Feilding Public Library

Artwork by Sarah Platt

Book Reviews by our Library Staff

Rocks In The Belly - by Jon Bauer

Rocks in the Belly tells the story of an eight-year-old boy and how his childhood shaped him to the 28 year old man he became. His mother fosters boys, despite the problems it causes for her own son. His jealousy reaches unmanageable proportions when she fosters Robert, a child she can't help bonding with. As the relationship grows, the son's envy triggers an event that profoundly changes everyone. Especially Robert.

Still haunted by his childhood, the son returns to face his mother, who is now terminally ill. Now it is the son that has the power. He is the dominant one and his mother is dependant on him. It is a power he can't help but abuse.

Written in two voices, Rocks in the Belly is about the destruction we cause one another in the simple pursuit of our own happiness, and a reminder that we never really can leave our childhood behind. A fast-paced, powerful, yet often beautiful and funny first novel.

That Bird Has My Wings - by Jarvis Jay Masters

Jarvis Jay Masters has been on death row since 1981 – he was then 19 years old.

His mother was a heroin addict, and Jarvis was moved from foster home to foster home and then to boys’ homes where he escaped and lived on the streets.

I think he was born a victim. Born in to the wrong family, wrong circumstances, wrong friends, wrong choices - but all the time his heart seemed to be some where else.

In prison Jarvis became a Buddhist and has come to discover who he is and what made him who he is. It is not a pleading innocence kind of book but one about liberation of his past and hope. It is also a plea for young people not to go down the same path as him.

The Red Garden - by Alice Hoffman

This is the story of a small town called Blackwell in Massachusetts and the people who have lived, died and mysteriously disappeared from there.

Each chapter takes on new characters beginning with the town's founder, a young woman from England who has no fear of blizzards or bears, to the more recent era where a poet falls in love with a blind man. In common with all these lives is a garden where only red plants can grow.

This book could be described as a little odd, but then, Alice Hoffman does write slightly odd books. I like them because they always have an element of magic in them and are so different to the novels of most other writers.

The Boy From Baby House 10 - by Alan Philips and John Lahutsky

This is the story of a Russian child Vanya, born prematurely with cerebral palsy. He was sent to an orphanage where he spent 24 hours a day tied to a cot. He was starved and deprived of any kind of mental stimulation. He was classed as an imbecile, yet he was very bright. No matter what Vanya went through his spirit was unique and he touched the lives of everyone around him. Eventually someone from USA would become his family and his story inspired people to fight against the cruelty of the Soviet system.

The Larnachs - by Owen Marshall

William Larnach's life was the stuff of Shakespearian tragedy. A proud, self made man, Larnach was a government minister, banker and speculator who enjoyed his role of local laird in the Dunedin community. His house was a self aggrandising monstrosity built with the finest imported materials by craftsmen brought in from Europe. When his financial dealings collapsed, he locked himself in a committee room in parliament buildings and shot himself. However, it seems likely that not only financial ruin drove Larnach to kill himself. His third wife Constance was having an affair with his son Douglas.

Owen Marshall seems an unlikely candidate to write a novel whose storyline is worthy of cheap fiction. That he brings it off is a testament to his virtuosity as a writer. The plot unfolds in alternating chapters, each told from Conny and Douglas’ viewpoints. There are no villains here, simply people who believe – as all lovers do – that what they are doing is right and true and that if they are discreet no one need get hurt. In this they are like many of Marshall’s characters – neither good nor bad, but simply human. In his short story Thinking about Bagheera, the narrator concludes that "we all give love at our peril, I suppose." The Larnachs may have been Otago aristocracy but the lesson they learn is the oldest one in the book.

The Cut of Love - by Helena Close

This story evolves over one year. Jane's mum and dad never stop fighting. She wishes she couldn’t hear or see, but she does. There is only one thing that helps her cope. When Jane’s best friend Leah questions her about the criss-cross marks on her arms, Jane blames the cat. Leah knows that everyone has secrets. Even her. She never mentions her brother Jack. Sometimes it's like he never even existed. Alison, Leah’s mum, escapes into her dreams, where she becomes reunited with her dead son. It is less than a year since he was killed in an accident, for which she blames herself. The pain of it is often unbearable and Alison struggles to hold herself together. When Alison and Jane's dad, Dermot meet, it feels like they are kindred spirits. Darker conclusions lie in wait.

Many would be able to identify with the issues that unfold in this book.

The Night Following - by Morag Joss

A woman has just found out that her husband is having an affair. Moments later while driving along a windy road she hits a woman on a bike - and drives away. She retreats into shame and solitude. This is an exploration of loss and deception and how one moment can change things forever, a collision of fates. Beautifully written.

Play Dead - by Harlan Coben

Laura is a beautiful ex model and successful business woman. All is perfect until on her honeymoon her husband goes for a swim and does not return. His body is never found and the question is, did he drown or is he alive somewhere? Laura is plagued by doubts and questions and as events unfold she begins to uncover a conspiracy which destroys everyone involved. There is somebody who would do anything to keep Laura from revealing the truth and she can no longer trust anyone anymore.

The book seems quite predictable but there is a surprising twist at the end.

Without Mercy - by Lisa Jackson

Shay is a troubled teenager who was sent to an elite boarding school called Blue Rock Academy. The school has the reputation for turning wayward kids around. A student had gone missing from the school a few months earlier and her body has never been found. Shay becomes fearful and feels as if her every move is being watched. More kids die and Shay pleads with her older sister to get her out. Her sister, Jules, applies for a teaching job at the academy and becomes convinced that something sinister is going on. Jules becomes the target for the killer. This book keeps you in suspense and when you think you have it all figured out there is a great twist at the end.

Caught - by Harlan Coben

Seventeen year old Haley has disappeared and after 3 months everyone assumes the worst. Wendy Tynes is a reporter who makes it her mission to bring down paedophiles. Dan Mercer is a social worker who is known to befriend troubled teens and he is a suspect in the disappearance of Haley. This is the story of people in the community and their reaction to loss, the man who may have taken her and the reporter who soon realises that there is more to this story than she bargained for.

Harlan Coben has written many thrillers and this one hooks you in until the end.

A World Without Islam - by Graham E Fuller

A remarkable book, even more so because its author was a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA. Fuller is an expert on the Muslim World and argues that while many of today’s conflicts might be supported by Islamic nations, Islam itself is not the source of the problem. To illustrate this he analyses the history of the West’s relationships with Islam and concludes that a world without Islam might face similar conflicts to those it does today.

Pray for Silence - by Linda Castillo

This book is every bit as good as Linda Castillo’s first book, “Sworn to Silence”. Once again set in the Amish Community where Kate Burjholder grew up. An Amish family is murdered in a shocking, brutal way. Investigating this case brings back memories to Kate of her own past and it makes her all the more determined to find the killer of the Plank Family. She enlists on help of Tomasetti, who we meet in the first book. He has problems of his own too. This book is a graphic portrayal of violence and not really for the faint-hearted. Toward the end you wonder if these two wounded people can ever be whole again.

I am looking forward to seeing if Linda Castillo will write a third book including Kate and Tomasetti.

The Things That Keep Us Here - by Carla Buckley

Panic has gripped America. A killer virus is moving across the world killing almost everybody. Society grinds to a halt and families must isolate themselves if they have any hope of survival.

Ann and her two daughters have to fight the cold and dark, food and water shortages, and even against their neighbours if they’re are to survive.

Perhaps this could be us one day... What choices would we be forced to make, how tight would we be prepared to make ourselves, how would we react to such a deadly threat?

Anzacs in Arkhangel - by Michael Challinger

An unknown chapter in ANZAC military history.

In the closing months of the Great War, Britain set up an expeditionary force to topple the newly established Bolshevik regime in Russia. The force included a number of Australians and a handful of New Zealanders. The enterprise was a failure. Like so many invasions of Russia, the troops were completely unprepared for the conditions. Unlike the static warfare of the Western Front, the Russian campaign was fought over great distances with railways playing an important role inth strategy of both sides. Allied troops withdrew in September 1919.

A fascinating insight into a forgotten war.

Secrets of Eden - by Chris Bohjalian

The book opens with a murder suicide. An abusive husband has murdered has wife and turned the gun on himself. The aftermath of this is told by four people closest to the event. The pastor who was close to Alice, the murdered woman. Heather, a spiritual writer who feels drawn because she can identify with Kate, the daughter of the couple killed. The local town prosecutor who believes it was not suicide at all, and Kate, the only child who witnessed abuse.

People are not what the seem... sometimes there are secrets and hidden complexities that mark different people’s lives.

A great read and a good twist at the end.

The Sixties - by Jenny Diski

Jenny Diski looks beyond Beatles’ lyrics and free love to suggest that the legacy of the nineteen sixties is not what we imagine. She has excellent credentials; she lived in London during the sixties and marched against the bomb, took drugs, indulged in free sex “because it seemed rude not to” and was involved in ‘alternative education’. Most importantly, she has a writer’s capacity to observe, stand slightly to one side and take note of what’s going on.

Diski’s most uncomfortable insight is that the liberalism of the sixties led directly to the libertarianism of the eighties and nineties. On the surface this seems daft. How could Flower Power be at the root of Thatcherism and, in New Zealand, Rogernomics? However, it was sixties activists who enthroned individual needs as the highest good. “I do my thing and you do your thing” as Frederick Perls famously put it. Social mores were the enemy of the sovereign self and seen as stultifying and corrupt. A decade later, Margaret Thatcher declared that there was “no such thing as society”, that it was the individual’s job to look after him or herself. Freedom to starve may not have been what sixties idealists had in mind, but history is full of similar incongruities. Russian socialists did not envisage Stalin and the gulags.

Diski teases out sixties attitudes with the cool eye of one who has been there and done that. “It is possible”, she concludes, “that we were simply young and now we are simply old and looking back as every generation does nostalgically to our best of times.”

The Lacuna - by Barbara Kingslover

Barbara Kingsolver packs this book full of history and adventure. The story begins on a remote island in Mexico where 12 year old Harrison Shepherd has been brought by his mother. The boy is a compulsive chronicler from the outset, and one of the few things his mother provides are the notebooks he craves. Through his recorded observations and later correspondence, the reader follows the unconventional life of Shepherd over two decades, from 1929 to 1949, from revolutionary Mexico to post World War II America. Without formal education, he learns of life first from the cook, and then from the streets. Kingsolver cleverly and credibly weaves his story together with that of famed artists, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

Shepherd enters their eccentric household as cook and secretary, and later serves the exiled Bolshevik leader, Leo Trotsky. Recording the events of his life in a curiously dispassionate way, Shepherd is portrayed as an unobserved bystander in his own life, always looking for the ‘lacuna’, the secret opening, leading to a tunnel which transports him from one set of circumstances to another.

A violent event finds him back in the USA during World War II, where he goes to ground until being again forced into the open with the success of his first novel. Shepherd is a man of words, of careful observation and meticulous records, but his words and unorthodox past are turned against him. Another lacuna opens, one that threatens to destroy him as he is sucked into the madness of post war anti-Russian America where public and political frenzy win out over truth and reason.

How To Paint Your Tractor - by Tharrian E. Gaines

Judging by the large numbers of vintage tractor displays at AMP shows these days, restoring classic farm machinery is popular in the Manawatu. This book concentrates mainly on spray painting, although there are also sections on sheet metal work and applying transfers along with plenty of illustrations of restored tractors.

The Once And Future Celt - by Bill Watkins

This book begins with the author sustaining a severe cut on his foot that is cured by a Gypsy healer and her niece, Riena. As he stays on at the camp, the Gypsies accept Bill as one of their own. He finds himself discovering many connections between the Romany traditions and those of the ancient Celts.

This is an intriguing book. Bill Watkins shares the knowledge of poetry, folk tales, folk music, and folk wisdom that he has gathered while travelling throughout Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and England. With poetry, song, philosophy and humour, Bill tells of the people he meets as he travels about. He returns home and finds it hard settling down and fitting in. It is not long before he leaves again on another journey, infused with the joy of being a Celt, a culture on the verge of a revival.

The Nature Of Ice - by Robyn Mundy

Freya has come to Antarctica on a photographic expedition to pay tribute to Frank Hurley who was an iconic photographer in the early1900s. She is also escaping a stuffy marriage. While she is in the cramped confines of Davis Station she finds her life changes in ways that she never thought possible. Weaving a re-creation of the ill-fated expeditition in 1914 of Douglas Mawson and the contemporary story , this novel is both an adventure story and a love story.

I liked this book very much as it captured the haunting landscape of a frozen world that seems to intrigue us all.

While My Sister Sleeps - by Barbara Delinsky

Robin Snow is a world-class runner. While out training she has a heart attack. Lack of oxygen leaves her brain-dead and on life support. When hope runs out, her family has to make the painful decision of when to pull the plug. Her mother Kathryn is devastated. She cannot accept the truth of Robin’s condition. Molly, Robin’s little sister, has grown up in her shadow and does not feel loved or noticed. As the family starts to disintegrate it is Molly who becomes Robin’s voice and steers her mother into being able to making a decision that no one should have to make. This novel isn’t only about the moral and ethical questions of life support, but also relationships and uncovered secrets.

Woodstock: Peace, Music and Memories - by Brad Littleproud and Joanne Hague

Whether or not you were among the half a million people at Woodstock, or if you wished you had been there, this book takes you back to the event Time magazine called “The Greatest Peaceful Event in History”. There are interviews with the performers, some of the people who worked there and people who attended the festival. Over 300 photos in scrap book style capture the times and spirit of the event. It’s a great book to browse through if you are interested in music,or if you are a baby boomer.

The Case For God - by Karen Armstrong

Don’t be put off by the title. This isn’t a book of Christian apologetics. Karen Armstrong looks at how the major faiths have conceived of God, and how this changed with the rise of scientific thinking. Before the Enlightenment, Christian theologians did not see science and religion as being in conflict. Science dealt with empirical truth, religion with symbolic truth and the conduct of life. The rise of science and in particular Darwin’s theory of evolution, led many Christians into the blind alley of trying to ‘prove’ the tenets of their faith and beat scientists at their own game. Fundamentalism is one of the results of this process and is, Armstrong tells us, a response to fear. Theology may not seem a likely subject for popular reading but this book defies the odds, being full of insights for believers and non-believers alike.

Karen Armstrong spent seven years as a nun in the 1960s and is currently a theologian and advocate for religious liberty.

Sworn to Silence - by Linda Castillo

Painters Mill is a rural Pennsylvanian town with a nearby Amish community. Sixteen years earlier a series of brutal murders shattered the community. At that time a young Amish girl, Kate, had left the Amish community and now she is back in her home town as Chief of Police. One night a girl is found murdered. A series of numbers is carved on her body, the same as the killer 16 years before had done to his victims. Only the killer is supposed to be dead... or is he? As Kate investigates the case, a secret that she has hidden for many years is about to be uncovered, and she realises that she could be the next victim. A new author and a gripping read.

Noah’s Compass - by Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler's novel tells the story of a year in the life of Liam Pennywell, a man in his 61st year. He has been ‘let go’ from his school teaching job and has just moved in to a new apartment. On his first night there,he goes to bed early and then wakes up in hospital. He has no idea of how or why he is there. Obsessed with the gap in his memory, he sets out to uncover what happened to him. He feels like a visitor in his life. He meets an unusual woman and after becoming good friends he finds she is hiding something. This is a novel about memory loss and relationships. It is about an unheroic survivor and is an often amusing, gentle read.

Been There, Read That! Stories for the Armchair Traveller - by Jean Anderson

These are stories written by writers from around the world, translated into English and published for the first time. A very varied selection of short stories.

The cover caught my eye, but the contents turned out to be much better than expected. The book was hard to keep open - it was new - but the contents made the effort well worth the effort. A number of stories that often seemed to be about situations I have experience or with which I could easily identify and sympathise with the situation. At the same time that were from a different cultural perspecative, and at other times educational. Always worth pausing to think at the end of the story, and better for not trying to read the book in less than about ten reading sessions. Certainly a book that deserves to be read.

The Billy Cart and Trolley Bible - by Glyn and Julian Bridgewater

Don’t worry about the American terminology: billy carts are those four wheeled contraptions we all built when we were kids, using scrap timber and the wheels from an old pushchair. If you’re called on to make one of these for your children, this book will show you how to build everything from a basic soapbox style cart to more sophisticated models with pedal and even lawn mower engine power. Great stuff.

The $21 Challenge - by Fiona Lippey and Jackie Gower

How to feed your family for $21 a week... Yes, it’s hard to imagine how you could do this without eating the cat but the authors say it can be done. Let’s put it this way - the average New Zealand family of four spends $320 a week on food. A fair proportion of this is goes to waste - leftovers which turn green in the fridge, meats running over their used by date in the freezer. Even if you can’t keep within $21, there’s enough good advice in this book to cut a decent sized amount from your food bill.

Promised Land: From Dunedin to the Dunstan Goldfields - by Grahame Sydney

Graham Sydney is best known for his landscape paintings of Central Otago. In this book he traces the early gold mining history of the area. For 21st century tourists, Otago is a unique landscape, popularised by the Central Otago Rail Trail and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. To 19th century miners it was ‘The Wasteland’. One prospector wrote: “I don’t think there’s such a miserable country on the face of the earth - if so, God help its inhabitants.”

This is an excellent book, well illustrated with early photographs as well as Sydney’s own.

Top Gear Daft Cars - by Matt Master

A collection of off the wall experimental vehicles. Some simply have silly names, such as the Citroen C-Cactus and the Tang Hua Book of Songs, an electric city car which looks like a prop from The Magic Roundabout. Others are simply badly designed, like the Aston Martin Lagonda saloon of 1976, which apart from being appallingly ugly, was stuffed with on-board computer gimmicking which didn’t work. Great fun to dip into if you like cars and have a warped sense of humour.

Save Money on Your Mortgage - by Martin Hawes

Need we say more? Martin Hawes is a recognised New Zealand financial author who has written many books on family trusts and personal investment.

West : The History of Waitakere - by Finlay Macdonald

A large, well illustrated book on everything to do with Waitakere and the ‘Westies’. West Auckland has always been a distinctive part of greater Auckland with its European immigrants and laid back culture. Surfing and wine production figure largely in its history. There are also chapters on the arts community, criminals, architecture and Crown Lynn Potteries.

For anyone interested in our history and fans of Outrageous Fortune.

Tatty - by Christine Dwyer Hickey

Tatty is the story of an Irish childhood told through the eyes of an 8 year old girl. Often funny, but also heartbreaking, Tatty tells us about her life with her father, her tormented mother and her five siblings and the alcohol which brings the family down. She tells of childhood lost.

Anne Enright says “This book is for anyone who ever wondered about the shouting next door...”

Journey to the Edge of the World - by Billy Connolly

To have Billy Connolly as a personal tour guide through some of the world’s most dramatic landscapes in the vast wilderness of the Arctic is to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime experience only he can offer. In his own way Billy takes us zig-zagging from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean via Newfoundland,Canada, the Yukon and the Northwest Passage in an epic adventure only recently made possible through global warming.

Billy bumps into all kinds of weird and wonderful people on this journey. He learns how to be a bear whisperer, learns how to square dance, kayaks through ice floes between fishing trips, and attempts the finer complexities of the Inuit language. He jams with fiddlers, kisses a cod, goes hunting for Big Foot, and invokes the spirit of the ancients while iceberg-harvesting.

‘Journey to the Edge of the World’ is more than just an informative and entertaining travel guide – it is time spent in one of the few real wilderness places left on earth.

Through Black Spruce - by Joseph Boyden

Fifteen years after the death of their patriarch Xavier, the Bird Clan finds itself struggling to survive on the hardscrabble reservation they call home. On Christmas Day, the youngest of the clan, a beautiful young woman called Suzanne leaves by snowmobile with her boyfriend Gus Netmaker, against both families' wishes, hoping to find purpose and a better life in Toronto.

When word from Suzanne and Gus suddenly ceases, the Netmakers and Birds fear the worst and tensions between the two families escalate to violent levels. Suzanne's sister Annie, a loner and a hunter, leaves home to search for them, leaving behind their Uncle Will, a man haunted by loss. While Annie travels from Toronto to New York, from modeling studios to A-list parties, Will encounters dire troubles at home. Both eventually come to painful discoveries about the inescapable ties of family.

THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE paints aboriginal life in a contemporary world, full of the dangers, desperation and harsh beauty of both the forest and the city. It is the search for identity and the bonds of family.

Wild Spirit - by Annette Henderson

In June 1975, Australian couple Annette and Win Henderson found themselves stranded in Libreville, Gabon, after travelling halfway across Africa. When a thief robs their Kombivan, they are left penniless - with no way to go back and no way to go on. They are saved by a chance meeting with a local expat, who offers them jobs in a remote mining camp in the mountains, close to the Congo border, a region never visited by tourists and accessible only by canoe. At the camp, Annette battles isolation, culture shock and the challenges of a job for which she is ill-prepared. She finds solace and joy in her surroundings. When she adopts orphaned baby gorilla, Josie, her life changes forever.

Wild Spirit is the moving story of a young Australian woman suddenly immersed in a strange land coming face to face not only with the plight of endangered wildlife, but also with her own personal questions of the meaning of her life.

Champagne & Polar Bears - by Marie Tieche

Marie meets a German professor in a bar in Norway and after one hour, he says he will take her away for a year to a remote place in the Arctic. This is a work proposal, but Marie is always hopeful for romance. Marie would become the first woman to spend a winter at over 80 degrees North. It is the story of day-to-day survival in severe weather, adventures with inquisitive polar bears, and living in four months of total darkness. I really liked the book because I enjoy reading about anything involving extremes. I think anyone would enjoy it... from a romance reader to a travel reader.

The Book of Emmett - by Deborah Forster

The novel begins with the funeral of Emmett, an alcoholic and abusive father and husband. Emmett loves words and more than anything wants his children to be successful and well educated. Emmett erupts at the slightest annoyance to his routine life, and his five children learn to tiptoe around him. Set in the western suburbs of Melbourne this novel is an emotional portrayal of family violence. It explores the complex relationships between brothers and sisters and the love and pain that evolve between them. The novel follows the progression of Emmett’s life through dementia and the calming emotion this brings to the family and how they finally discover love.

An Awkward Truth : The Bombing of Darwin, February 1942 - by Peter Grose

When Japanese bombers hit Darwin on 19 February, 1942 more bombs fell on the city and more civilians were killed than at Pearl Harbour. Having made no plans for such an attack, both military and civilian authorities were caught flat footed, allowing the situation to escalate into an orgy of looting. Many civilians abandoned the town, clogging the roads with their vehicles. Most major events of the Second World War have been well covered by historians. Here is a story that will be new to most readers and a reminder of how close the war came to our part of the world.