BOOKS FROM NEW ZEALANDDogside Story
Description:
There is conflict in the whanau. The young man Te Rua holds a secret for life, the one to die with . But he realises that if he is to acknowledge and claim his daughter, the secret will have to be told. The Sisters are threatening to drag the whanau through the courts. But why? What is really going on? Meanwhile, wider events are encroaching. Visitors will arrive in numbers to this East Coast site, wanting to be among the first in the world to see the new millennium. There are plans to be put into action, there's money to be made, and there's high drama as the millennium turns . . . Like Potiki before it, Dogside Story is set in a rural Maori coastal community. The power of the land and the strength of the whanau are life-preserving forces. This rich and vivid novel, threaded with humour, presents a powerful picture of Maori in modern times. Also available as an eBook
Reviews:
(1 week ago) |
02 Oct, 2025
I enjoyed this yarn about family and community. The story, language and narrative structures were all unexpected - they are culturally specific to an East Coast Māori community in Aotearoa New Zealand, just before the millennium. It sometimes felt like a meandering story told by your elderly relatives, interspersed with seemingly tangential gossip, chatting, singing and dancing, but everything gets woven back into the whole story. I particularly enjoyed reading this as an audiobook so I could appreciate the ever-changing sound and rhythm of the spoken language and the story structure.
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