Best Non-fiction

Reviewed by Jim Eagles, Mark Fryer, David Herkt, Siobhan Harvey and Dionne Christian

SONTAG: HER LIFE

by Benjamin Moser (Allen Lane, $75)

Susan Sontag was one of the unmistakable figures of modern intellectual life. Striking in appearance, with a mane of dark hair, streaked in later life with a strand of white, she was a familiar presence in New York, Paris, and even in Sarajevo, where she directed Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot during the city’s long siege. Benjamin Moser’s authorised biography of Sontag reveals the woman behind the image. It is detailed and anecdotal. The young ambitious schoolgirl at 17 marries an older academic and writes his most famous book. Exploring her lesbianism in a series of long relationships, Sontag’s women (including famed photographer Annie Leibovitz) were often more than her equals in battles of dominance and retreat. Oddly, Sontag never “came out”; her sexual orientation might have been widely-known but she never spoke publicly about it. Moser’s account of Sontag’s private life is often revelatory, including her quarter century of amphetamine use. Moser’s interviews with those Sontag knew and loved are fully utilised; it is rich with people, stories, and glimpses, not the least of Sontag’s own contradictory persona. (DH)

HELLO DARKNESS

by Peter Wells (Mighty Ajax Press, $40)

The final book from the late New Zealand writer, Peter Wells, is a resounding and imaginative triumph. Following a prostate cancer diagnosis, Wells used his personal Facebook feed to communicate his experiences of diagnosis, hospitalisation and treatment. Using a social media platform in this way gives Hello Darkness a diaristic, formal immediacy. Supplemented by photographs and additional writing, Wells explores what it means to face the end. He would launch the book only weeks before his death. Characterised by swift glimpses as Wells records his moves from home to hospital and back, Hello Darkness is a collection of potent impressions. Fellow patients are sketched. Ward nights echo with the movements of nurses. Wells also explores aspects of his own life as a gay man, member of a family, film-maker and writer. His words are finely-honed as he describes New Zealand society as much as he sheds light on his own autobiography. It is a book that goes to the essence of communication — one personal voice in the looming night speaking to an unknown listener. In Hello Darkness, Wells demonstrates just how the journal form can reveal and communicate. It is arguably his most powerful and effective book. (DH)

THE IMPOSSIBLE CLIMB

by Mark Synnott (Allen & Unwin, $37)

In the simplest terms, this is about a single, extraordinary achievement: Alex Honnold’s 2017 climb of the US rock formation called El Capitan — 880m bottom to top, in less than four hours (pictured left). What’s more remarkable is that he did it “free solo”, meaning no climbing partner, no rope, no safety gear, clinging to the rock with just his fingers and toes. In fact, the subject matter is considerably wider than that single climb, as Synnott explores the climbing culture and the — let’s say “quirky” — community of outsiders addicted to extreme ascents. The author’s own climbing expertise shows through in his descriptions of climbing technique and the way climbers “read” the rock as they plan their line of ascent. Depending on your point of view, all this is either the ultimate adventure or clear-cut proof of insanity, and parts are vivid enough to make vertigo sufferers feel decidedly uncomfortable. Does it answer the “why” question? Not really, as if anything could, but it’s as vivid a depiction of the climbing life as you’re likely to read. (MF)

CRAFTING AOTEAROA

edited by Karl Chitham, Kolokesa U Mahina-tuai and Damian Skinner (Te Papa Press, $85)

This major new history of craft in Aotearoa New Zealand spans 300 years and considers, in glorious detail, the relationship diverse communities have with the objects they make and use and the meanings they bring to them. It doesn’t just serve as a history of the handmade; it takes a deeper dive into the relationships between Pakeha, Maori and those from the island nations of Moana Oceania and expands the very definition of what craft is — short film, anyone? Thoughtfully referenced and indexed, there’s a huge range of perspectives included while it’s packed with outstanding illustrations and photography, like our cover shot. (DC)

THE MEANING OF TREES

by Robert Vennell (Harpercollins, $55)

Robert Vennell makes wandering through our bush seem like a visit to a giant shopping centre packed with delightful goodies. Over there is the Kawakawa store offering everything from an aphrodisiac to a cure for gonorrhoea. Next door is the Tutu cafe where you can enjoy a delicious wine or a refreshing laxative (though the seeds are deadly). Up on the top floor is the Matai bar where the berries aren’t to everyone’s taste but the bushman’s beer is great after a hard day’s work and the wood makes flutes and trumpets for your entertainment. Round the corner is the Miro health centre with oil for massages, gum that serves as an insecticide and bark that’s good for a stomach ache. Every plant has a story and the result is delightfully informative. (JE)

THE NEW ZEALAND WARS/ NGA PAKANGA O AOTEAROA

by Vincent O’malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40)

When this book arrived my initial reaction was, “Do we really need another potted history of the New Zealand Wars?” After reading it my answer is “Yes, we really do need this one.” Partly because there still seems to be an alarming lack of understanding about the origins of the confrontations which occurred between 1845 and 1872 and what happened on the battlefields. But also because, as you would expect from Vincent O’malley, author of the magisterial The Great War for New Zealand, this is an outstanding work. O’malley calmly and persuasively outlines the background to each cluster of conflicts, what fighting took place and what the outcomes were, all of it marvellously illustrated with contemporary pictures. (JE)

THE ANARCHY

by William Dalrymple (Bloomsbury, $33)

Say what you like about Google, Facebook, etc, at least they didn’t get rich by slaughtering tens of thousands of people.

The East India Company knew no such restraint. At its peak, the company ruled almost all of India from a London boardroom, had twice as many men under arms as the British army and generated almost half of Britain’s trade. Long before the Raj, the company operated a sort of private-enterprise colonialism. The puzzle was how this happened. It certainly wasn’t a case of a wealthy Western nation forcing itself on a lesser power: at the time, India was the giant, in population and economically. As Dalrymple tells it, what won the day for the company was a combination of capitalism, in the form of the joint stock company, superior military management, and its ability to divide India’s rulers and pick them off one by one. This is history on an epic scale, with a warning about what can happen when multinationals get too big to control or, as in the company’s case, too big to be allowed to fail. (MF)

SEA PEOPLE

by Christina Thompson (Harpercollins, $35)

A beautifully crafted study of the greatest migration in history: the settlement of the remote islands of the vast Pacific Ocean by the Polynesians. Christina Thompson, a distinguished American writer with a Maori husband, traces the efforts of later explorers, anthropologists, linguists, archaeologists, geneticists and sailors to work out how a people with no knowledge of writing or metal could do such a thing. Initially many scholars concluded it was impossible and Oceania must have been a vast continent which sank leaving a few survivors stranded on former mountaintops. But recently modern Polynesian sailors, using traditional vessels and navigation techniques to recreate those ancient voyages, have demonstrated how the impossible actually happened. (JE)

FURIOUS HOURS

by Casey Cep (William Heinemann, $38)

A delightful literary weaving of four great yarns. Subtitled “Murder, fraud and the last trial of Harper Lee”, there’s the tale of Rev Willie Maxwell, a charismatic black preacher who seems to have murdered two wives, a brother, nephew and stepdaughter for their life insurance — through voodoo, some said — but got away with it until he was shot by an angry relative. Then there’s story of Harper Lee, who wrote the wonderful To Kill a Mockingbird but struggled to produce anything else. Next, we have Truman Capote, who hired his childhood friend Lee to help him with his true crime bestseller In Cold Blood and appalled her by his cavalier disregard for facts. And finally, pulling it all together, there’s Lee deciding to end her writer’s block with a proper true crime tale about the Rev Willie ... but then being unable write it. I couldn’t put it down. (JE)

JAMES COOK

by Peter Fitzsimons (Hachette, $38)

Maybe this should come with a cautionary sticker: “Warning: Contains imagination.” That’s because Fitzsimons is trying to tell us what sort of man James Cook really was, and running into the usual problem: the great navigator left us plenty of maps but not much of a personal nature. Starting with Cook’s boyhood and his early naval career, this book’s focus is very much on that first great voyage aboard the Endeavour. Fitzsimons wrings as much personal drama as possible from the historical record, filling in the gaps with a little writerly speculation. He makes much of the relationship between Cook — dutiful, verging on dour, the ultimate self-made man — and his companion, the wealthy, womanising Joseph Banks. Nothing-but-thefacts readers may sometimes object but the result is a vivid picture of Cook, the places he explored and the people he encountered. High school history would have been a lot more fun — and more memorable — if this was the Cook we’d been taught. (MF)

THE NOCTURNAL BRAIN

by Guy Leschziner (Simon & Schuster, $38)

The late Oliver Sacks wrote a book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; maybe Guy Leschziner could have called his The Man Who Mistook His Parrot’s Birdseed for His Dinner. That’s one of the more extreme cases in this catalogue of sleep disorders — the man who would rise from his bed, fully asleep, and devour anything even vaguely edible, including parrot feed. There’s plenty more where that came from: plain old insomnia; sleep apnoea, sleepwalking; sleep driving; even sleep motorbike riding. Some sleepers have terrifying nightmares, some lash out violently at their partners, some have sleep sex, some have a non24-hour sleep clock, so they’re constantly falling in and out of sync with the world and some sleep almost all day. Leschziner, a specialist in sleep disorders, recounts these case studies in the process of delving into what we know — and the many things we don’t — about the science of sleep. For non-sufferers, there’s a fascination to these bizarre tales. For the afflicted, while this is no self-help guide, it may suggest a way of finding relief. (MF)

ZIGZAGS AND LEAPFROGS

by Maris O’rourke (David Ling, $35)

This is a powerful account of how a marginalised, migrant single mother of two broke the glass ceiling by becoming the first Secretary of Education in Aotearoa and then moved onto work at the World Bank before becoming an author. But instead of being told in dry episodic manner, Zigzags and Leapfrogs offers its author’s life through a bricolage of memoir, fiction, poetry and graphic novel. So, at times, O’rourke writes a memoir about revisiting her birthplace; at others, she composes a poem about becoming a grandparent. There are further instances of her life in which she appears as a fictionalised character and still others in which she transforms into a graphic novelist heroine, Superstela. Whether it’s through a tough upbringing, surviving the boardroom or being a parent, the author summons upon her inventive life-story through the power of reinvention. (SH)