A prize-winning classic novel, as relevant today as when it was first written.
Patricia Grace (Ngati Toa, Ngati Raukawa and Te Ati Awa) is one of New Zealand's most celebrated writers. She has published over 35 titles, including novels, short-story collections, works of non-fiction and books for children, a number of which have been translated into te reo Maori. Among numerous awards, she won the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards in 1986 for the much-loved Potiki, which also won the New Zealand Fiction Award in 1987. She was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001 with Dogside Story, which won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Prize. Tu won the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Awards Fiction Prize and the Deutz Medal for Fiction and Poetry. She was also awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Oklahoma, in 2008. Her children's story The Kuia and the Spider won the Children's Picture Book of the Year and she has also won the New Zealand Book Awards For Children and Young Adults Te Kura Pounamu Award. Patricia was born in Wellington and lives in Plimmerton on ancestral land, in close proximity to her home marae at Hongoeka Bay. Her book Cousins was made into an internationally-acclaimed film in 2021, directed by daughter in law Briar Grace-Smith and Ainsley Gardiner.
Switching between first person and third person, this loose narrative of developers trying to build a resort on Maori land revolves around the family of Roimata Kararaina and her husband, Hemi Tamihana. Although land development is the central theme, Grace, the New Zealand author of several novels and short-story collections, is at her best portraying the lives of her characters, from their daily tasks (eel-fishing and cooking) to the stories they tell‘both real hard-luck stories and ancestral myths. While the writing here is often elegant in its simplicity (the first-person sections in particular are beguilingly direct‘``I have loved Hemi since I was five,'' Roimata announces by way of introduction) and the information about Maori life intriguing, the plot thread is often buried. Individual segments stand out because of Grace's able descriptions, but liberal use of Maori words such as papakainga and tangi with no explanation (a glossary might have helped) add to the confusion. When the conflict with ``the dollarman'' (their nickname for a Mr. Dolman, who comes to try to convince them to accept a project that includes not only a nightclub and golf course, but also ``trained whales and seals etcetera'') heats up, it moves matters along, but those sharp-edged segments can be disorienting in tandem with all the magical storytelling. This uneasy mix never jells completely, and the saga of native people suffering at the hands of an imperialist oppressor is not especially fresh. (June)
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