City ‘saga’ lacks contrasts

Press, 16 February 1980, Page 17

City ‘saga’ lacks contrasts

Saga in Sepia., By Valene Smith. Dunmore Press, 1979. 185 pp. $14.95. (Reviewed by D. H. Gilmore) Issued to mark the centenary of the Palmerston North Public Library, “Saga in Sepia” is a somewhat disappointing effort on all counts. Sepia is one of the more neutral colours on an artist’s palette, and it is, perhaps, because the entire book is produced in this colour that it fails to make impact' on the reader’s eye. Although it contains much of historic interest in text and illustrations, this lack of contrast between the two makes concentration on either difficult. Valene Smith’s work suffers from its multiplicity of themes, apd this is not helped by the fact that her publishers have done little to distinguish between her text and the captions to the wide variety of illustrations reproduced from the

library’s Shailer Collection — one finds the, former cut off in mid-

sentence, to be resumed some 15 pages later after the interpolation of a number of apparently irrelevant photographs, each with a long explanatory capti.on in identical, typeface as the text. The result of this is, to say the least, confusing. G. W. Shailer, after attempting a farming life in the early Manchester Settlement at Feilding, took up business as a professional photographer in Palmerston North in the 1880 s, and the writer attempts to set the historical development of that city within the biographical boundaries .of his personal and professional ■ life in the Manawatu district.