Picture of author.

Jenny Pattrick

Teoksen The Denniston Rose tekijä

14+ teosta 323 jäsentä 14 arvostelua 1 Favorited

Tietoja tekijästä

Jenny Pattrick was born in 1936 in Wellington. She worked as a teacher and later began her career as a jeweller. Pattrick has been a full time writer since 1993 and has written fiction for both print and radio. With her musician husband, Laughton Pattrick, she has written several songs and musical näytä lisää shows for children. Her songbooks include Songs for Seasons, On our Street, and The Farm at the End of the Road. Pattrick is best-known as a historical novelist. Her first novel, The Denniston Rose and its sequel, Heart of Coal, are two of New Zealand¿s biggest-selling novels. In 2005 Pattrick published Catching the Current. Pattrick has long been active in the arts community and has served as President of the Crafts Council. In Touch with Grace is a contemporary novel, in prose and letters, about Grace, an independent octogenarian, her love affair with Max and the various complications his family bring into her life. Jenny Pattrick was awarded the 2009 NZ Post Mansfield Prize, incorporating the six-month Katherine Mansfield Fellowship in Menton France. Her novel Inheritance was published in 2010 and in 2012 she publisher the novel Skylark. In 2014 her title Heartland was published. (Bowker Author Biography) näytä vähemmän

Includes the name: Pattrick Jenny

Image credit: New Zealand Book Council

Sarjat

Tekijän teokset

The Denniston Rose (2003) 104 kappaletta
Heart of Coal (2004) 52 kappaletta
Catching the Current (2005) 35 kappaletta
Landings (2008) 28 kappaletta
Inheritance (2010) 21 kappaletta
Harbouring (2022) 19 kappaletta
Heartland (2014) 15 kappaletta
In Touch With Grace (2006) 14 kappaletta
Skylark (2012) 13 kappaletta
Leap of Faith (2017) 13 kappaletta
Grace notes : a novel (2008) 2 kappaletta
Very Important Godwit (2010) 2 kappaletta
Bull's Lace 1 kappale

Associated Works

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

(8.5) I found this a very satisfying read. Pattrick has obviously carried out extensive research in to the colonisation and settlement of Wellington. I found her characters credible and the setting authentic. The story is told in sequential order in the first person voices of Huw, his wife Martha and Hineroa. These provide the different cultural perspectives of the events unfolding. The colonisation of Wellington had a special poignancy for me as my parents lived there when they were young.
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
HelenBaker | Aug 19, 2022 |
This is a great story of an isolated coal mining town in New Zealand. Populated with a mixture of drifters and drinkers, as well as religious professional miners, Denniston is a community full of tension but also, at times, a community working to come together. Into this mix comes Eva Storm with her five-year-old daughter, Rose. Rose is beautiful, intelligent and becomes a favourite of all factions of the community. But Rose suffers from the neglect of her mother, and the abuse of her "uncle" Billy. The town folk don't want to meddle in "private matters", but do what they can to ensure Rose is fed and cared for. As Rose's problems escalate, the town is gripped by a crippling miners' strike.

It's a great story but I think Rose remains relatively unscathed from her experiences. I can't help but wonder how she will manage to deal with her childhood trauma as she ages...the author glosses over the long term impacts of child abuse. If I didn't worry about that, I'd have rated the book higher.
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
LynnB | 3 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jan 15, 2021 |
Ugh! So many things wrong here.

Why do so many New Zealand books and films have eccentric characters when the country doesn't?

Do New Zealanders think it makes a book or film more interesting?

Well, it doesn't. It makes it annoying and juvenile. 2 dimensional quirky characters just do not work anywhere outside of fantasy comics.

My take is that it is deflection from a lack of writing skills which in turn leads to a lack of convincing characterisation and/or a good story. Inserting weird characters may help you to try and turn a mediocre story into a good one but it has the opposite effect.

In fact, if you took all the weird shit out of the story and developed the underlying story you could have come up with a real winner, something that really does represent NZ in fiction, something that this puerile fantasy does not.

If you want to do eccentric see what better writers do. Read the Cormorant Strike books by the Potter woman. Her main character is eccentric but she has done enough backstory to make it passably convincing. Having a "real kiwi bloke" trying to win the Crochet Cup from the town women introduced just a few sentences doesn’t give the reader a chance to engage and works against suspension of disbelief. I have lived in small isolated settlements in NZ and just isn't like that.

This book is just rubbish and makes NZ look dumb. Sorry to be so harsh, I tried to like it but you made it as difficult as it gets. The underlying story had so much potential, there was so much scope in the relationship of the Maori guy to the old women, there is a whole seam of race and history just begging for some depth right there.

I could go on but I think I've made my point.
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
Ken-Me-Old-Mate | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Sep 24, 2020 |
(6.5)In 1907, the New Zealand government decided to construct a railway line to connect Auckland and Wellington. The terrain offered many challenges and necessitated the construction of the Makatote Viaduct.
We follow the Cameron family who are all employed in the project.
This is a light undemanding read and the author brings back several characters from her earlier novels. I am pleased I didn't purchase this book. I am happy for it to go back to the library.
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
HelenBaker | Nov 1, 2017 |

Palkinnot

You May Also Like

Associated Authors

Tilastot

Teokset
14
Also by
1
Jäseniä
323
Suosituimmuussija
#73,309
Arvio (tähdet)
½ 3.5
Kirja-arvosteluja
14
ISBN:t
50
Kuinka monen suosikki
1

Taulukot ja kaaviot