The House at Karamu
What does a place mean? An old kauri villa with a one-roomed school attached is the place that has sustained a writer, Beryl Fletcher, through turbulent years and an obsessive love. Sent away at the age of six for a few months to the house at Karamu, she discovered books and spent many nights reading by candlelight, listening to the call of the moreporks. Karamu became a symbolic landscape of safety that helped her to survive.
2003 | ISBN 9781876756352 | Paperback | 200 x 130 mm | 437 pp
Reviews
‘There is so much in this book, that it is impossible to summarise the breadth and scope of it. Beryl Fletcher writes with humour and warmth, with toughness and psychological insight, and has produced an important work of social and family history, entirely engrossing and heartfelt.’
–Sue Bond, JAS Review of Books
‘This memoir is patient with the past, how many writers have equanimity to dwell on a previous generation’s troubles as Fletcher does here? It’s a tough and profoundly moving recollection of 20th-century survival as an antipodean woman and artist. Not a manifesto exactly but so illuminating and true as to have the same effect.’
–Catherine Ford, The Age
‘Beryl Fletcher demonstrates a large talent for metaphor, theme, character and descriptions which border on the lyrical…’
–Ruth Hogg, The Dominion
‘Fletcher is quickly establishing herself as one of the boldest and most inventive talents in contemporary New Zealand fiction.’
–Jennifer Lawn