FICTION GALLERY

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33579, 6 July 1974, Page 10

FICTION GALLERY

Islands 7. Edited by Robin Dudding. 132 pp.

The emphasis of the seventh issue of “Islands” is made plain enough on the cover, which consists of a gallery of portraits: 16 of New Zealand’s leading writers of fiction, each of them represented in the current number. As the title page claims, this is an anthology of contemporary New Zealand fiction; something approaching a report on the storytelling state of the nation.

There are absentees, of course. The editor, Robin Dudding names most of those that come to mind in his brief Tailfeather: Maurice Duggan, Janet Frame, O. E. Middleton, Maurice Gee, Witi Ihimaera and Michael Beveridge. He also comments, quite justly, on the range and variety of the stories. Though the critical stereotype of the New Zealand story is not, perhaps, as fatuous as he suggests — humourless childhood memories, bar-bed-wire and cowpats — there are contributions here which will surprise as much as they delight.

To single out pieces is, in an anthology where the standard is maintained at a

remarkably high level, to demonstrate one’s own preferences. This reviewer liked particularly John Graham’s “The Sotto Voce Man,” a witty account of Otto Brown, who put his talents as plumber and musician together to give pleasure to the neighbourhood through a reticulated french horn; Owen Leeming’s “Charity, Chief,” which describes a racial encounter in Dakar with

both force and grace; and Howard Press’s “Man in Wardrobe,” which maintains a nicely serio-comic tone throughout. Of the rest, few fail, though Fiona Kidman’s tale, “The Torch,” somehow does not bring off all it might, while Murray Edmond’s “Four Prose Poems” illustrate how unforgiving a genre the prose poem is, and how narrow the margin for failure. All in all, however, “Islands 7” contains a plethora of talent, and its gathering together is a signal success for the editor.