HINETOA: A Story of Bravery
by Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku
(HarperCollins, $39.99)
“Young, reckless, naive, I wanted it all ... I had to prove them wrong. I had to pass. I had to get to the top, and I had to stay there.
This is a strange memoir. It’s a contradiction: honest but often frustratingly oblique; explicit in some places and coy in others; its people and places and times evoked in depth but its narrative also, at times, on breathless fast-forward. One of the book’s strengths is its visceral scenes, but when these take place 50 years ago, the level of detail –and dialogue –makes this read more like fiction than a
