The Gorse Blooms Pale: Dan Davin's Southland Stories

by Dan Davin, Janet Wilson (Editor)

Dan Davin a Rhodes scholar, and for many years and one of New Zealand's acknowledged masters of the short story was born in Invercargill, New Zealand in 1914. The Gorse Blooms Pale gathers together twenty-six stories and a selection of poems reflecting his experiences while growing up in an Irish-New Zealand farming family in early twentieth-century Southland. Comic, haunting, compelling, poetic, lyrical, and entertaining, these stories have a regional flavor quite unlike any other body of work in New Zealand literature. They insightfully capture the character of an idiosyncratic rural community its post-British social relationships and tribulations with a flair equal to such other New Zealand writers as Sargeson, Frame, Middleton, or Marshall. The Gorse Blooms Pale is a rare treasure in the landscape of twentieth-century New Zealand literature.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

Dan Davin is a well-known writer of short stories. He is the author of Salamander and the Fire and also selected stories for Short Stories of the Second World War.