ANDRIS – Where Are You? by Ron Crosby (Craig Potton Publishing, $40)

Review by Simon Nathan

A few years ago I attended an international science conference in Lithuania, one of the recently independent Baltic republics, immediately west of Russia. We went on a field trip through Latvia, but none of the Russian delegates were able to come because it was virtually impossible for them to obtain visas. This personal account of the disruption and agonies undergone by the Apse family helps to explain why Russians are not welcome in Latvia.

Andris Apse is one of New Zealand’s best known landscape photographers. He was born in Latvia while the country was in the midst of the turmoils of World War 2 – firstly invasion by the German army (into which Andris’ father, Voldemars, was conscripted), then occupation by the Russians. His mother, Kamilla, and baby Andris had to flee to a refugee camp in west Germany, and eventually emigrated to New Zealand. His father had disappeared without a trace – they believed that he had died in the conflict or in a Soviet prison camp. Andris grew up as a Kiwi, and developed his career as a photographer. Forty years after arriving in New Zealand, he and his mother discovered that Voldemars was still alive in Latvia.
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A Winter’s Day in 1939 by Melinda Szymanik (Scholastic, $18.50)

Review by Nikki Slade Robinson

Adam is 12 and living with his family in rural 1939 Poland… but not for long. Their home isn’t far from the Soviet border. When the Soviet Red Army invades Poland, Adam’s family is one of many uprooted and transported to Russian labour camps.

It is a harsh existence: appalling living conditions, freezing temperatures, illnesses, a severe shortage of food, and the ever-present enemy. It’s a challenge to survive each day, let alone try to stay together as a family.

This young-adult story, while fictional, is closely based on Melinda Szymanik’s father’s recollections of his family’s experiences in 1939 Poland and the USSR: ‘My father was 12 when the Soviet Red Army invaded eastern Poland, where he lived, in 1939. His family was transported from Poland to a labour camp in Russia in 1940. Their experiences… form the basis of this novel, and a lot of the things that happen to Adam and those close to him happened to my father and his family and friends.’
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Girl’s Guide to Sewing by Cheryl Owen (New Holland, $29.99)

Reviewed by by Sophie Robinson (age 12)

My best friend has just started college. I was thinking of buying her a little something but I haven’t yet. Now, though, I think I’ll make her a ‘Foxy Key Fob’ out of the Girl’s Guide to Sewing. She likes cute animals and sewing so I think she’ll like a home-made gift from me. In fact I think I’ll make two so we can have matching ones!

The book has 35 projects and is clearly set out with plenty of photos – at least one for every project. The first section ‘Essentials’ has information on equipment, materials, techniques and templates. It explains a lot. The second section has the projects. Each project has a photo and brief description: for example the Jeans Gadget Bag: “It’s often a sad day when we must admit that a favourite pair of jeans are past their best. Don’t despair, upcycle…”. After the description, there is a list of what you will need, cutting-out instructions, and maybe a tip: “Don’t use your skinniest jeans… [for the bag]“. Then there are the step-by-step instructions. Each step has a lot to do, so I think it would have been better to write maybe five shorter steps rather than one very long step. It would save having to re-read each step to find your place again, especially when you’re learning. There are some diagrams: some are fine, but in some cases it could be good to include more detail.
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The Freedom Merchants by Sherryl Jordan (Scholastic, $19.50)

Review by Nikki Slade Robinson

I’ve just been on a roller-coaster ride from an idyllic 1600s Irish fishing village, across stormy seas to the land of the Barbary pirates, and back again. And a good ride it was too. The words weave a sense of calm, only to give a sudden twist, lurch, or pitch into the unknown. I was kept on my toes the whole time.

As with Ransomwood, Sherryl Jordan’s previous JF/YA title, The Freedom Merchants is beautifully written. The text flows richly, smoothly, effortlessly. The story wraps around the reader. The era, the people, the adventure all are believable and utterly absorbing.
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The Strangler’s Honeymoon by Håkan Nesser (Mantle, $30)

Reviewed by Ruth Brassington

The cluster of horrific Scandinavian crime stories has now yielded The Strangler’s Honeymoon, first published in Swedish in 2001, and now translated into English by Laurie Thompson. In keeping with the Scandinavian crime-writing tradition, the story is blacker than those from milder climes. Ex-teacher Nesser’s books shock with nasty detail – in this one you can feel the killer’s hot breath on your cheek as you read.

The murderer is certainly a match for the ostensibly retired chief inspector and antiquarian bookseller Van Veeteren, one of Sweden’s most popular characters. If you met the killer and the cop in person, you’d probably take to the former more than the latter. Van Veeteren is not at all the easy-going everyman and irritates a lot of his peers in the crime game.
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Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis, edited by Max Rashbrooke (Bridget Williams Books, $39.99)

Review by Alison McCulloch

The idea that New Zealand is an egalitarian society has always been vulnerable to reality – and going by the current debate over the widening wealth gap, never more so than today. But while inequality might have worsened in recent years, the past was hardly an egalitarian nirvana.

In the late 1940s, the political scientist Leslie Lipson wrote what has been described as “the preeminent scholarly analysis of New Zealand’s political development”. Titled The Politics of Equality: New Zealand’s Adventures in Democracy, Lipson’s book (which was re-issued in 2011 by Victoria University Press) depicts a New Zealand where egalitarianism is a value prized above all others. “It is an ingrained equalitarian temper which dominates and regulates everything that happens in the community,” Lipson wrote. “Poverty is well nigh eradicated from the Dominion and in its worst forms does not exist at all. There is no underdog, nor is anybody exploited.” Read more »

The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000BCE-1492CE by Simon Schama (Random House, $39.99)

Review by Judith Nathan

This book was conceived and written in conjunction with a five-part television series shown on BBC2 last year. While the television series covered from ancient to modern times, this large book covers only the first two one-hour television programmes with a second volume in preparation.

Despite its vast scope, covering 2500 years of history, the book is at times overwhelming in its detail, with a dizzying number of people and places unfamiliar to me, and in many cases not figuring in the maps or timeline at the back of the book. While the chapters are in chronological order (with pages devoted to relevant nineteenth- and twentieth-century archeological discoveries) this is not a chronology, or even a particularly cohesive narrative.
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Wearable Wonders by Fifi Colston (Scholastic, $21)

Review by Nikki Slade Robinson

‘I’m not going to show you how to copy one of my masterpieces… I’m going to show you how you can come up with an idea for something you’d never dreamed of making before…’

That’s what Fifi Colston says in her introduction to Wearable Wonders. And that’s precisely what she does.

Colston is a Wellington-based artist extraordinaire: author, illustrator, costumier, TV presenter, veteran of the World of Wearable Art Awards, and a very crafty person. She has stitched, glued, woven, painted and photographed her magic into this book for children – and I suspect for teenagers and even adults. She has also involved the World of Wearable Arts so there are some lovely photos of costumes.
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The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Victoria University Press, $55)

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana

As you no doubt know, Eleanor Catton is a 28-year-old New Zealander who — with this massive 832-page novel, set during and nominally about the 19th-century New Zealand gold rush — has scored the 2013 Man Booker Prize and who, inevitably, has also scored a myriad of mainly positive reviews.

Make no mistake, this is an unputdownable tome that is very cleverly pieced together, rather like those clichéd Russian dolls that nest inside each other or, perhaps, an ouroboros: a mythical serpent that devours its own tail and symbolises constant re-creation. Before even beginning to write the book, Catton must have spent eons drawing up micro-plans and infrastructures and interconnecting webs and wefts similar to the mass of astrological charts she employs throughout. They recursively parallel the 12 “main” and all-male zodiacal characters lurking, shirking and working inside the covers, whom we initially encounter in a sort of Last Supper setting. I spent hours propelled forward by the lure of any possible, cogent conclusions to the plethora of plots, sub plots and sub-par plots enveloping the plotting performers.
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Juno & Hannah by Beryl Fletcher (Spinifex Press, $25)

Review by Sienna Latham

The New Zealand bush haunts every page of Beryl Fletcher’s compelling new novella. Set in 1920, Juno & Hannah follows two sisters as they flee the isolated Waikato community of religious fundamentalists who raised them. They soon find themselves in strange — and strangely familiar — territory.

Fourteen-year-old Juno, the younger of the two girls, challenges the rigid structure of life in the Christian settlement simply by existing. She is different: childlike, visceral and visionary in her reactions, echoing the sounds she hears and succumbing to emotion when it comes to animals and children. She embodies fragile, fecund, uncontrollable nature, guarding a secret that she both understands and doesn’t. Stable, capable Hannah acts as her sister’s guardian when others lose patience with her, but even she must remind herself occasionally to be patient; Juno lives by different rules.
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