New Zealand Book Recommendations

Just for Fun,Book Reviews

Painting of New Chums beach, New Zealand
Image by Caz Novak in Pacifica collection “New Chums Beach”

Books are a way for people to learn about other’s perspectives and experiences in life. I have found that people do not often enough read books from other countries and make an effort to find books other than what we get given in class. I have spent most of my life in New Zealand and found it to be full of culture and great books. Here are some that I have enjoyed and others I plan to read. All photos and descriptions and photos are from Goodreads.

The God Boy by Ian Cover cover
The God Boy by Ian Cross

The God Boy by Ian Cross

“Set in a small town in New Zealand, the story is told through the eyes of a gauche thirteen-year-old boy called Jimmy Sullivan. It is the haunting tale of a young boy growing up in a catholic household, seeing things he shouldn’t and struggling to cope. The book appears to be domestic in scope and provincial in vision, but by the end of the novel, the reader has encountered murder, and witnessed the warping of a promising mind and the destruction of a family.” 

Read more about God Boy on Goodreads.

The Bone People by Keri Hulme cover
The Bone People by Keri Hulme

The Bone People by Keri Hulme

“In a tower on the New Zealand coast lives Kerewin Holmes: part Maori, part European, asexual and aromantic, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor—a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon’s feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality.” 

Read more about The Bone People on Goodreads.

The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera cover
The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera

The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera

“Eight-year-old Kahu, a member of the Maori tribe of Whangara, New Zealand, fights to prove her love, her leadership, and her destiny. Her people claim descent from Kahutia Te Rangi, the legendary ‘whale rider.’ In every generation since Kahutia, a male heir has inherited the title of chief. But now there is no male heir, and the aging chief is desperate to find a successor. Kahu is his only great-grandchild—and Maori tradition has no use for a girl. But when hundreds of whales beach themselves and threaten the future of the Maori tribe, Kahu will do anything to save them—even the impossible.” The Whale Rider was made into a movie in 2002 that is well known in New Zealand.

Read more about The Whale Rider on Goodreads.

Tu by Patricia Grace cover
Tu by Patricia Grace

Tu by Patricia Grace

“In this new novel acclaimed Maori novelist Patricia Grace visits the often terrifying and complex world faced by men of the Maori Battalion in Italy during World War II. Tu is proud of his name–the Maori god of war. But for the returned soldier there’s a shadow over his own war experience in Italy. Three brothers went to war, but only one returned–Tu is the sole survivor.” 

Read more about Tu on Goodreads.

Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump cover
Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump

Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump

“A tale of raw adventure as Uncle Hec and Ricky use all their skills to survive in the hard world of precipitous hills and impassable forest. It uncovers the slow maturing of love and trust between two loners in a hard world.” There is now a New Zealand movie based on the book called “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” directed by Taika Waititi that was released in 2016.

Read more about Wild Pork and Watercress on Goodreads.

Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff cover
Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff

Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff

“Once Were Warriors is Alan Duff’s harrowing vision of his country’s indigenous people two hundred years after the English conquest. In prose that is both raw and compelling, it tells the story of Beth Heke, a Maori woman struggling to keep her family from falling apart, despite the squalor and violence of the housing projects in which they live. Conveying both the rich textures of Maori tradition and the wounds left by its absence, Once Were Warriors is a masterpiece of unblinking realism, irresistible energy, and great sorrow.” Once Were Warriors was also made into a famous New Zealand movie in 1994.

Read more about Once Were Warriors on Goodreads.

The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield cover
The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield

The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield

“The fifteen stories featured, many of them set in her native New Zealand, vary in length and tone from the opening story, “At the Bay, ” a vivid impressionistic evocation of family life, to the short, sharp sketch “Mrs. Brill, ” in which a lonely woman’s precarious sense of self is brutally destroyed when she overhears two young lovers mocking her. Sensitive revelations of human behavior, these stories reveal Mansfield’s supreme talent as an innovator who freed the story from its conventions and gave it a new strength and prestige.” 

Read more about The Garden Party and Other Stories on Goodreads.  

Ella Tomkins | 2021

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