Life without ‘mod. cons’

Press, 5 December 1981, Page 16

Life without ‘mod. cons’

Women of the North. By Jane Wordsworth. Collins, 1981. 198 pp. Index. $19.95.

(Reviewed by

Margaret Quigley)

Jane Wordsworth was educated at Dargaville District High School and after some years in Auckland returned to Northland to spend 29 nine years teaching in a variety of schools there. She has, therefore, a wide knowledge of and a deep love for that special part of New Zealand—almost as distinct and individual an entity as the South Island’s West Coast. In this book she writes brief biographies of the women, who, over the last century, have made their homes in this district. From the time of the first settlers, missionaries and farmers for the most part, and on into this century these women lived in harsh conditions. They endured primitive housing, a general lack of educational and medical facilities, infrequent social contact with others apart from their immediate families, and an endless round of essential household tasks. Their contribution, not just in building full and happy lives for their own families. but in service to the communities in which they lived is immeasureable. Jane Wordsworth pays tribute to 44 of them in this handsome book which has an attractive dust-jacket and a selection of fascinating old photographs. Some of the stories make humbling reading for those of us spoilt by all “mod. cons.” Lucy Martinovich, “Queen of the Dalmatians,” began her married life and gave birth to her first child in a shack she made of sacks sewn together; Rose Bracas followed her mercurial husband to almost every part of Northland, constantly

starting a new home in a different wilderness. One wonders, however, if 44 stories many very similar in outline, and even in some details, are rather too many for a general reader to maintain interest in. Moreover, the alphabetical arrangement of the biographical sketches means that the reader who is progressing straight through the book, rather than looking up known individuals has to switch constantly back and forth from the ninetenth to the tweentieth centuries. Perhaps the book is designed to appeal most to descendants of these women, who will doubtless be glad to have a permanent record easily available. Waiting for war The Devil’s Parole. By James Wright. Allen Lane, 1981. 349 pp. $21.50. This is a quietly written tale of a very ordinary, middle-class English family, waiting in the countdown leading towards the Second World War. The tension, and the expectation of the inevitable conflict, both unites its members and at the same time makes them climb into their own skulls in readiness for their own personal future. The intrusion of an I.R.A. activist as the lover of one of the daughters suddenly puts the quiet English countryside into the position of an explosive, bloody battlefield. Even before formal war is declared, the family have been changed, never to return to their previous way of life. An unexciting, but competently written novel of ordinary folk trying to come to grips with extraordinary times.—Ralf Unger.