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DionHenare rated The Great Gatsby: 3 stars

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (2003)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

DionHenare rated He Pou Hiringa: 4 stars

Katharina Ruckstuhl, Merata Kawharu, Maria Amoamo: He Pou Hiringa (Bridget Williams Books)

He Pou Hiringa by Katharina Ruckstuhl, Merata Kawharu, Maria Amoamo

'The creation of new science requires moving beyond simply understanding one another's perspectives. We need to find transformative spaces for …

DionHenare rated Tōku Pāpā: 3 stars

Ruby Solly: Tōku Pāpā (2021, Victoria University of Wellington Press)

Tōku Pāpā by Ruby Solly

When you first told me that you gave me the name of our tupuna so that I would be strong …

DionHenare reviewed The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

In post-Arthurian Britain, the wars that once raged between the Saxons and the Britons have …

Review of 'Buried Giant' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

The ending picks up and makes some interesting points but it's a fairly long-winded road to get there. The general theme around memory and forgetting is definitely the best aspect of the book, and it makes me wish that more time had been spent developing all of the other elements to make it a rich, well-rounded read. The characters were all quite bland. I don't feel like I ended up emotionally invested in any of them, and I think a lot of that was due to the dialogue. All of the characters spoke in the exact same way, and it was a bizarrely formal/polite/detached style that made them feel inhuman. The main couple talked a lot about how much they loved each other, but it didn't really come across in the rest of the writing. At first I thought maybe this was part of the magic of the mist, clouding …

The ending picks up and makes some interesting points but it's a fairly long-winded road to get there. The general theme around memory and forgetting is definitely the best aspect of the book, and it makes me wish that more time had been spent developing all of the other elements to make it a rich, well-rounded read. The characters were all quite bland. I don't feel like I ended up emotionally invested in any of them, and I think a lot of that was due to the dialogue. All of the characters spoke in the exact same way, and it was a bizarrely formal/polite/detached style that made them feel inhuman. The main couple talked a lot about how much they loved each other, but it didn't really come across in the rest of the writing. At first I thought maybe this was part of the magic of the mist, clouding their mind and taking away their personality and emotion but it never changes so I guess not. By the end, the world was a bit more filled out but for a lot of the time it was as bland as the people.

I think this could have been a really fantastic short story but, as it is, it's a mostly tedious meander for the first 2/3rds that delivers a good ending. I'm just not sure the ending is good enough to justify the investment.

DionHenare rated Imagining Decolonisation: 4 stars

No cover — Imagining Decolonisation (2019, Williams Books, Bridget)

Imagining Decolonisation

DionHenare rated Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers: 5 stars

Witi Tame Ihimaera: Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers (2019, Random House New Zealand)

Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers by Witi Tame Ihimaera

DionHenare reviewed Pounamu Pounamu by Witi Tame Ihimaera

Witi Tame Ihimaera: Pounamu Pounamu (Paperback, 1900, Heinemann)

Review of 'Pounamu Pounamu' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I found this to be a good read, but didn't quite have the depth and magic of some of Witi Ihimaera's later work. I can understand how important it would have been when it first came out, it explores people and places that have been generally ignored. In the modern context, however, there are lots of other books that do it better (especially his own later stories) and therefore reading this book after reading those works makes it a bit less impactful. It's interesting reading through the earlier formations of some of his more iconic characters, and some of the stories were really great, but others dragged a little for me and lacked focus. Still worth reading, it's a good collection but mostly when viewed in context of its initial release in 1972.