A SHEPHERD'S LIFE
bile 8 ~ ing socal ae Peter Newton. A. H. and A. W. Ree FI reviewed this book the day I finished it, I might easily have called it the book New Zealand has been waiting for since books first began to be a New Zealand product. That would have been wrong but not quite ridiculous. There is not enough variety or depth, nowhere a complete enough escape from trivialities and non-significant things, for a really important book; but I think it is the best book of its kind so far produced in New Zealand. It is in fact so far as I can remember the only book that begins and ends with high-country shepherding. _ Bruce Stronach, afew years ago, wrote some good articles on the subject for the Christchurch Press, and Burdon has, of course, written a first-class book about high-country farming in general. But Peter Newton is a musterer and nothing else. His life for 20 years has been seven or eight months of racing the dawn to ridges three, four, or five thousand feet high, followed by four or five months. in =
winter quarters in lower country if he has not returned to a mountain hut to shoot keas or deer. It has been a life of unbroken companionship with horses and dogs and close but continually changing friendships with other _ physically tough young men. And almost every hour of it makes fascinating reading. Mr. Newton does not quite succeed in being entirely direct and simple; which is, of course, another way of saying that he has not quite reached reality and truth. But he has skirted very close to them, and I don’t know whether we should be most grateful to him for writing the story down or to his publishers for their courage in circulating it. I am myself most grateful to both, and grateful also to John Pascoe, F. Jones, and V. C. Browne for their wholly satisfying photographs. (There is a curious mistake on the dust jacket which, though it has nothing to dg with the interest of the book itself, ought to be corrected when a new edition is called for. Neither Woodstock nor Castle Hill nor Lake Coleridge nor Mesopotamia nor Mt. White nor St. James is in the Mackenzie Country.)
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19480123.2.25.1
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 448, 23 January 1948, Page 12
Word count
Tapeke kupu
382A SHEPHERD'S LIFE New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 448, 23 January 1948, Page 12
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Material in this publication is protected by copyright.
Are Media Limited has granted permission to the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa to develop and maintain this content online. You can search, browse, print and download for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Are Media Limited for any other use.
Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.
Log in