New Zealand Books

If you want to know every detail about diplomatic efforts and negotiations surrounding Las Malvinas (Falkland Islands) conflict, this is the right book. But if you are a hard core military history reader, this is not the book for you. The narrative doesn't have the magic to make you feel like you were there. It doesn't trigger the movie in your mind. There are no personal accounts of the soldiers who took part in the action. How they felt, what they saw and what they did. It doesn't have the details of the offensive and defensive actions for the battles. If you have read the books of Stephen E. Ambrose, you will understand what I'm talking about.

This book tells the history of the Malvinas Battle of 1982 between Argentina and Great Britain. The tale of what happened in Buenos Aires, London, Washington and New York as the conflict unfolded is very interesting. Must be read by anyone who wants to have a clear understanding of the Battle and of the political motives behind the actors (Argentina's military junta, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government and the Reagan Administration).

Sir Edmund Hillary, the great mountaineer from New Zealand and Sherpa colleague Tenzing Norgay, battled their way across the slanting snowfields and violent winds, up rocky cliffs and around the icy cornices to the 29,002-foot summit of Mt. Everest. Indeed, a New Zealand beekeeper was one of the first two men ever to stand on top of the world. Hillary was to be even more deeply respected in his lifetime because of the way he used his fame. His strength was not merely physical. It was spiritual, too, which gave him the higher purpose of devoting his later energies to the welfare of the Sherpas - buildings, schools and clinics, bridges, airfields and monastery reconstructions that were sponsored by his Himalayan Trust. During his next 55 years, he was to become one of the most honored men on earth. The most unpretentious and unpompous of mountaineers, He was the opposite of that contemporary mediocrity, the Celebrity, and a genuinely heroic non-celeb. In 2008, He died at the age of 88.

Edmund Hillary went to Nepal to climb Mount Everest. He left behind schools, hospitals and health clinics. Today, more often than not climbers arrive with helicopters and TV cameras and in their wake leave a mountain littered with trash and corpses. Hillary was a humble and selfless, insisting that he and Sherpa colleague conquered the mountain as one, refusing the distinction of being the first. Climbers today pound their chests and stuff their bottomless egos with self-aggrandizement. With Sir Edmund Hillary's passing, much of the mountaineering world's remaining grace, humility and reverence have vanished.

- Brian D'Ambrosio

Sir Edmund Hillary was an extraordinary man, who grew up in the most humble surroundings and driven, ultimately by his lifelong sense of being inadequate: of not measuring up. He suffered this at the hands of a cold father, and at a prestigious school that offered discouragement to young Edmund - labelling him as as an awkward misfit.

Solitary by nature, he found in New Zealand a love for the outdoors and a passion for the mountains. Of course by 1953 his fitness, and drive, took him to the top of Mt Everest, alongside Tenzing Norgay, and for the next 55 years Hillary lived in the shadow of that mountain.

By his choice he spent most of these incredible years giving himself to the people of Nepal - helping build schools, hospitals and airstrips not only through fund raising, but through hard physical work. In a sense he found a place where he really belonged and where he was loved.

Ed Hillary's own books suffer somewhat because his story has been too often repeated. How many times has he been asked to describe the feat of scaling Everest? Over the years the story has been worn through familiarity and its power eroded - and his own writing has shown not only this natural erosion, but has also revealed his own taciturn unwillingness to discuss himself in depth.

In this volume however, Johnston performs a wonderful job in capturing the heart of the man, and the glory of his personal journey. His commitment to the people of Nepal is an inspiration that has helped fire many others including fellow mountaieer Greg Mortenson Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time.

Many of our world heroes, I'm thinking of Gagarin, or of Neil Armstrong, largely withdrew from public life. Hillary, perhaps because of his personal self-doubt kept trying to conquer his own sense of inadequacy, and as a result became an accessible soul who will continue to inspire.

This book is, in my view, the best of the Hillary books available.

I was disappointed that the first 52 chapters reviewed and repeated what he had written in Trinity. I should have started at chapter 53. I was determined to get through both books and I did. I have read almost all of Uris' books and want to read them all. bb

The 200 or so pages in this novel that Leon Uris devotes to the battle of Gallipoli Peninsula in WWI are very well-written and extremely interesting. I have to wonder if Uris originally planned to write an entire book about Gallipoli but didn't have the energy left in his old age. He knew he'd make a pile of money with a sequel to his popular book "Trinity" so he stuck the Gallipoli story into the sequel.
The first 300 pages of this book are a rehash of Trinity and I skimmed over them very quickly. The parts after Gallipoli are mildly interesting but not worth spending a lot of time on.

I read this book quite awhile ago, and picked it up agin to skim through. This is a wonderful epic saga of the Larkin family. It spreads across about 25 years, and frrom Ireland, to New Zealand to Australia to Egypt. It also encompasses the First World War. We also see a young Winston Churchill who can almost single-handedly be blamed for the Gallipoli fiasco. This is a book that takes you by the throat and won't let go until you turn the final page. I think it is a true classic and is a fitting finish to the also truly wonderful "Trinity".

My only regret with this book is that I think I read it out of order. I believe that Trinity was the first of a two part story. But even by itself it stands as a really compelling story. I wasn't prepared for the places it would take me. It was surprising but nice to be transported to New Zealand. And the story of a very bloody battle (Gallipoli) which I had no previous idea of. I first thought that Leon Uris would only be an author of middle east books (having read Exodous and The Haj). But it was a pleasant surprise to find he is a master story teller.

Trinity was based upon Uris's Irish experiences. While living in Dublin, he had written a photo-essay entitled Ireland, a Terrible Beauty. Trinity was a chronicle of a Northern Irish farm family from the 1840s to 1916, whose fate is connected with two other families, one representing the British aristocracy and the other coming from Scotland. The central characters are a young Catholic rebel and a Protestant girl, who try to find their own place in the country divided by religion and wealth. The story of the Larkin family continued in The Redemption. In these works Uris developed further one of his central themes, the restorative capacity of love and forgiving. Also the situation in the Northern Ireland, from Ireland to New Zealand, Egypt, and Gallipoli.

This book was typically written by a non-historian, a biased anti-Serb trying to portray a non-factual and non-historically backed truth.

Genocide comitted by Serbs? You got to be kidding!

Mr. Anzulovic, here is a topic for you to cover: the infamous concentration camps on WW2:"Jasenovac" in Croatia, that even shocked the Nazis for its gruesomeness.

The roots of the 1990's war in the Balkans lie in 'Jasenovac' Death Camp.

Jasenovac Death Camp is the place where an estimated one million civilians (majority women and children) were brutaly tortured and murdered just for being non-Nazi and non-Croatian.
This was a legacy of the Nazi-puppet State created in 1941, called 'Independent State of Croatia' governed by the so called Ustashe, dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by Nazism and extreme Roman Catholic fanaticism.

This rampage of racial GENOCIDE began in August 1941 and lasted 'till April 1945, when the camp was liberated.

More than 60 years later the existance of this infamous camp and the horrifying crimes committed there are still being overlooked, denied and suppressed throughout the world.

Hopefully, not for long.

For more info, please see:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-9841842-1853711?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Jasenovac
http://www.jasenovac.org
http://www.pavelicpapers.com/
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/jasenovac/
http://www.balkan-archive.org.yu/kosta/jasenovac/

Again, 60 years later, the same Nationalistic Party called NDH (a.k.a Independent State of Croatia) comes to power in Croatia and reignites the old genocidal aspirations which were an overture to the 1990's conflict in the Balkans.

So, Mr. Anzulovic get your facts straight.

For all the true historians out there, above is a bit of factual literature.

Lest we forget, JASENOVAC !

Regards,
John Fletcher

Anzulovic's book is well written and researched. I have studied this region of the world in-depth. However, when reading this book it is important for the reader to understand that Anzulovic is exploring the Serb side of events, and what lead the Serbs to commit the atrocities they committed during the 1990s. During the Balkan Wars, all sides committed atrocities and war crimes and one needs to explore the wars from all sides, and come to his or her own fact based conclusion.

Anzulovic's Heavenly Serbia is a great resource for students of the Balkans and the Yugoslav wars. It is also a good read for those with a general interest in the Balkans. The book is well written and well researched.

Strengths
Anzulovic sets out to explain how the myth of Heavenly Serbia has set the stage for the genocidal wars of the 1990s. He manages to do that very well in this book. He uses historical documents to prove that the myth was initially not a popular myth at all, but a church version of what had happened at the Battle of Kosovo in 1989. Further, he shows how the narrative spread among the population through the singing bards. Then, Anzulovic explains how the myth was used in the 19th and 20th centuries to justify Serbian megalomaniac ambitions. An, intriguing part of the book is the section where the author talks about how international circles had accepted the myth thus giving legitimacy to both the Serbian territorial ambitions and the genocidal campaigns.

Weaknesses
One weakness of the book is that Anzulovic often becomes repetitive. Also, one could argue that the author draws from too few sources when trying to prove his hypothesis. He relies a lot on Njegos's The Mountain Wreath to argue that the idea of eliminating entire ethnic groups to create a compact Serbian state was accepted widely. However, the content of one Serbian book is not as significant as the popularity of that book,. And, Anzulovic mentions the popularity of this and other similar books (Noz) to argue that the Serbian intellectuals were in fact promoting the myth Serbian victimization and calling for `revenge.'

In conclusion, Heavenly Serbia is an indispensable book for those who seek to understand the wars of 1990s in the Balkans. And, not only those but, also, previous wars of the 19th and 20th century in the Balkans which in fact were prequels to the 1990s, as this book implies.

This book explains why the Serbs did the genocides of the 1990s.
The author explains how the Serbs came to feel like victims and performed some of the worst attrocities of the after Cold War era. I think some of the explanations have great value to how we understand these troubled people.

1.) Serbs viewed themselves as the bulwark against the East and the Turks. As the author vividly demonstrates, the Serbs were more often the allies of the Turks in the invasion of Europe than adversaries. The Serbs often allied themselves with the Turks against other Christian peoples like the Bulgars.
2.) Serbs glorified the use of violence against their enemies. Their most valued weapon was the knife. Glorification still takes place in modern novels and the Serbs are always the good guys.
3.) The Orthodox religion is tied so closely to the state that it is nor an effective opposition to the bloody policies of the police state. In fact, the Orthodox Church often condones and revels in the attrocities against the other religions.

This is an interesting read for the academic reader. It serves as one theory of why the Serbs did what they did in the 1990s. I am not sure if the author has an ax to grind with the Serbs, but the justification for what he says is in the book. A nice read.

This is a book about the history of Serbian nationalism and xenophobia. The author gives a quite brief treatment of early Serbian history then goes into, as all such accounts seem to, the famous 1389 Battle of Kosovo. But he gives more detail than similar accounts, discussing the medieval sagas of the battle in detail and showing how the legend that was built around it was modeled on legends relating to the temptation and crucifixion of Christ. He also takes pains to refute another Serbian myth, that the Serbs, while losing their own independence, saved Europe from the Ottomans. In fact, as he demonstrates, the weakened Serb state after 1389 was a Turkish ally and helped the Ottomans move into Europe.

There is much more, discussing the more recent history of Serbia, the role of the Serbian Orthodox church, and the rise of modern Serbian nationalism as the Ottoman Empire collapsed. We find extensive discussion of such figures as Petar Njegos, the 19th Century Montenegrin patriarch whose epic "The Mountain Wreath" was one of the first landmarks of modern Serbian literature, and Bishop Velimirovic, a notoriously anti-Semitic theologian of the 20th Century, who, shortly after this book was published, was named a Saint by the Serbian church. Disinctions within the Serbian community, between Serbia proper, Montenegro, and Vojvodina, as well as tensions between rural and urban Serbs, are also discussed with historical context.

This book is written with a plain pro-Croatian and anti-Serbian bias, and the reader should be aware of that and properly cautious about many of the conclusions. Still, it has the virtue of packing a great deal of material into a package that is rather brief (not much over 200 pages) and easily accessible. The useful material on many subjects that aren't easily available in such accessible English language sources earns this book a high rating, in spite of the clear biases.

Your rating system should allow for no stars. I would not purchase from this seller again.

The best thing that can be said about this modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast is that it is entertaining. the worst is that it is inconsistant. Overall Wilson did a nice job of creating her characters. We know from the begining who will wind up with whome but there's a certain pleasure in watching that happen. I liked that the greatest challenge was not in the "beauty" character loving the "beast" character, but rather in him allowing himself to accept that love and believe himself worthy of it

***spoilers ahead***

A lot has been said about this book's ending and I feel that that's where it really falls short. I don't object to an unhappy ending if it serves some purpose or works in the context of the story. My problem here is that Wilson seemed to add a sad epilogue in order to avoid the "happily ever after" found in fairy tales, which makes little sense because that's exactly what this is. This ending simply feels tacked on after the "real" ending

I began reading romance novels because I liked happy endings, but this book will always be on the top shelf for me. The characters were sweet, but not unbeleivably sweet. They made mistakes and paid for them. Many romance novels. Too many romance novels' heros and heroines make mistakes but never pay for them; the Fates in those books are kind indeed, for everything always turns out perfect. I enjoyed this book despite its sadness, and perhaps because of it. I believe that anyone who has had a broken heart will be able to identify.

The novel was so good. I thought the characters were a bit shallow including the heroine Alix, she was with a very shallow man for the longest time, she would think to herself what a jerk he was and then she would just hop into bed with him. I thought Leland was adorable although the people with his disease disliked the novel and the way the disease was portrayed I thought Leland was kind and sweet. A little more could have been said and researched about Leland's desease instead of the reader just hearing about how ugly and reclusive it made him. The friendship and love between Alix and Leland was beautiful but the author could of at least let us see them consumate that love. The novel was great, I was so happy when they finally got together and then the last 13 pages it was like someone else had started writing. It was very stilted with little emotion and it made absolutely no sense to end the novel that way. Just because it is a modern update doesn't mean that the ending has to be all depressing, if it were really modern, modern medicine would have saved that ridiculous ending. If you want to read a beutiful love story then you should read this book but when they finally get together, close the book and just make believe they lived happily ever after.

I listened to the auduiobook recording of Susan Wilsons book Beauty and I liked it. It is sort of based on The Beauty and The Beast Story but is about a beautiful woman named Alix falling in love with a man named Lee who's face has been disfigured by a disease and I think that Lee is a very inspirational character and I found his and Alix's love story very touching and yes the ending was very sad but I sill liked this book. I just found out recently that this was turned into a movie, I was was watching something on Lifetime Television and a commercial came on for the movie that is based on this book and I was like oh, my gosh, I have to set my VCR timer and tape it, which I did. I haven't watched the movie yet but it stars Janine Turner from Northern Exposure as Alix and Jamey Sheridan from Law and Order: Criminal Intent as Lee and also Hal Holbrook from Designing Woman as Alix's father. I haven't watched the whole movie yet but I did see the ending and they left out the sad ending from this book!

I liked this book. It is well researched about the background of Alexander Selkirk which is important to know for understanding his marooning, the ship board life of sailors and the life of privateers. I don't know of a better book that conveys a sense of the sailor's life then. The last thing I would want to spend a lot of time reading is Selkirk's diary of spending his days creating goatskin clothes, creating his hatchets and knives and hammers, chasing goats.

The nitty gritty of his actions covered a great deal of his time since he had no on-island adversaries. In contrast the arguments over the privateers' booty and discontent by the sailors with their share, the mumblings against the officers give a real sense of shipboard life.

Then the rush by the "scribbners" to cash in on Selkirk's experiences shows that greediness was not different than it is today in book writing. Her story also draws in some background on Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift is also a character in this story.

It is not a complicated story to read. I ended up having great sympathy with the salor's lot in the 1700's.

I would have liked to see more pictures of the Island, and a contemporary map of the Island in relation to Chile and the other ports discussed.

Jim

This book I'd rate below average. Its really just a mess of conjecture. Although, to be fair, since Selkirk didn't keep journals, that really is all the author had to go on. I was disappointed by the lack of information regarding Selkirk's four years on the island. When it came down to it, we really only had less than a chapter that dealt with those years. Also, I read this book after having read Mike Dash's incredible effort, Batavia's Graveyard. If you're reading this review, I'd like to point you to that book instead. Dash truly is an inspired writer. Batavia is a gem. This book...not so much. Honestly, the only real reason I gave it two stars and finished it was because I paid for it. This book was better off out of print. Boo.

While Souhami does an admirable job describing what life MAY have been like for Selkirk, it is mostly conjecture, as Selkirk left no journal behind to document his life on the island. Instead, most of the book is about Selkirk's voyages at sea, including his quest for riches with the famous buccaneer William Dampier. Souhami also spends some time reviewing the major works of literature emanating from Selkirk's travails, but her discussion of them adds little to our understanding of Selkirk's experiences after he was rescued. In the end, we know very little about Selkirk's days marooned, and even less about their effects on the rest of his life.

Souhami's book is awful for the simple fact that she bases so much of Selkirk's actions on his sexual appetite for goats. This may be true, however Souhami bases this gross assertion on the anecdote of one unnamed islander. Forget Selkirk's own testimony. Forget the fact that Defoe's interviews with Selkirk led to a powerful story of an individual wrestling with the providence of God. Forget that when Selkirk lived the idea of throwing off the shackles of moral convention wasn't part of the common individuals frame of reference. No,instead Souhami is clear in her conviction that Selkirk's whole being was centered on a randiness for goats. Unfortunately this leads Souhami to defend this outrageous claim throughout the rest of the book. Defoe, closer to the source, was inspired to write a story that captured the dynamic and driving spirit of Western cultural achievement(Not that it always benefitted everyone). Souhami instead jams a narrow modern interpretation on a classic and we're left with one of the least inspiring tales ever fabricated.

This book appears to be a biography of Alexander Selkirk, but is actually a well-researched historical novel. The author knows her sources. There are many footnotes, quotes, and factual details. You want to believe she had some way of knowing the intimate details she supplies--how people saw their situations, what their motives were, and the vivid details of their experiences that bring the story to life. After all, historical sources sometimes provide such background, and in this case we do have some sources for Selkirk's thoughts, feelings and experiences. Soon enough, however, one sees that Souhami has simply assumed the authorial omniscience of a novelist. She states as plain fact many things that she could not possibly know, including things that only Alexander Selkirk could have known and that he would not likely have revealed.

After she tells how Selkirk masturbated against palm trees while he was marooned on the island, a serious reader continues to read only to see how far she will go. At the same time it is interesting to note how she painstakingly documents some details that are not especially interesting--perhaps this is a tactic to make the book seem more like a solid historical narrative.

Her most imaginative invention is Mr. Selkirk's having sex with wild goats on the island. We do know, from his own account, that he ran down goats for sport and food, and either killed them to eat, or else notched their ears and released them. We do not know that he indulged in any other kind of sport with them. Certainly Selkirk had an abnormal capacity for violence and survived in a pirate culture that was a home for the most dysfunctional dregs of humanity. He could have been guilty of screwing goats or even kinkier things. But there is no way to know. Ms. Souhami only provides a footnote in support, implying that a present-day native of the island gave her the idea: "It is always that way with men who are alone," he tells her. Selkirk's sex with goats is not just a passing conjecture. It is a theme to which the author returns, to encapsulate Selkirk's life on the island, and to portray his attitude towards women.

I enjoyed her discussion of the myth-making that followed Selkirk's life, especially the few pages where she analyzes the public appeal of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe fantasy, which was based on Selkirk's adventures as a castaway. But she has invented another myth--one that is likely to last. In other reviews here you'll see that some readers uncritically believe her tale.

This book received the Whitbread award, in the category of biography. That was a big mistake, unless history is now to be done the way Hollywood does it. Much effort went into this book, some talent, and a commendable concern for the preservation of habitat on Selkirk's island, but no professional ethic regarding the responsibilities of historians. We'll never know whether Selkirk screwed goats, but we do know that Souhami screwed this story.

Well well well, I fully expected to find a five star reader rating here. I guess I forgot that these types of different, forward-thinking books polarize people so much. I too have seen Aboriginals in Northern Arnhem Land as well as in the pub in Katherine, and I am sure that many Americans have seen drunken Indians wandering zig-zagged down the side of the road. We can all see what have become of these cultures since being raped, pillaged and tempted by European settlers. They stood not a chance - even the Aboriginal communities that did not want any "aid" from the Australian government were forced to take it - and became addicted to refined wheat, sugar and a new 'easy' way of life. Talk about the Sirens' calling sailors to their deaths. Alcohol has had the most devastating affect on their lives of all our influences. It is interesting to note that kava is strictly illegal in Australia: This is a easily grown root that can be crushed and drunk to produce a mellow high, and does not induce the same ill-effects to Aborigines as alcohol.

Anyways, Lawlor talks of pre-contact Aboriginal culture. If he wanted to do a book on post-contact culture, derrrrr, it would be a different book.

The book that he has written is packed with insight and the information provided within is the sort of stuff that could change your life if you just stay open to it. You may not agree with all of it but it doesn't make the rest a lot of baloney. I have just finished reading it a second time and there is just soooo much to this book. Yes it has been compared with Mutant Message (which I didn't like at all) but this is the real deal. I don't want to be too effusive but it has changed the way I perceive the world on a daily basis.

To all the nay-sayers: there must have been something in that culture to have not self-imploded after tens of thousands of years. It is always hard to loosen the grip on a static world view that we have held onto so tightly - even when it is increasingly obvious that it no longer works.

To realize that all we think we know is in truth metaphor; to conceive of the lovely, intimate metaphor that we are one of infinitely varied, harmonic vibrations emanating from an earth that in turn emanates the Divine; to live this way. What a gift this book is!

Now this is a book i would recommend:
Yorro Yorro: Aboriginal Creation and the Renewal of Nature : Rock Paintings and Stories from the Australian Kimberley by David Mowaljarlai and Jutta Malnic (Paperback - Sep 1993)

I have had my copy for thirteen years now, and, since the first time I read it, I have called it my Bible. This book has helped me to summon up lost teachings of my own souls journey, and has helped me to find my truth.
As far as the people who gave it poor reviews, I guess they don't connect to the true, raw wisdom that Lawlor has to offer.

I bought this book not long after it was first published in 1991. I was attracted to the book because the form and binding looked good and I didn't have any books about Australian Aborigines yet. As far as appearances go, the book looks great. Nice division in chapters, wonderful illustrations.
OK, now it gets tricky because I am going to review the contents. The author is indeed a person that can write. However the book is filled with well formulated sentences as "The landscape of Aboriginal Australia mirrored a living organism" that are vague in the extreme. The author makes a division in that everything about the Aborigines (where traditionally girls are raped at age 14) is good and everything about Western society is bad. This division might be ok in a cowboy movie, but that doesn't prevent Lawlor drawing heavily on the evil sciences of the West.
Lawlor idolizes the civilisation of Ancient Egypt and connects Aboriginal myth with theories about magnetic forces. This is done in with sentences like "Indigenous people believe..." and "some scientists have recently found evidence..." that must draw the reader into his stream of thoughts. My biggest problem is that the author is making assumptions on behalf of the Aborigines to which the working of Magnetic forces is completely foreign. The author suggests that a uniform culture existed among the natives (something I doubt is true) and refrains from telling the sad story of their history since Australia's discovery.
After reading through 391 pages the reader is left with little concrete information about the Australian Aborigines, some interesting viewpoints, and a lot of information about the earth's magnetism, Carl Jung, etc.
My conclusion is that this book falls short of its mark. It's more about the Dreaming of the author than the Dreaming of the Aborigines.

As travel adventure this is a walk in the park. Really light stuff. So, why the four stars? What the reader runs in to, is the plight of the indigenous people, caught up in a free market of evangelicals and their "products." There must be some law against committing cultural genocide. The native people appear to be lost in their own land, drowning in an alien culture.

I am no native English speaker, but I spent some time in New Guinea. And I know that there are no emus in New Guinea, but cassowaries. Apart from that, a rather good account of contemporary New Guinea, although too superficial for my taste.

This was a great book, it read like a novel. It was fascinating and honest, Edward Marriott weaves a mystical story of the indigenous tribespeople of New Guinea, the Liawep. It at times seems too fantastic to be true, but the amazing thing about it is, that it is true. I hope he will write a follow up if he ever goes back! He's a great writer, never lingering too long on any episode, just enough to keep the reader interested. I read a lot of non-fiction and I must say that I recommend this one highly! An amazing book!

From the very start of the book, this author has gone out of his way to slam the missionaries working in Papua New Guinea. In doing so, he has thrown out some "facts", startling mostly in their complete inaccuracy. For the record, the Summer Institute of Linguistics does NOT forbid all books but the Bible; there are no books. The whole point is that they are working to create a written language where one did not previously exist. There ARE no written texts in the languages with which SIL work.

Given that I spent 8 years in Papua New Guinea growing up, reading this book is painful. The author's interpretations of cultural mores are naive at best, intolerably patronising at worst. When one of his contacts balks at the prospect of getting into a PMV (not a "minivan", Mr Marriott) on payday Friday, the tone of the narrative is ever-so-slightly scathing, as if he can't believe this person is afraid of a few noble savages. As a former resident, I can assure you that payday Friday was the day each fortnight when violence and drunkenness were endemic, and no Westerner or female of any persuasion would voluntarily put themselves in any sort of vulnerable position on that night.

There is a clear overtone of life being viewed and interpreted through a certain ?cultural? ?moral? ?anti-religious? filter; while the events the author describes may well have actually happened, his interpretation of their meaning leaves much to be desired.

I am slightly horrified to see that the author has written several other "my true tales of adventure" type of books set in Nicaragua and other places, and I can only imagine what sorts of nonsense those contain.

This was an author I had hoped would deliver something that many travel-writers don't - a sense of the freedom and anguish of the way we once lived, portrayed through the experiences of the living. In review, he largely managed this. But I still felt strangely unsatisfied when finishing the book. A feeling that emerges from the fact that you leave the story without actually knowing all that much about the tribe. You see, in truth this book is more about a series of events along a storyline than an expose of a 'lost' tribe. Of course this has much to do with his difficulties in communicating with the tribe, but nevertheless it is a shame.

I did though feel that this story highlights the gulf still existing in the world across the spectrum of human cultures. It is for the reader to decide (or not) the value in maintaining or trying to close such a gulf, and for whose benefit - ours or theirs. For example, the impact of western religion on such tribes is shown in the book to be thoughtless and combattant in the way it is taught. Perhaps to be expected in the 18th or 19th century, but quite disturbing when it is in the present day.

In conclusion, I think Marriot has done the Liawep justice with this story, but the damage he did during the course of his stay will probably haunt him and the Liawep for many years to come.

The Evil Friendship (1954) was the first book about this case, written by VIN PACKER. It will be reissued by Stark Press in 2006. This book came many years after, but it is a fair read, just as Heavenly Creatures was okay. Marijane Meaker

It would be unfair to expect this book to react to Peter Jackson's film "Heavenly Creatures," inasmuch as it was written before the film was made. As a companion piece to the film, however, it fleshes out the New Zealand of the 1950's and gives the murder a societal context. Unfortunately I found it difficult to be engaged by the book's distance from its subjects; Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme seem rather remote from the author's concerns, and the focus falls rather on the case's impact on contemporary and later lesbian politics and individuals. While I have no particular quarrel with the authors' politics, the title would suggest a closer examination of the girls themselves. In particular I question the authors' decision not to attempt to contact the grown-up Parker and Hulme for some comment. All in all, although this book places the events in context, it fails to illuminate the girls themselves.

Okay, this book, as the other reviews have stated, is interesting in it's description of what followed the murder of Honora Parker. Heavenly Creatures left us with so many unanswered questions. Unfortuantely, while intersting in parts, most of the book is pretty superficial, pretending to delve into the history and psyche of Pauline and Juliet when it is actually a rather lazy analysis which only scratches the surface. The chapter which supposedly gives serious, important information from Pauline's diary to prove she's not "mad" or "bad" made me crack up...about 2 pages of continuous 1 or 2 line excerpts describing the housework Pauline helped her mother with. And that was it. That was the whole of the "analysis" of the diary. Washing dishes for her mum. What in the hell is this supposed to prove? All in all, a dissappointment, but interesting for the account of events after the murder and the (few) photographs.

So far, this is the only book I have been able to find on the Parker-Hulme matricide case. I normally wouldn't read a book about lesbians, and I thought lesbianism figured very little in the movie, but I didn't find it distracting here in the book, it didn't take away from the facts of the story. There are loads of details here that aren't in the movie, but I agree with others: why hasn't this been written about before, and especially now since Hulme is known to be the mystery writer Anne Perry? All in all, a very good book, and I read a lot of true crime!

This is to my knowledge the only book out there exclusively about the Parker/Hulme case.Its a little shocking that another book hasn't been written about such a well known murder case, and in light of the fact that Juliet Hulme is now known to be Anne Perry,the famous mystery writer.I do agree that the lesbian angle was focused on a bit too much, even though that is a big part of the book.But it gives a lot of info about the case I hadn't heard before and a pretty clear picture of what happened.If anybody wants to know more about the story behind "Heavenly Creatures", read this book.

Sue Reidy came up with an interesting premise for this novel, but only partially delivered on its potential. The story revolves around the Catholic sisters Catherine and Theresa, in a strict and dogmatic household in the New Zealand of the 1960s. These offbeat sisters are obsessed with female saints and martyrs, and receive a visit from the Virgin Mary herself. The Mother of God in their vision apparently wishes to promote women's liberation and to push along the inexorable changes taking place in the Catholic church of the time. At this point the novel shows real promise as a satirical critique on the strictest tenets of Catholicism and its treatment of women. But disappointingly, the second half of the novel drifts badly from its Virgin Mary-oriented possibilities, becoming a fairly standard (though racy) coming-of-age tale as the sisters discover themselves and rebel against their tyrannical father. This story will probably resonate most with young women from Catholic backgrounds who skeptically question their church's attitudes toward sexuality and women's rights. But any reader will probably conclude that much of the story's deeper potential is wasted as unique characters grow up just like everyone else does. [~doomsdayer520~]

Reidy had a rather charming idea for a book: two "tween" girls are totally hepped up on the suffering of female saints. So hepped up that they finally have a vision of Mary themselves. Mary delivers a message that birth control is okay.

There were a lot of interesting places Reidy could have taken this, like a modern, New Zealandish Song of Bernadette retelling. However, the whole Mary visitation plot is quickly forgotten, making an 11th hour reappearance at book's end. The narrative collapses around a standard tale of two girls fighting against a controlling, intolerant father, unable to accept his daughters are blooming into sexually active women. You begin to wonder if you're still reading the same book.

The daughters vs their father plot is well told, but you do feel like the books a bit of a literary bait and switch. We were promised a tender, quirky, religious satire but we got a heartbreaking work of staggering standardness.

What's it like growing up poor and Catholic in New Zealand in the 1960s? Meet the Flynn sisters, Catherine and Theresa. Their childhood games consist mostly of re-enacting the lives of martyrs and saints, torturing themselves before an audience of their numerous siblings, with the Baby occasionally projectile-vomiting to add color to their already grisly pretend play. Things get pretty surreal when one of the little girls has a nun habit made and starts wearing it every day in preparation for a life in God's service.

One day, the Flynn sisters receive a visit from the Virgin Mary, who manifests herself above the lemon tree in the backyard. The manifestation puts in the girls' trust a letter for the Pope. It is insinuated in the story that the letter is one advocating birth control and family planning. The young sisters hand the letter to their parents, and their conservative father doctors the letter before handing it to the religious authorities to make it appear as though the letter confirms and approves the status quo; i.e. religious prohibition against birth control.

That is not all there is to the story. Surreal though the plot may sound so far, Reidy's prose is down-to-earth, warm and full of feeling. The girls grow up, meet many people with different points of view, experience sexual awakening, learn to stand up against their parents and their patriarchal values and learn what it is to be a woman and an individual.

Although this book raises what some may consider controversial issues, ideas are presented in a wholesome, non-offensive manner that is sure to endear itself to its readers.

Recommended reading to anyone who enjoys a good story and appreciates objectivity and freedom of information.

This book was truly a treasure which I found on a clearence rack. This novel gives an account of the relaxing of the Catholic Church which took place in the 1960's through the lives of two young girls. At the same time, hilarious and haunting, this story is a must read for anyone who grew up in a Catholic home.

This book was a thoroughly enjoyable, if disturbing, portrait of women's lives in Catholicism during the 1960s, a.k.a. last days of the church's unquestioned sovereignty in the lives of faithful Catholics. I found it to be very readable; in fact, I read it straight through, and went back for a re-read. The ending, far from being disappointing, was perfect: Instead of dispensing a Quick Fix From On High (much as we might wish one), the BVM inspired the girls, and all women, to look to themselves, discover their own power, become agents of their own lives who can take action to change their world. And if the final scene is a bit "too good to be true," well, hey, this IS a fairy tale, of sorts. ;-) Recommended, if for no other reason than to remind us what it used to be like, and to motivate us to hold firm and see to it that we never go back to the bad old days when women's bodies were not their own.