Books set in New Zealand (11)


1.

After The Fall by Charity Norman EN

Rating: 4     3 Votes
Description:
In the quiet of a New Zealand winter's night, a rescue helicopter is sent to airlift a five-year-old boy with severe internal injuries. He's fallen from the upstairs veranda of an isolated farmhouse, and his condition is critical. At first, Finn's fall looks like a horrible accident; after all, he's prone to sleepwalking. Only his frantic mother, Martha McNamara, knows how it happened. And she isn't telling. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Tragedy isn't what the McNamara family expected when they moved to New Zealand. For Martha, it was an escape. For her artist husband Kit, it was a dream. For their... continue
Genre
Recommended: 17 May 2018

2.
Daughter of Gloriavale

Daughter of Gloriavale by Lilia Tarawa EN

0 Ratings
Description:
In this personal account, Lilia Tarawa exposes the shocking secrets of a small Christian cult in New Zealand, with its rigid rules and oppressive control of women. She describes her fear when her family questioned Gloriavale's beliefs and practices. When her parents fled with their children, Lilia was forced to make a desperate choice: to stay or to leave. No matter what she chose, she would lose people she loved. In the outside world, Lilia struggled. Would she be damned to hell for leaving? How would she learn to navigate this strange place called "the world?" And would she ever find out the... continue
Recommended: 06 Jan 2023

3.

Faces In The Water by Janet Frame EN

Rating: 3.5     8 Votes
Description:
'Janet Frame's luminous words are the more precious because they were snatched from the jaws of the disaster of her early life . . . and yet to read her is no more difficult than breathing' Hilary Mantel When Janet Frame's doctor suggested that she write about her traumatic experiences in mental institutions in order to free herself from them, the result was Faces in the Water, a powerful and poignant novel. Istina Mavet descends through increasingly desolate wards, with the threat of leucotomy ever present. As she observes her fellow patients, long dismissed by hospital staff, with humour and... continue
Recommended: 07 Mar 2022

4.
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy

Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy by Lynley Dodd EN

Rating: 5     1 Vote
Description:
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy is the hilarious rhyming classic by Lynley Dodd.Hairy Maclary goes off for a walk in town, followed by doggish friends of all shapes and sizes. One by one they join Hairy Maclary until they meet SCARFACE CLAW! Scarface Claw is the toughest Tom in town, and causes all the others to run for home. The brilliant cumulative rhyme and terrific pictures of this story has turned it into a classic - and it is still one of the most popular picture books today.Lynley Dodd is an award-winning author/illustrator who lives in New Zealand. She is enormously popular for he... continue
Genre Humor
Recommended: 02 Jul 2023

5.
Mister Pip

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones EN

Rating: 4     1 Vote
Description:
In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives. On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. So begins this rare, original story about the abiding ... continue
Genre
Recommended: 17 Jul 2023

6.

Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff EN

Rating: 4     7 Votes
Description:
Life as a Maori in present day New Zealand, chronicling their poverty, their alcoholism and their despair. The narrator is a Maori woman who has nothing but contempt for Maori men--warriors who degenerated into lazy bums.
Genre
Recommended: 04 Sep 2022

7.
Overkill

Overkill by Vanda Symon EN

Rating: 4     4 Votes
Description:
First published in New Zealand by Penguin Books (NZ) in 2007.
Recommended: 31 Mar 2023

8.

Potiki by Patricia Grace EN

Rating: 3.6     5 Votes
Description:
'Provocative, compassionate and beautiful' - Joy Harjo, US Poet Laureate A moving story of a Maori community's fight for survival, from one of New Zealand's most prominent and celebrated authors On the remote coast of New Zealand, at the curve that binds the land and the sea, a small Maori community live, work, fish, play and tell stories of their ancestors. But something is changing. The prophet child toko can sense it. Men are coming, with dollars and big plans to develop the area for tourism. As their ancestral land becomes threatened, the people must unite in a battle for survival. Weaving... continue
Recommended: 08 Oct 2022

9.

The Bone People by Keri Hulme EN

Rating: 4     60 Votes
Description:
Integrating both Maori myth and New Zealand reality, The Bone People became the most successful novel in New Zealand publishing history when it appeared in 1984. Set on the South Island beaches of New Zealand, a harsh environment, the novel chronicles the complicated relationships between three emotional outcasts of mixed European and Maori heritage. Kerewin Holmes is a painter and a loner, convinced that "to care for anything is to invite disaster." Her isolation is disrupted one day when a six-year-old mute boy, Simon, breaks into her house. The sole survivor of a mysterious shipwreck, Simon... continue
Recommended: 20 Apr 2022

10.
The Bookseller at the End of the World

The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw EN

0 Ratings
Description:
Ruth Shaw weaves together stories of the characters who visit her bookshops, musings about her favourite books, and bittersweet stories from her full and varied life before bookshops. She sailed through the Pacific for years, was held up by pirates, worked at Sydney's King's Cross with drug addicts and prostitutes, campaigned on numerous environmental issues, and worked the yacht Breaksea Girl as an expedition/tourist boat with her husband, Lance. But underlining all her wanderings and adventures are some very deep losses and long-held pain. Balancing that out is her beautiful love story with ... continue
Recommended: 01 Jun 2023


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