a nutshell: gathering stories by one of New Zealand’s most prominent Māori authors, Grace’s writing offers a fascinating insight into life in this corner of the world
a line: “It’s fashionable for a Pakeha to have a Māori for a friend”
an image: Grace’s loving descriptions of the landscape were a highlight for me, particularly as I was reading it while travelling around NZ’s South Island – observations of the sun putting its finger on everything, the sky rightly bestowing tears on earth, lupins, ledges, and a joyous big stink of pigs
a thought: one story that will stay with me for some time was ‘Journey’, which closes with an old man sitting on the edge of his bed looking at his palms, utterly dejected & heartbroken after an exhausting effort to try to defend his land from development – insisting that “if it’s your stamping ground and you have your ties there, then there’s no land equal, surely that wasn’t hard to understand”
a fact: Waiariki (1975), which is included in this book, was the first short story collection by a Māori woman writer
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