I've just read Elizabeth Smither's new short story collection, The Piano Girls. The images that grab you in Smither's poetry are equally striking in this sixth prose selection, along with her characteristic mischief, subversive empowerment
By David Hill
2 mins to read
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.
Soldiers and nurses, sailors and WAACs, airmen and POWs and civilians fill photos which are often startling (German forces moving into Poland on horseback); poignant (an enemy soldier captured in North Africa, frightened and exhausted and only 15 years old); revelatory (who knew one Kiwi had joined a SS unit?). Linked by a text that is concise and authoritative.
Coastwatcher, by David Hill (Penguin, $20), is out now.