Gods And Little Fishes

Gods And Little Fishes

by Bruce Ansley
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date: 01/10/2012

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A heartfelt, hilarious and warm-hearted memoir of New Zealand in the 1960s. When you walk along the pier under the huge blue sky and with clean surf on either side, you can easily think that New Brighton is the loveliest place in the world. This was once New Zealand’s most bustling township, however it became a parable of New Zealand when the revolution of the eighties and nineties derailed it. New Brighton’s youth grew up in happy anarchy beside its great, glorious beach. In Gods and Little Fishes, Bruce Ansley gives us immediate entry into one such rich, well-lived boyhood and family life. He both captures the freedoms of a childhood many would envy now, and offers a perceptive adult sensibility charged with a partisan view. Not only a marvellous memoir, this is also a superb portrait of a seaside town set in the second half of last century. New Brighton’s playing fields, the pier, the Cubs and Scouts, the main street shops, even the easterly, are given as much character as the township’s old identities. The nuances of family life, the complexities of a marriage, the entanglements of small town relationships, and the very culture of the place are all conveyed with love and humour, as well as a sharp sense of what has been lost. The sound and brilliance of the sea, the wind, the women, the shadow of a generation of men who went to war: all are described with a poetic clarity and dancing wit that will make you long to have lived the author’s boyhood alongside him.

ISBN:
9781775530541
9781775530541
Category:
Memoirs
Format:
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date:
01-10-2012
Language:
English
Publisher:
Penguin Random House New Zealand
Bruce Ansley

Bruce Ansley is one of New Zealand's pre-eminent storytellers. For more than two decades he was a writer for New Zealand Listener, before becoming a full-time author in 2007. He has held fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and has won a number of journalism awards. He is author of ten books, including Coast: A New Zealand Journey which won Best Illustrated Non-fiction Book at the New Zealand Post Book Awards in 2014.

His other books include A Fabled Land: The Story of Canterbury's Famous Mesopotamia Station and Wild Roads: A New Zealand Journey. He loves tramping and has roamed the South Island's back country. For many years he lived in a tiny traditional bach in Golden Bay, and once built a house in the far reaches of Pelorus Sound. He has worked as a commercial fisherman in Fiordland and as a deer farmer on Banks Peninsula, but has also called each of the four main cities home.

On a good day he can usually be found out on the water in his Norwegian motor sailer, but his favourite occupation is simply poking around New Zealand, which he regards as the wildest, most beautiful, most romantic country in the world. Ansley has three sons and lives with his wife Sally on Waiheke Island.

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