Selected Stories

by Patricia Grace

Paperback

First published October 1, 1991

About the author

Patricia Grace is a major New Zealand novelist, short story writer and children’s writer, of Ngati Toa, Ngati Raukawa and Te Ati Awa descent, and is affiliated to Ngati Porou by marriage. Grace began writing early, while teaching and raising her family of seven children, and has since won many national and international awards, including the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for fiction, the Deutz Medal for Fiction, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, widely considered the most prestigious literary prize after the Nobel. A deeply subtle, moving and subversive writer, in 2007 Grace received a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to literature.

Reviews

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories are well selected. There is a movement throughout the book from the heartwarming and relatively innocent to slowly bringing in politics and poverty into the story. Racism and sexism start to be shown as lurking behind what people see...domestic violence, dispossession, colonialist reality and the way it affects the land too.

The stories centre on Maori characters, and don't write to please a white reader. The problems presented are not solved, and probably not solvable. There is a discontinuity between the colonist's social world and the social world of the families and people in the stories. Pride, shame, resilience, pain, connection and brutal lack of connection are woven together.

This is a start and painful depiction of humanity. I related, I wasn't sure I could do anything else.

[Gemma Goodwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

'It used to be green once' had me crying I was laughing so hard. My sister was the same. Having read this book and a couple other short stories of Grace's, I need to read more.

[Shuby · Rating 2 out of 5]

only read journey but the site doesn't have the option to review it seperately

[Barbara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sorry to say, I just couldn't relate to this book. And I like to support woman writers, especially from different cultures than mine. I found the stories disjointed. There were 26 in the book. That part I found interesting. How did she get her odds'n'ends published? Maybe after having success with her previous book?

[Josephine Ensign · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a lovely selection of Grace's short stories, many of them drawn from her earliest collection of stories in Waiariki. It's interesting to read through these and see how her writing style has evolved over time. My favorite stories in this collection are "Valley" and "It Used to Be Green Once."

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

A way of talking--3
At the river
Transition
Waiariki
Valley--3
Smoke rings
Parade
The dream sleepers--3
Between earth and sky--2
Mirrors
Beans
It used to be green once
*Journey
Kepa
*The pictures
Drifting
Whitebait
The urupa
Waimarie--2
The geranium
The lamp
Electric city
Going for the bread
*Butterflies
The hills
Hospital
***
Kahawai --2