Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl
...AnotherCat, I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say about what represents typical New Zealand fiction and how this does or doesn't represent that.
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I don't really know if there is anything that really typifies NZ fiction except for me it seems very thin on the ground, even keeping in mind the smallness of the country. I think that as far as I am concerned there are really only four NZ authors of fiction that come readily to mind as being of international literary standing for the quality and knowledge of their work. They are (undoubtedly I've forgotten someone):
Ngaio Marsh (crime)
Katherine Mansfield (short stories only though, if I recall correctly)
Margaret Mahy (children and young adult)
Lynley Dodd (children)
Interestingly Ngaio Marsh spent much of her life in the UK and Mansfield spent her short adult life there and Europe too (she left NZ in her late teens); Mansfield I therefore hesitate to claim as a NZ writer, but most NZ'ers seem to "own" her as one ("own" in the grasping context). I don't really know how well known Lynley Dodd is internationally but, for example, her
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy's sales alone are in excess of ten million worldwide now.
So a pretty thin lot for me as far as I am concerned, especially as I don't read children's books or short stories.
Outside of the above there are the the two Booker prize winners (the only NZ ones) who I have never held in any regard; 2013 Eleanor Catton (
The Luminaries) and 1985 Keri Hulme (
The Bone People). I gave
The Bone People a go way back but abandoned it (but I know others claim to like it), and despite Hulme having claimed forever that another book is on the way it has not turned up in the intervening 35 years. Catton wrote one novel before
The Luminaries but it was, if I recall correctly, written as a Master's thesis so perhaps doesn't really count as one structured for more general reading, I have read that and thought it mediocre and quite immature (a view shared by many). I have browsed
The Luminaries several times (unfortunately I squandered on a copy) and it struck me as plain tiresome - the comment of a book critic here, when asked his view of it in an interview, was "I won't be reading it anytime soon", that I thought fitted my own view. Again I know others claim to like it. In the intervening 7 years another novel has not appeared?
There have been some very popular nonliterary novels locally of which the work of Barry Crump (especially the early ones, the first
A Good Keen Man in 1960) has perhaps stood up long enough to have now qualified to have entered, locally at least, the realms of popular literature and are ones I respect. Unfortunately the novels don't seem to be in ebook but they are on every bookshop's shelves in paper.
Crump, perhaps because he seems to avoid it, reminds me of much that I find a problem for me in lesser NZ fiction in that it seems labored and too often to have a habit of wanting to deliver or use to carry the story (in a labored way??) dark societal messages to us, often exaggerated. Albert Wendt's
Sons for the Return Home (Wendt I would personally claim as a Samoan writer though) is an example of an exception for me in that while it is seen as critical of some aspects of Samoan society (and disliked by some because of that) which from my own observation I believe does so in an honest and well written manner.
All that aside there has been some excellent non-fiction, a lot is of fauna and flora but that very much compromised by the very narrow variety of and visually dull fauna and flora in NZ (albeit some of it being unique), so mainly of local interest. As in many countries the shelves of bookshops overflow with books about themselves, much poor or mediocre, or repetitive (plagiarized??) but there have been some excellent memoires of farm life/farm histories (though I don't recall any recent ones), plus an internationally recognized authoritative (but very readable) biography of James Cook.
So where does Janet Frame's
Owls do Cry sit for me? That to come
.