Book of the Week: WHAEA BLUE by Talia Marshall
Talia Marshall’s memoir-journey is undertaken in old cars, pauses to doss on sofas throughout the motu, and moves through place and through time until the two blur and reconfigure into a single substance, the living and the dead pushing past each other in the urgency of their stories. Marshall has a rare gift to look straight at difficulties or embarrassments from which most of us look away, and the poignancy and humour of her observations and phrasing draw us to discover humanity in places of damage, tragedy, awkwardness or uncertainty. Whether clambering the uphill slopes of Aotearoa’s less-than-shiny nowadays, peeling the layers of history and experience that make the whenua of Te Tau Ihu, encountering Te Rauparaha through her tīpuna Tūtepourangi, or dealing with the unwanted attentions of troubled or troubling men, Marshall finds strength in the women who precede her, walk by her side, or karanga to her from the future.