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A review by maplessence
Into the River by Ted Dawe
4.0
Nothing like a banning to make one want to read a book!
Edit; looks like Amazon have now removed this book - for NZ anyway. Yesterday the print version was still available.
Edit 2 14/10/15 & sanity returns. http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/73017920/into-the-river-ban-lifted-by-film-and-literature-board
Edit 18/12/15 The controversy has helped Ted Dawe! My local library is now going to stock this book. Tee hee!
Banned Book Week seemed the right time to read this book.
As I stated above, my local library now stocks this book,complete with a sticker warning of explicit content. But, even allowing for the young age of the main characters and the target audience and the casual use of a word many New Zealanders find very offensive, the book wasn't that racy. During the nadir of my working life I cleaned the metalwork and woodwork block of our local high school. I was allowed to start work just before the students finished school and listening to the kids' language made me feel like I was swimming through a sewer. So the delicate and tender young that the Chief Censor of the time (he now no longer has this job) was trying to protect - they don't exist. Dawe wrote this book to try to create a New Zealand book with a New Zealand subject that reluctant Kiwi teenage boy readers would read. My now 23 year old son was a reluctant reader and teens are when most of us are at our most boringly conformist. My boy simply would have refused to read a book with such strong homosexual themes. He would have been worried about What Would My Mates Say.
My Goodreads friend Emma Sea mentions the uncertain veering between times. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/719697086?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
I would add mention of the Warehouse chain means after 1982 (probably later than that- late 1980s was when they became ubiquitous) DVDs became common around mid 2000s, telephone cards for cellphones in use around 2000. It is sloppy and it is jarring.
But I liked it! I found this novel a fast paced easy read with recognisably Kiwi characters. Would I have read it if it hadn't have been for the censorship controversy? Almost certainly not.
Would have been my loss.
Edit; looks like Amazon have now removed this book - for NZ anyway. Yesterday the print version was still available.
Edit 2 14/10/15 & sanity returns. http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/73017920/into-the-river-ban-lifted-by-film-and-literature-board
Edit 18/12/15 The controversy has helped Ted Dawe! My local library is now going to stock this book. Tee hee!
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Banned Book Week seemed the right time to read this book.
As I stated above, my local library now stocks this book,complete with a sticker warning of explicit content. But, even allowing for the young age of the main characters and the target audience and the casual use of a word many New Zealanders find very offensive, the book wasn't that racy. During the nadir of my working life I cleaned the metalwork and woodwork block of our local high school. I was allowed to start work just before the students finished school and listening to the kids' language made me feel like I was swimming through a sewer. So the delicate and tender young that the Chief Censor of the time (he now no longer has this job) was trying to protect - they don't exist. Dawe wrote this book to try to create a New Zealand book with a New Zealand subject that reluctant Kiwi teenage boy readers would read. My now 23 year old son was a reluctant reader and teens are when most of us are at our most boringly conformist. My boy simply would have refused to read a book with such strong homosexual themes. He would have been worried about What Would My Mates Say.
My Goodreads friend Emma Sea mentions the uncertain veering between times. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/719697086?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
I would add mention of the Warehouse chain means after 1982 (probably later than that- late 1980s was when they became ubiquitous) DVDs became common around mid 2000s, telephone cards for cellphones in use around 2000. It is sloppy and it is jarring.
But I liked it! I found this novel a fast paced easy read with recognisably Kiwi characters. Would I have read it if it hadn't have been for the censorship controversy? Almost certainly not.
Would have been my loss.