Mary, quite contrary
A vivid portrait of an early feminist who bustled, charmed and cajoled her way into history.
Mary Ann Colclough isn’t a name that exactly rings loudly through the halls of New Zealand history. But reading Jenny Coleman’s illuminating biography of this doughty woman reveals that hers is a life that deserves to be celebrated.
Colclough, or to use her pen name, Polly Plum, was an outspoken, dauntless and irrepressible Kiwi battler; a middle-class Victorian woman who refused to remain a meek and subservient wife and mother. In
(Otago University Press, $39.95),
Coleman paints a vivid portrait of an early feminist who strode through New Zealand and Australia armed with an eloquent determination to improve the lot of women and families. As Polly Plum, Colclough won few friends, yet she emerges from this book as a stubborn but eminently likeable individual who bustled, charmed and cajoled her way into history. Jenny Coleman now presents her to a wider and more appreciative audience.
With some notable exceptions, diplomats’ memoirs are a mixed bag that lean towards fustian and carefully guarded reflections – possibly an echo of an intense training, in saying absolutely nothing with elegant charm.
With this in mind, I approached Gerald McGhie’s
BALANCING ACTS: Reflections of a New Zealand Diplomat (Dunmore Publishing, $34.99)
with a sense of foreboding. The first pages did nothing to raise my spirits. Then McGhie moved into the tumultuous times he faced while on two postings to Moscow during the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its aftermath, and things changed. As the last New Zealand ambassador to the Soviet Union and the first to a newly minted Russia, he provides absorbing personal insights into the events and personalities that continue to change the world. McGhie is an exception to the general rule – a diplomat who blends a passion for the job with a sharp eye for human detail, an awareness of political subtleties and a dry, engaging wit.
Anna Leask’s BEHIND BARS: Real-Life Stories From Inside New Zealand Prisons (Penguin/ Random House, $40)
lies in a vastly different universe to the diplomatic world’s politesse. As a journalist specialising in crime and justice, Leask is ideally placed to explore what to most New Zealanders is the dark side of society behind the walls and razor wire. Written in a suitably gritty and confrontational style, Behind Bars reflects the emotions generated by this brutal and claustrophobic world, where survival is paramount and entrenched cruelty is a daily fact of life. This is not a glib or likeable book. It is a stark, uncomfortable portrayal of the prisoners’ world and its effects on the men and women who inhabit it. Leask might reinforce wider perceptions of prisoners, but more importantly, she avoids stereotypes by giving glimpses of personalities who emerge as the genuine anti-heroes in this Stygian world.