A WOMAN OF CHARACTER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 901, 9 November 1956, Page 13

A WOMAN OF CHARACTER

THE WHIRINAKI VALLEY, by Nancy Ellison; Paul’s Book Areade, 12/6. MBS. ELLISON is impelled to write her story by sheer financial neces-sity-the need to help her husband to get together enough capital to qualify for a farm under the ex-servicemen’s rehabilitation scheme, Their misfortune is our gain: we have this artless and unadorned bit of autobiography. Country girl of more than average ability, boarding pupil of Epsom Girls’ (continued on next page)

BO #RS

‘continued from previous page) Grammar School, Junior University Scholar (third on the list), graduate with Honours in Latin, teaching, marTriage and war-time’ separation; then back to the Whirinaki Valley (near Atiamuri), children-six of them, and the long fight for the husband’s rehabilitation. ; The tale is told with simple directness; there are no complaints about poverty or hardship, no self-pity. Yet it appears to be a plain fact that this young woman, already winner of the University Senior Scholarship in Latin, fell short of the Post-Graduate Scholarship in Arts through sheer under-nour-ishment in her final year-it was in the slump of the ‘thirties. However, if the country lost a "blue-stocking" it has gained a fine bunch of children. The story is genuine New Zealand stiff; and fact, not fiction. Names are given of persons and places-in fact, a

locality map might properly and with advantage have been included instead of the photograph of the Whirinaki Valley, But it’s a strictly personal story -intimate enough as regards the principal actor, but delicately reserved as to others, in fact, too discreet, for the reader’s curiosity is aroused but not satisfied concerning important people such as father, mother and husband. Nor is there any introspective searching and analysis; this is a plain tale of a hard life and an unusual career which a woman of character has made satisfying.

L.J.

W.