LINEMAN'S TICKET

Te Ao Hou, September 1967, Page 62

LINEMAN'S TICKET by Manu Gilbert Blackwood & Janet Paul, $2.10 reviewed by Allan W. Muir This is undoubtedly the most entertaining book that I have read for some considerable time. The Irish-Maori brand of humour used by the author appealed to me, a Pakeha with a great interest in the Maori people. Manu Gilbert, youngest of a family of three, describes himself as a blockhead who left college after two years to work as a bulldozer driver, thus breaking his mother's heart. To my way of thinking, he is a tangata

matau’, capable of writing 169 pages of good light-hearted reading and furthermore wise enough to become a cow-cocky after all his years as a pole-sitter. For some rich entertainment, whatever your tastes, this book is a must. And a comment from Mrs Muir:— I went to a quiet beach cabin for a week's holiday and took two books with me, one Dr Zhivago, the other Lineman's Ticket by Manu Gilbert. First I read Zhivago since he had made the bigger splash into the vast literary pool. However, it was from Lineman's Ticket that I got what my Dad used to call a real ‘belly laugh’. You know—the kind that makes you rollick in the armchair, upset your dish of salted peanuts, and then when you recover from the effects of Manu's dry hori wit, you call to your spouse, ‘Hey dear come and listen while I read you this bit’. I like the writer's style—so true to type and unpretentious. The preface indicates that Gilbert wrote this for his buddies of the Power Board gangs. However, I, an ordinary Pakeha housewife was so absorbed by the true Maori atmosphere of the book that when my husband came in from gathering pine cones and said, ‘Where are the matches?’ I went off into gales of laughter and said, ‘Rub two plurry sticks together.’ Two small booklets reviewed by A. Bosch