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I've read a beautiful book. The biography of Rita Angus, one of the quintessential New Zeland artists, who contributed to the creation of a truly national sense of culture and identity.



What is so interesting about an artist who married young, divorced shortly afterwards, had no children, lived mostly on her own and in isolation, travelled to Europe only once, was a pacifist and a feminist, dedicated her life entirely to art but sold as little as she could, no drama, no scandals?

Well, if art means anything to you, everything.

The biography is brilliantly researched, simply, but elegantly written, and as well as tracing Rita's life, it offers also a lesson in 20th century Kiwi history and society, life in this land of milk and honey, at the far edge of the world. Plenty of prints of her artwork accompany the text.

And this weekend, the great exhibition of all her major works, many of which never displayed to the public before. Can't wait.

Finally, I want to rec Alice Tawhai's Luminous, a collection of most exquisite short stories nominated for the Montana book award.



Alice thinks of writing stories as being like painting with words. The colours and the shades have to be exactly right. Her writing practice could be seen as unorthodox as she doesn't start each story at the beginning and finish at the end, she just writes random paragraphs until she knows that they're all there, and then strings them together in an order that makes some sort of sense. Alice prefers anonymity and thinks that her inspirations, her characters she writes about, deserve any accolades she receives.

Short story, nimble goddess

"The novel is a capacious old whore: everyone has a go at her, but she rarely emits so much as a groan for their efforts," he said. "The short story, on the other hand, is a nimble goddess: she selects her suitors fastidiously and sings like a dove when they succeed. The British literary bordello is heaving with flabby novels; it's time to give back some love to the story."

Alex Linklater

I hope it's not just a sign of laziness, but the older I get, the more I prefer short stories to standard-length novels: the balanced structure, the crafted sentence, the perfectly chosen word.

The fragment even, where the unsaid is perhaps more important than what is on the page.

Not that I don't enjoy the experience of the long, epic read, the unfolding of the tapestry requiring patience, time. But very often I feel that the "standard" length of the fiction we read these days is more a convention than a necessity.

So much could be said more effectively in fewer words.

Or many more.