Dear Hearts and Gentle People

by Ruth Park

The four pretty Misses Admiral, having shed their tyrannical Scandinavian Pa, are kicking up their heels in the Charleston, when their orphaned niece Jenny arrives from Australia to live with them. The child is as romantic and flighty as they. In spite of their game efforts to rear her respectfully, Jenny joins the household as just one more frolicsome girl, though considerably shorter and with freckles.
Dear Hearts and Gentle People is a playful pastorale set in a New Zealand country town in the late 1920s, where folk, full of simplicities and ironies, had an unspoken resolution to remain European in outlook, despite the besieging ferny hills, wild flax swamps, and the twilit forest of a Maori sorcerer.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

202 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Ruth Park was a New Zealand-born author, who spent most of her life in Australia. She was born in Auckland, and her family later moved to Te Kuiti further south in the North Island of New Zealand, where they lived in isolated areas.

During the Great Depression her working class father worked on bush roads, as a driver, on relief work, as a sawmill hand, and finally shifted back to Auckland as council worker living in a state house. After Catholic primary school Ruth won a partial scholarship to secondary school, but this was broken by periods of being unable to afford to attend. For a time she stayed with relatives on a Coromandel farming estate where she was treated like a serf by the wealthy landowner until she told the rich woman what she really thought of her.

Ruth claimed that she was involved in the Queen Street riots with her father. Later she worked at the Auckland Star before shifting to Australia in 1942. There she married the Australian writer D'Arcy Niland.

Her first novel was The Harp in the South (1948) - a story of Irish slum life in Sydney, which was translated into 10 languages. (Some critics called it a cruel fantasy because as far as they were concerned there were no slums in Sydney.) But Ruth and D'Arcy did live in Sydney slums at Surry Hills. She followed that up with Poor Man's Orange (1949). She also wrote Missus (1985) and other novels, as well as a long-running Australian children's radio show and scripts for film and TV. She created The Muddle-Headed Wombat series of children's books. Her autobiographies are A Fence Around the Cuckoo (1992) and Fishing in the Styx (1993). She also wrote a novel based in New Zealand, One-a-pecker, Two-a-pecker (1957), about gold mining in Otago (later renamed The Frost and The Fire).

Park received awards in Australia and internationally.

Winner of the Dromkeen Medal.

Reviews

[Carol, She's so Novel ꧁꧂ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5★

I had to rocket through this read as my hairdresser is a member of Park's family & gives our op (charity) shop serious coin for every Park book we unearth. & I have a much needed hair appointment tomorrow.

Since there is nowhere on Goodreads to display backcovers I'm putting this on my review;



to show how important illustrator Phil Taylor was to the success & charm of this book & that Park herself recognised this & was very grateful to Taylor for enhancing her wonderful book.

Not convinced? Feast your eyes on the dedication page;



Just gorgeous & so redolent of the twenties.

When Jenny's mother dies in Australia her sisters bring Jenny to New Zealand to raise her in the fictional town of Te Kano (really Te Kuiti.)

Since my Maori language skills are on a par with my Swahili, I had to look the meaning of "Kano" up.

From the Maori Dictionary. http://maoridictionary.co.nz

kano Play
1. (noun) colour, pigment, hue, sort, kind.

Kōwhaiwhaitia ana e Maria ngā heke o te whare ki ngā kano ake anō a te Māori (TTR 1998:227). / Maria painted designs on the rafters of the house in traditional Māori colours.

2. (noun) seed, bean, grain, ovule.

I te nuinga o te wā he iti, he mārō anō hoki te kano. / Usually a seed is small and hard.

I want to know more of Park (she is fading into obscurity in New Zealand) but I would like to think she spoke some Maori & intentionally chose this name. There is a lot of colour in Jenny's new world & the seeds of a new beginning for her.. Park is a wonderful writer & vividly describes both the people & the settings in 1920's small town New Zealand.

A lot of the book is about the courtships & relationships of the Radiant Aunts Jenny adores;



But there is also an evil, bullying grandfather & the scene where he washes his hands of his offspring is one of the funniest in the book & complex relationships with the Maori people which will make modern people wince. But I can remember shades of these adults & trying to pick through them myself in the early 1960s, so believe Park is an authentic voice.

I am being a little nit picky & knocking off half a star as Park decided not to bother with pesky little things like chapters. This made the book a harder read than a book of this size needed to be.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prejudiced view here, I suspect, as the Te Kuiti that Park writes about is very much the one my parents knew, for them immediately post-WW2. I have been assured that almost every character is identifiable!

[Sonia Saddiqui · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cover art on my version is much better than the one attached to this review. LOVED this book! Poignant, evocative and touching. I knew next to nothing about this period of New Zealand history. Park writes with a Pratchett-esque humour that I found enchanting. I found myself laughing out loud quite a bit. It's this wit that provides a (gentle) introduction to the racial and class tensions inherent to the time. The physical landscape feels like a character all on its own. The books contains some of the most well explained descriptions of a child trying to comprehend the big, confusing, illogical world of adults. I am a sucker for fiction set in the 20s, too, so this was a real treat. So, so highly recommended.

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really cute little story about a young girl growing up in 1920's rural NZ. A nice, easy read, Ruth Park captures her naivety and understanding of the events happening in her world. (Also titled "Pink Flannel")

[Carsie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a family gem published in 1955. Written in first person from the young point of view of the main character, this is a completely charming girl's coming of age story. Our heroine is adventuresome and smart. A really swift, fun read.

[PeggyFliss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweet, engaging, thoughtful. A pleasure to read.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just read it again after many years. One of her best, and she's one of my favourite authors.

[Pam Coll · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this magnificent anatomy of a childhood completely spellbinding, as an audiobook, beautifully read by Yvonne Lawley. New Zealanders of my era will understand it fully. Set in the early 20th century countryside, before my time but in the time of my own parents, cousins et al. The child narrator is tormented and tormenting and prone to every predicament we vaguely remember from our own pasts. A delight.

[Tegan Boundy · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved this so much, nice and quick, and the writing was so good, I tabbed so many passages, such poetic writing 😍