The Stories of Bill Manhire

by Bill Manhire

Sheep-shearing galas, Antarctic ponies, human clones, the Queen’s visit to Dunedin, a pounamu decoder, a childhood in the pubs of the South Island, the last days of Robert Louis Stevenson—this is Bill Manhire as backyard inventor, devising stories in which the fabulous and the everyday collide. The Stories of Bill Manhire collects the stories from The New Land: A Picture Book (1990) and those added to South Pacific (1994) and Songs of My Life (1996). In addition there are previously uncollected and unpublished stories, the choose-your-own-adventure novella The Brain of Katherine Mansfield (1988), and the memoir Under the Influence (2003). From reviews of South Pacific: –‘His voice is appealingly restless and seriously funny.’ New York Times –‘South Pacific made me laugh aloud frequently. Yet at core it’s extremely serious, radiating a love of New Zealand and worry about the human world which it represents.’ Scotland on Sunday –‘Manhire’s negotiation between the local and the archetypal is witty and flexible, and his range of reference makes this collection an entertaining, challenging read.’ Times Literary Supplement

Genres: Short Stories

320 pages, Hardcover

Published June 2, 2016

About the author

Bill Manhire was born in Invercargill in 1946. He was his country's inaugural Poet Laureate and has won the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry four times. He holds a personal chair at the Victoria University of Wellington, where he directs the celebrated creative writing programme and the International Institute of Modern Letters. His volume of short fiction, South Pacific, was published by Carcanet in 1994.

Reviews

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

While reading this I was reminded of a documentary from years ago by Sam Neill called "Cinema of Unease". It compared NZ film with particularly Australian film. While they came up with "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" we, NZ, made "Sleeping Dogs". While reading these interesting but in places very complex stories I was made aware of the dark thread running through them. Is this because NZ is at the 'bottom of the world'? To the west we have a tropical Continent with a mainly blistering desert in the middle. To the east of NZ is the wide and sometimes threatening Pacific. To our South is Antartica, an ice covered Continent, the last forbidding frontier on Earth. We fall back on our own resources. And in places we have a dark history because of this isolation. The stories are intriguing with fascinating characters and at times seem to wander between Manhire's own remembered world and then overlaid with fiction so it all blends. I was also intrigued by some of the format of the stories, some Q&A, some in named paragraphs and one in the style of find your own story by following numbered pieces. While I can acknowledge the strength and expertise of the writing I did find some of the stories inexplicable and some quite depressing. An interesting read.

[Cheryl Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 because some stories are terrific and some not so. The terrific ones are terrific and the last story is a great memoir.