Graeme Lay and Stephen Stratford, editors: An Affair of the Heart: A Celebration of Frank Sargeson's Centenary

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

One early reader of this anthology has said that, for him, the book "resurrected" Frank Sargeson, often described as the "father" of New Zealand writing. This seems a good observation as, in order to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Sargeson's birth, Cape Catley (owned by Sargeson's long-time friend and literary executor Christine Cole Catley) and the Frank Sargeson Trust have collected together a warmly personal series of remembrances from the people who knew the writer best.

Sargeson indeed springs to life (figuratively, that is). Here's Kevin Ireland's poem Ash Tuesday:

Old friends always

take each other lightly,

so when we held your body

in a paper bag

no bigger than a bull's

scrotum and took turns

at jigging you out

under a loquat tree,

our only fear was that

the wind might blow you

completely away

before we could get you back to your roots.

Or Janet Frame:

Has it, as the poets say, come to this?

A handful of ash after fire,

A scoop of sand after the stone mountain.

Here he is in his little, George Haydn-designed house at 14 Esmonde Rd, Takapuna, behind the overgrown hedge, that "incontinent vegetation" as Graeme Lay notes. Here he is in his garden tending capsicums and Chinese gooseberries (before anyone else had heard of them). And, most famously, here he is amid the piles of books inside his house (which had an extra-low toilet for healthful crapping), generously dispensing rusks, meals, Lemora ("foul, fortified wine", as Nigel Cook puts it) and advice, encouragement and conversation to an endless procession of writers and friends.

An ambitious, eclectic, untidy project, the book includes not only memories but short stories, excerpts and poems not related directly to Sargeson but born of the literary fellowship that bears his name; short stories from Sargeson himself; the radio interview with him conducted by Michael King in 1978; a history of the Frank Sargeson Trust; and a bibliography of Sargeson's work. But it's a delightful mishmash, a labour of obvious love, extremely dip-in-able, and a tribute both to the man and those who have worked hard to turn his memory into a live, productive thing.

Cape Catley, $34.99

(Limited edition hardcover $49.99)