restaurant in Shoreditch, London. The restaurant opened in 2015, and not long after, I was lucky to be taken there for my 30th birthday. My partner and I were both wowed and came back a second time for brunch. This time it was even better: between the kofta pastries and Kiazim’s signature medjool date butter, we were hypnotized.

So when I heard Kiazim was publishing a cookbook, I jumped at the opportunity to get a closer look at her recipes. I was back in New Zealand, but how hard could it be to create Turkish-Cypriot cuisine on the opposite side of the world?

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Releases

New Literary Prize for NZ Authors

Announcing a new literary prize for New Zealand writers. Entries open 28 July 2017

Text Publishing is proud to announce the Michael Gifkins Prize for an Unpublished Novel, an exciting new award for writers holding New Zealand citizenship or who are permanent residents of New Zealand.

Thanks to a generous financial commitment from Ann Hatherly and André Gifkins, the partner and son of the late Michael Gifkins, and from Text Publishing, the winner will receive a contract for world rights from Text, and an advance to the value of NZ$10,000.

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Releases

Lowlife: Short Stories by Michael Botur

A Whangarei writer says ‘working poor’ experiences he has had as part of Generation Rent inspired his latest short story collection.

Michael Botur released Lowlife: short stories on June 16. The book is Botur’s fourth collection of ‘dirty realism’ literary fiction, with the previous collections garnering strong reviews.

Many of the stories are inspired by Botur’s experiences as a student or low-paid white collar worker in Christchurch, Dunedin, Wellington or Auckland, although Botur now lives in Northland.

Botur, 33, says most of the characters in the stories are aged under 35 and were largely inspired by Generation Rent’s working poor population, ie. The population who are paid too little and have costs too high to save money or invest in a house.

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Book Review | BWB Texts

The Whole Intimate Mess: Motherhood, politics, and women’s writing

by Holly Walker (BWB Texts, paper $14.99; e-book $4.99)

Reviewed by Alison McCulloch

When I saw Holly Walker, MP, speak at a meeting in Tauranga, I remember thinking how confident and together she was. That was a few years back, and she must have been barely 30 years old. “Whoa,” I thought, “I could never have done that at 30-something.” When she decided to step down as an MP, I confess to being a bit disappointed. Having read a fair bit over the years about the struggles facing women in Parliament, I had started to think that was then, this was now and things had finally changed for the better. I mean, look at Holly Walker. This book makes very clear that’s not the case.

Walker’s résumé is impressive, Bachelor’s degree, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Member of Parliament, all before she turned 30. And all of it following an origin story about her mother’s struggles as a single parent and her own lifelong dream to make sure every child in New Zealand had the kind of safe, secure, opportunity-rich childhood she’d enjoyed. It was a story that, by the time she left Parliament in 2014, she had come to doubt as inauthentic. “The reasons for this lofty ambition,” she writes, “were as much to do with celebrity and approval as they were about public service.” Holly Walker wanted to excel, to exceed expectations, to be approved of, to be liked.

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Book Review

Don’t Let Go, by Michel Bussi (Hachette, $37.99)

Reviewed by Wendy Montrose

There are endless reasons for picking up a book by an author we don’t know and it can be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. But it can also lead to disappointment. This book was unfortunately, disappointing. I chose it because I have a particular interest in the setting. Reunion Island, a tropical French outpost in the Indian Ocean is the home of my ancestors. Michel Bussi writes as though he knows Reunion, and he doesn’t seem to like it.

Bussi is a Professor of Geography at the University of Rouen. After overcoming numerous early rejections he has gone on to publish ten detective novels and two non fiction books on political and electoral geography. Don’t Let Go was originally published in French as Don’t Let Go of my Hand and the translation to English is a little clumsy in places as though the translator’s grasp of English was wanting. The odd phrase jars. “Everything goes blurred.” “Laroche is walking around the carpark in his boots…”

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Book Review | Children’s Books

Wave Me Goodbye, by Jacqueline Wilson (Penguin Random House/Doubleday, $30)

Reviewed by Sophie Robinson

“‘Would you like to go on a little holiday?’ asked Mum, the moment she’d shaken me awake.”

Main character Shirley, aged 10, was shocked at the question, because her family never went out of London on holiday. But things were different now due to the approaching war. Children of all ages, including Shirley, were being sent out to the countryside for safety.

The story follows Shirley through the beginning of her new life as an evacuee. She is shy and has no friends, and people sense this. When host families are choosing evacuees, Shirley is one of the last 3 children to be rehomed. Everything in her life is turned upside down – first she has to cope with her father leaving for war, then she has to leave her mother behind in London when she is evacuated to the country, and she has to cope with living with strangers.

This story made me feel like I was there with Shirley, as she left her old life in London, and then had to start a new life in the country with no friends or family. Jacqueline Wilson’s character development is thorough so the reader feels like they have a personal connection with the main character. Read more »

Book Review

Good Sons: A Novel of the Great War, by Greg Hall (Mary Egan Publishing, $32)

Reviewed by Ruth Brassington

“She’s a wonderful woman, she gave three sons to the war.” So I recall an elderly relative saying about her neighbour when I was a child. Anzac Day was “to remember the glorious dead”. The gory-ish dead, more like it. We all know WW1 was not a pretty place. Other writers have told stories, and now Greg Hall has told it from a local viewpoint. The first half  of the book is set in New Zealand, showing how we were experiencing the world situation at that time.

The three good sons of this historical novel’s title are those who have volunteered, one by one, each in their own time, for their own reasons; Tom, Robert and Frank step up to the mark to save us from “the hun”. And to save themselves from public censure, stressful home life or to see the world. It’s made clear that you would be labelled a shirker if you didn’t enlist. And conscientious objectors were mostly shunned – or worse. It must have been curious for boys raised in a church-going society with “thou shalt not kill” to learn that they were expected to do so.

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Book Review

To the Memory: New Zealand’s war memorials, by Jock Phillips (Potton & Burton, $60)

Reviewed by Simon Nathan

It is hard to believe that there are over a thousand public war memorials scattered around the country, commemorating over 30,000 New Zealanders who have died in wartime, and most of whom are buried overseas. This fascinating book gives an overview of the war memorials, showing how the commemoration of the casualties of war has changed over 150 years.

The author, Jock Phillips has been documenting war memorials for over 30 years, and the book is based on his detailed research, including the compilation of a database of all known war memorials. Because this is a topic that has been largely overlooked by past researchers, new information constantly comes to hand. In the opening paragraph, Phillips details his delight at finding a previously unidentified memorial obelisk in the Symonds Street cemetery as recently as September 2015.

An earlier version of this book was published in 1990 as The Sorrow and the Pride: New Zealand War Memorials by Jock Phillips and Chris Maclean. At that time there was little interest in military commemoration, and the book appeared an oddity. But in recent years there has been an awakening of interest in the commemoration of Anzac Day, and the centenary of World War 1 has inspired enormous interest in understanding New Zealand’s part in military conflict. This book is a completely new edition, incorporating the large amount of new information and interpretation that has become available over 25 years.

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Book Review

Breaking Ranks: Three Interrupted Lives, by James McNeish (Harper Collins, $35)

Reviewed by Judith Morrell Nathan

James McNeish, well known author of novels, non-fiction and drama, sent his publishers the final manuscript of this book a few weeks before he died in 2016.  In it, he tells the stories of psychiatrist John Saxby, soldier Reginald Miles and Judge Peter Mahon, described by McNeish as “three men who defied authority and paid for it”.  He says the chapters are not biographies: “at most they are sketches”.

While Mahon is well known for his damning report on the Erebus air disaster, in which he claimed he was presented with an “Orchestrated litany of lies”, Brigadier Miles, and especially John Saxby, are less well known.  They both apparently committed suicide, though what drove them to it is not entirely clear. Whether Mahon’s premature death was hastened by the reaction to his criticism of Air New Zealand and of his subsequent release of a book to justify his conduct, is a matter of conjecture.

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Book Review | BWB Texts

Tax and Fairness

by Deborah Russell and Terry Baucher (BWB Texts, paper $14.99; e-book $4.99)

Reviewed by Peter Malcolm

This is an excellent and timely book, since apart from general statements about increasing or mostly reducing tax, there has been very little comment or debate as to whether we should pay tax at all and how much tax each of us should pay.

The authors have subtitled the book “we need to talk about why we pay taxes”, an important statement, although I believe they should have added “and how much should each of us pay”. The last couple of pages make an excellent case for “the why”, and the last two sentences encourage us to see our tax system in a more positive light:

“Proudly paying our taxes is a sign that we believe in our own capacity to create a flourishing society that gives all New Zealanders fair opportunities. We should smile when we pay our taxes.”

But what about the “Fairness”? The authors give little space to this critical question apart from the unfairness of an almost non-existence Capital Gains Tax. The question of tax scales, progressive or regressive tax systems, hardly rates a mention. Many commentators aruge that in comparison with most other developed countries our tax rates on the poor are heavy and the tax rates on the high income/wealthy are light. Is this fair?

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