{"id":26069,"date":"2014-06-23T06:30:54","date_gmt":"2014-06-22T18:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=26069"},"modified":"2014-06-19T21:36:30","modified_gmt":"2014-06-19T09:36:30","slug":"two-recent-reads-ive-enjoyed-heartland-by-michelle-leggott-mortal-fire-by-elizabeth-knox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2014\/06\/23\/two-recent-reads-ive-enjoyed-heartland-by-michelle-leggott-mortal-fire-by-elizabeth-knox\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Recent Reads I’ve Enjoyed: “Heartland” by Michelle Leggott & “Mortal Fire” by Elizabeth Knox"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two books I’ve very much enjoyed recently are:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Heartland<\/em><\/strong> by Michelle Leggott (Auckland University Press, 2014)<\/h3>\n

I am a fan of Michelle Leggott’s poetry and I think Heartland<\/strong> is “even better” than its predecessor Mirabile Dictu<\/strong>, which I also enjoyed. I love the continuing theme of family heritage and intergenerational stories, an exuberant ‘who we are’ as much as ‘who are we?’ explored in poetry. I also love the richness of Michelle Leggott’s use of language and her command of the poetic form. A must-read poetry collection, imho.
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mortal Fire<\/em> by Elizabeth Knox (Gecko Press, NZ; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, US; 2013)<\/h3>\n

From the outset, I was intrigued by and drawn into this story. I love the character of Canny (the central protagonist) and the world building. I particularly admire the way Elizabeth Knox takes the recognizably ‘real’ –and recognizably NZ real, at that — and weaves it into a “1-step-removed” alternate world. There were also some great secondary characters, such as Sholto, Susan, and Cyrus. I also really liked that Canny’s heritage is “Pasifika” (the quote marks are because this is an alternate world, but still I think Pasifika is a fair term in the context of the story), as although very much part of NZ’s contemporary cultural make up, the Pacific influence is not as prevalent in our storytelling.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two books I’ve very much enjoyed recently are: Heartland by Michelle Leggott (Auckland University Press, 2014) I am a fan of Michelle Leggott’s poetry and I think Heartland is “even better” than its predecessor Mirabile Dictu, which I also enjoyed. I love the continuing theme of family heritage and intergenerational stories, an exuberant ‘who we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","category-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26069"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26084,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26069\/revisions\/26084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}