Greenstone Door

by William Satchell

This book was digitized and reprinted from the collections of the University of California Libraries. It was produced from digital images created through the libraries’ mass digitization efforts. The digital images were cleaned and prepared for printing through automated processes. Despite the cleaning process, occasional flaws may still be present that were part of the original work itself, or introduced during digitization. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found online in the HathiTrust Digital Library at www.hathitrust.org.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad I persevered past the first few pages to get used to the style. It was a really interesting read. Interesting from an historical point of view as it was set during the NZ Wars, and interesting from a literary point of view (first published in 1914). A good story as well!

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

New Zealand classic, set during the times of the Maori Wars. Old-fashioned story-telling, with a good bit of romance, but historically accurate and unusual for the time in showing events from both Pakeha and Maori points of view. Informative and absorbing.

[Discoverylover · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a while to get into this book, I found the first 50 pages or so a bit boring, but I'm glad I persevered as I really started to get into the story after that! The person who gave this to me had said they really enjoyed the way the Māori were portrayed in the book, not at all as they would have normally been in the era the book was written, and I agree with him. In fairness, the book wouldn't have worked at all had it NOT been sympathetic though.

[Mikaira · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a little rough to follow at the start, but once I passed a few chapters, I began to follow the main character. I enjoyed the story, invested, and felt deeply on certain situations that occurred. Nice fiction book that appeared to be dressed an factual things such as names of places,iwi maori kupu.

[MH · Rating 3 out of 5]

Supposedly the great classic of pre-WWI NZ literature, and it stands up surprisingly well to C21st eyes. It narrates the life of its protagonist, from growing up among the Māori, to visiting Auckland and finding pakeha society cruel by comparison, falling in love, rejecting his British grandfather, and eventually witnessing the Invasion of the Waikato and its conclusion at Ōrākau. It is generally sympathetic to the Māori, which is not what I expected from colonial literature.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am currently reading this book for Librivox and enjoying so far. The author keeps you going by scattering ominous hints at what might come. Just finished reading chapter 8!

I finished reading this in quite an agitated state. During the course of the reading I was researching more about the period described in the book stumbling across Vincent O'Malley's book 'The Great War for New Zealand' and as a result became aware of just how biased and outright misleading the Pakeha propaganda was surrounding the reasons for war and this book is a responsible for this as many others of it's era.

However, the book is now finished and available for download - https://librivox.org/the-greenstone-d...

[Adrian · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Really nice NZ historical fiction novel. Beginning and middle drag a little, but overall some great writing and very memorable.

[Alesa · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was written in 1917, and is described as New Zealand's most famous historical novel. However, not being from NZ, I lacked the historical foundation to understand what was going on. There were a lot of Maoris shooting and hacking away at each other, and some cannibalism. I just couldn't get into it, and gave up (although I very rarely do this).