Skip to main content

Review of Kiwis Might Fly by Polly Evans

Sub-title: Around New Zealand on two big wheels
Year published: 2004
Genre: Non-fiction, travelogue
Setting & time: New Zealand, 2003 (?)

This is Evans’ second published travelogue, and a sort of sequel to It’s Not About the Tapas. This time around Evans stepped up the pace and got herself a motorcycle permit before embarking on a journey around New Zealand in search of the stereotypical Kiwi male: the hard-living, hard-drinking, ingenious bloke of pioneer days. This is, of course, a gimmick (such as most travel writers use in order to justify their journey) and it works well, even if it seems a bit affected. It lends humour to the narrative, as does her initial struggle to master the powerful motorcycle and the relationship she develops with the bike in the course of the journey. Then there is the destination. New Zealand comes across as the kind of place an Icelander would feel right at home, with its small-town culture, individualism and friendliness, and the varied landscapes and even more variable weather.

Evan has, in this book, managed to find the right balance between personal and historical narrative. There are no overly long historical passages and when she has chosen to include some history, the short and well-chosen passages are relevant to her mission and the places she visits. Most of all, she manages to make New Zealand interesting, in a way that she fails to do for Argentina in On a Hoof and a Prayer.

Rating: An interesting and well-written travelogue. 4 stars.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more