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1. The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin)
This June, it will be 80 years since D-Day. Pippa Latour, who died in West Auckland late last year aged 102, helped lay the groundwork for the operation’s success by acting as a secret agent in France for Britain during WW II.
“I was not a James Bond-style spy,” said Latour. “I was a secret agent whose job it was to blend into the background and cause quiet chaos.” It was exhausting work; she was unable to trust anyone, had several code names and was often hungry. It was desperately perilous, too. Many of the 13,000 Special Operations Executives were killed, including 14 women out of 39 in France. The average life expectancy of male wireless operators in France when she served was six weeks. Latour’s was a truly remarkable life all around, and The Last Secret Agent, co-written with Jude Dobson, is a clear and fluent account. Read the review here.
2. Foraging New Zealand by Peter Langlands (Penguin)
Kiwis clearly love the idea of foraging our forests and fields and riverbanks for edible wild plants, and in current times there’s probably an economic element as well. Liv Sisson’s Fungi of Aotearoa sold pallet-loads when it came out last year, and we can expect Peter Langlands’ book, from the same publisher, to do the same. Langlands is perhaps the country’s only professional forager, collecting wild flora for restaurants and running workshops. It’s a chunky guide, 500 pages, that picks out 250 plants and fungi from about 7500 edible species. The book warns of stuff not to touch, and plants that look like others but are verboten. The range is impressive. You may know you can eat samphire and wild chervil, but be surprised that you can scarf parts of rengarenga, pōhutukawa stamens, wandering willie. You can read an interview with Peter Langlands here.
3. Hine Toa by Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku (HarperCollins)
Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku is a respected Māori scholar, an expert on tā moko, and now an emeritus professor. But in 1981, she was the first Māori woman to be awarded a PhD in New Zealand. To achieve her success, she had to fight against family pressure, peer contempt, the academic and Māori establishment, racism, sexism and homophobia. And she would take up political fights, leading protests for the Vietnam War, the 1970 All Blacks tour of South Africa, Waitangi Day, women’s liberation
Her childhood, centred around “the pā”, Ōhinemutu, on the western shore of Lake Rotorua, is richly evoked in this memoir. “This was a place of drifting thermal mists and streams of trout and crayfish; her family had its own bathhouse, mostly open to the sky and sandy below.” But if anyone still imagines New Zealand in the 50s and 60s as a wholesome pastoral idyll, Hine Toa will dispel those illusions. “Ngāhuia’s parents separated, but to attend her local school she had to live with her abusive father. He beat her and perhaps more.”
The memoir is ultimately a contradiction, “honest but often frustratingly oblique; explicit in some places and coy in others … And yet this is an important book: vital to write, vital to publish and vital to read.” Read the review here.
4. Evolving by Judy Bailey (HarperCollins)
In which the person who presented our TV news from 1986 to 2005 (“I just fell into it”) offers an “inspiring and personal guide to ageing well and with happiness”. It covers older health, fitness (she does Pilates), finances and embracing joy, as well as the inevitable losses and griefs of a life. Bailey says being in your 70s today is a world away from what it used to be. “We’re out there doing things and we’ve got a lot to contribute,” she told the Australian Women’s Weekly NZ.
5. The Team That Hit the Rocks by Peter Jerram (David Bateman)
In April 1968, the interisland passenger ferry Wahine hit Barrett Reef at the entrance to Wellington Harbour in a cyclone, the worst storm recorded in New Zealand’s history. Among the 610 passengers and 125 crew was the Lincoln College cricket team, with one Peter Jerram among its number. Some 53 people lost their lives and while the cricket team all survived, the disaster had a huge impact on them.
Initially, they didn’t discuss their experiences, but over the years that has changed. Drawing on the written and oral testimony of his teammates, crew and rescuers, Jerram tells their stories, and examines what led to the disaster and loss of life, finding serious fault with the Court of Inquiry into the tragedy.
The Listener said that there have, of course, been other books and documentaries about the catastrophe but few, if any, that have captured the catharsis of the event so directly and with undemonstrative emotion. “These are remarkable stories; enduring but unvarnished personal accounts of what it means to confront death … [it’s] an intensely felt exploration of tragedy and survival.”
6. Māori Made Easy Pocket Guide by Scotty Morrison (Penguin)
Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy Pocket Guide does exactly what it says on the kēna, or tin. A bit wider than a cellphone, it’s an updated and reworked “careful selection of some of the best and most useful content from my previous books”. This includes pronunciation and communication basics, as well as history, tikanga and essential phrases like “Aue, kei te tino rongo au i te whiu a te waipiro” – “Gosh, I am terribly hungover.”
7. Take Two by Danielle Hawkins (A&U)
Laura is a successful communications manager on a break from work and back in her home town for a visit before walking from one end of New Zealand to the other. But her plans are thrown out the window when the family of her long-term ex-boyfriend, Doug, come back into her life. Then Doug’s kid brother, Mick, begins to take an interest.
From the Listener’s review: “Take Two is a great small-town drama, in which local gossips try to make mischief with Laura’s situation, while the family bookshop needs to be kept running and a murky property development is being sold to vulnerable locals. It’s a cosy read, though the author isn’t afraid to broach some bigger issues, such as how families manage illness, women deal with infertility and the sometimes tricky relationships between mothers and daughters.”
8. Dame Suzy D by Susan Devoy (A&U)
Petra Bagust describes Dame Susan Devoy’s autobiography as “a rollicking story of a life well lived”, and John Campbell says the book is “the story of becoming Suzy D – in all her determined, triumphant and unabashed singularity”.
In her own words – and in the straight-up style that won her legions of new fans on Celebrity Treasure Island – Dame Susan tells the story of her life so far: the wins, the losses, the battles, as well as the bonds that got her through life’s hardest challenges.
Some might be surprised to learn that as well as being a sporting champ, chief executive and Race Relations Commissioner, she also answered the call when our horticulture industry needed staff and worked as a kiwifruit picker.
9. Amma by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press)
This Kiwi debut is a sweeping family drama taking place across three countries and three eras – 1950s Singapore, New Zealand in the 1980s and London in 2018.
From the publisher’s blurb: “Arriving on her uncle Suri’s doorstep, jetlagged and heartbroken, Annie has no idea what to expect – all she knows is that Suri was cast out of the family before she was born. Moving between cities and generations, Amma follows three women on very different paths, against a backdrop of shifting cultures. As circumstance and misunderstanding force them apart, it will take the most profound love to knit them back together before it’s too late.” You can read the review here.
10. The Call by Gavin Strawhan (A&U)
Another local thriller writer jumps straight into the bestseller list on debut. Strawhan, an experienced TV writer, including on Shortland Street, has written a novel that’s “deft and accomplished”.
From the Listener’s review: “The event of the title that sets Strawhan’s story into motion is an early-morning phone call to Auckland detective Honey Chalmers from Kloe, a battered mother-of-three who’s tired of the beatings and disrespect from her gang-affiliated partner.
The Reapers are 501 “blow ins” from Australia who have recently set up shop in Aotearoa and are working on an ambitious deal to bring in a large amount of methamphetamine through the Port of Tauranga enlisting the help of a local gang.
That 4am call will change both women’s lives.
It will lead to Chalmers receiving a vicious beating which she’s lucky to survive and set Kloe on a life-or-death journey as a police informant – a situation complicated when family members begin to suspect something is going on.
After Chalmers’ assault she takes time off from the police and relocates to Waitutu to recover and also to take care of her mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s.
While Chalmers rightly gets most of the page-time, Strawhan also depicts the high-stakes life of Kloe: “She was so busy trying not to give anything away, she couldn’t remember how to be. It was like trying to walk down steps. It came naturally to you, until you tried to deliberately put one foot after the other.”
But best of all is DS Honey Chalmers. Strawhan captures her beautifully: tough, vulnerable and smart, and willing to step outside the rules to get things done. Let’s hope this isn’t the last we see of her.
(Source: Nielsen Bookscan NZ – week ending April 27.)
