The Singing Bones Shaun Tan

The Singing Bones
Inspired by Grimms' Fairy Tales
Shaun Tan
Allen & Unwin (2015)
ISBN 978 1 76011103 8

This book contains handsome colour photographs of 75 sculptures by Shaun Tan. That would be reason enough to enjoy it.  Even better, however, is that each sculpture illustrates a story from the folk tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. Each colour plate is accompanied by the appropriate  brief extract from the original tale (Jack Zipes’ translation). At the end of the book, there is a brief summary of each of the 75 stories. This means that people who are not familiar with the Grimm stories will find themselves intrigued and drawn to seek them out.

These are tiny sculptures – 6cm to 40cm – done in papier-mâché and clay. They may be small but their impact is huge. As Philip Pullman points out in his Foreword, they capture the “strangeness” of the fairy story world where animals talk and behave like humans. There is a marvellous other-worldly feeling to each of the sculptures. My favourite is the one used to illustrate Jack Zipes’ Introduction, where two seated figures – obviously Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm – are hunched over, writing furiously, to the dictation of a fox.  The fox is a masterpiece of sculpted simplicity, a sleek abstraction with sharp ears and broad tail. The sculpture is as Shaun Tan notes, “only...a few red triangles.” Yet it is unmistakably a fox, speaking confidently while the men listen intently.

The pictures that follow are all different but they share the same intensity and simplicity – a perfect match for the stories they illustrate.

Trevor Agnew

(8 Jan 2017)

The Heading Dog Who Split in Half, Michael Brown, llustrated by Matt Tait

The Heading Dog Who Split in Half
Michael Brown, ill. Mat Tait
Potton & Burton, NZ$40

This book is a stunning pictorial presentation of classic tall tales from the folk-memory of New Zealand’s past.

Michael Brown has taken musterers’ yarns, family legends, history footnotes, old songs and even the lies told by tour bus drivers and spun them into stirring tales of passion, revenge, bravery and romance. (There is also some good old leg-pulling.)  

Matt Tait has used his experience with award-winning comics to create striking graphics for such wonders as the giant crayfishes of Waihi. (One would “feed a football team including the coach.”) Some of the stories are linked to genuine historical events like the Tarawera eruption  and the adventures of the shore whalers. Others are closer to urban myths, like the many versions preserved here of Cargill’s Castle.

Michael Brown’s real love is for songs like "Ranzo the world’s worst sailor" and the fast-footed dog of the title.

The cover is Mat Tait’s masterpiece.

 

Trevor Agnew

This review was originally published in Fairfax newspapers in Dec 2015.

 

From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle

From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle

 Kate De Goldi

Longacre [Penguin Random House]

NZ $30

 

Young Adult fiction enthusiasts relish E.L. Konigsburg’s writing. Kate De Goldi’s “homage to the incomparable Mrs Konigsburg” takes the form of a manuscript typed two-fingered from hospital by D.T.S.  

From his “meticulously ordered files,” D.T.S. has re-created not only the achievements of a keen young amateur film-maker, Barney Kettle, but also the beloved High Street district where both Barney and D.T.S. lived and worked. While the story (or stories) seem to be about Barney’s efforts to get his friends to co-operate in his films, it gradually becomes clear that a catastrophe has hit the un-named City (which occupies the same space in our mixed-up mental memory files as Christchurch) and that Barney’s summer of filming records a community that has been destroyed. 

 Like one of Barney’s films, the story takes several viewpoints and D.T.S. himself is an unseen narrator dropping hints to his readers at each chapter’s end. All adults and many young readers will enjoy this richly detailed and poignant novel.

Trevor Agnew

Note: This review was first published in Fairfax newspapers on 1 October 2015. 

Finding Monkey Moon Elizabeth Pulford, ill. Kate Wilkinson

Finding Monkey Moon

Elizabeth Pulford,
illustrated by Kate Wilkinson
Walker Books NZ$28

Finding Monkey Moon is writer Elizabeth Pulford’s 61^st children’s book and illustrator Kate Wilkinson’s first book. Between them, the two have created a masterpiece.
Elizabeth Pulford’s story tells of Michael’s favourite toy monkey found missing at bedtime and how he and his father search for it, even returning to the park.
“Don’t be scared, Monkey Moon,” Michael cries out. “I’m coming.”
Kate Wilkinson’s elegant and touching illustrations show the two searching by torchlight in the wintry darkness, “their breaths fluttering like moths in the cold air.”  
As they search among the dark trees, the beautiful pictures have emotional impact, capturing both the boy’s concern for his toy and the father’s caring love for his son.
The last picture shows the two, their search successful, returning home. We see that Michael is carrying Monkey Moon, just as his father carried him.
“There you go, young fella,” says Michael.

Trevor Agnew

This review originally appeared in Fairfax Newspapers in September 2015

 

Seveneves Neal Stephenson

Seveneves (2015)

Neal Stephenson
Borough, NZ$37
Reviewed by Trevor Agnew

Amazing Survival Epic

Neal Stephenson is brilliant with words. Seveneves has 861 pages of them, and it’s not enough. He is also skilled at creating characters who stick in your mind, even as they face challenges beyond comprehension.  Stephenson is also superb with ideas. The first sentence of Seveneves is a perfect example: “The Moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.”

Everything that happens in this massive novel – and a great deal happens - stems from that seemingly simple sentence. Ricocheting remnants of the Moon will soon be raining destruction down on Earth. A Hard Rain of meteorites will “merge into a dome of fire that will set aflame anything that can see it…Glaciers will boil.” Can the International Space Station be converted into a human ark, a rallying point for a fleet of rapidly assembled arklets? Can the resulting Cloud Ark of tiny interconnected ships survive by “making things out of asteroids,” until Earth is habitable again, thousands of years in the future? Did I mention that Stephenson thinks big?

Earth’s population faces its assured destruction, while scientists, engineers and politicians try to achieve their triple aim of preserving Earth’s genetic legacy, human knowledge and some humans.  The cast is a large one, with about forty main characters, many of them female, and all of them interesting. In orbit they dodge Moon debris and improvise systems to avoid annihilation.  
 

 

In this huge saga, Stephenson has planted dozens of genuine surprises; moments when something unexpected but plausible occurs. I have been avoiding mentioning these so that readers can enjoy the little bursts of astonishment as they reach them.  Nevertheless, it is difficult for a reviewer to avoid some spoilers. Part Three of the book begins “Five thousand years later…” so it can be revealed that life survives but not in the way that was planned.

Of course, nobody from the first part of the book is still alive, but as the book’s seemingly cryptic title suddenly explains itself, the new generation of humans reflects the personalities of their ancestors. As the Fifth Millennia unfolds, three billion people are living on nine thousand habitats geosynchronously orbiting Earth in the form of a linked metal ring.  By now the reader is so familiar with the technology used to create the Cloud Ark, that there is the delight of recognition when familiar mechanical systems are seen carrying out unexpected new functions. 

Once again the human race faces a complex challenge. This time the question is how will they return life – human and otherwise - to Earth. Inevitably things do not go quite as planned and there are more big surprises in store. Some of them are tragic. Some of them are actually very funny. Nothing in Seveneves is predictable except the sense of wonder that it generates.

Seveneves has to be the most intellectually satisfying science fiction novel of the year, if not the decade.

 Trevor Agnew

Note: This review first appeared in Your Weekend magazine, Fairfax NZ newspapers