Canter Bridge

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Upon visiting New Zealand for the first time two years ago, an enthusiastic Kiwi colleague recommended Michael King’s recently published Penguin History of New Zealand as ‘a true page-turner’.

Five hundred and seventy pages later, I am almost prepared to agree. It may well be that not even John Grisham could write a true page-turner about this beautiful and endearing country’s history. Regardless, Michael King has done about as superb job with the material in hand as one can imagine.

The reigning paradigm that makes itself felt throughout the book is the interaction between Maori and Pakeha, a troubled but not persistently bellicose relationship that colors nearly every aspect of New Zealanders’ life up until the present time. Some of course will suspect that this is overstatement by an outsider who cannot know how genuinely normal life on these two islands is most of the time. Perhaps they are right, though it must be conceded that any single volume that attempts a sweeping history of the place must necessarily pay attention to this indivisible division among its mosaic of people.

It is the achievement of that very panoramic coherence and the readable—page-turning might be a stretch—manner in which it is presented that represents the late author’s victory. He was patently a man both enamored with and to some degree frustrated by his land and its inhabitants. Just as evidently, he must have loved to talk about that place. Only one who first spoke often and well about it could write so eloquently of his number eight wire country, where almost anything is possible with a little grit and ingenuity. Even a page-turning history—we might finally concede—of New Zealand.