There we were the three of us.
Aunty Gloria was unwrapping photographs and Bub was arranging them about the casket. I took my photograph out of my pocket and gave it to Bub to put there too.
Men were getting up and speaking. I think they were talking to Makareta. People were settling themselves and there was nothing to make me afraid. I looked about for those others. I looked for Anihera. I looked for Kui Hinemate. They seemed to be there even though I couldn’t see them any more, but I knew I would see them again.
Baby No-Eyes
Patricia Grace
There’s a way the older people have of telling a story, a way where the beginning is not the beginning, the end is not the end …
Tawera and his sister are inseparable, in a relationship that is impossible for others to share. In fact his whole whanau is bonded by secrets, a genealogy stitched together by shame, joy, love and sometimes grief.
Patricia Grace’s major new novel merges recent headlines with stories of a heartfelt family history. It is an account of the mysteries that operate at many levels between generations, where the present is the pivot, the centre of the spiral, looking outward to the past and the future that define it.
‘The book’s prose has the rythmic surge of the sea, the thump and sway of the haka. This is the novel as weaving demonstration, as whaikorero, as marae – full of memorable images.’
David Eggleston, Listener
‘Baby No-Eyes is warm, positive, and hopeful, a lyrical, richly woven story that makes you grin and lets you cry.’
Michele A’Court, New Zealand Herald
The Dream Sleepers and other stories
Stories of family life in the country and the city, of the contrasts between young and old, of relationships between people who know what it means to be Maori in a society whose predominant values are alien.
‘Grace is simply the best short-story writer to have emerged in this country in the last decade.’
New Zealand Listener
‘Patricia Grace has almost entirely (not absolutely) avoided the schmaltzy sentimentality of so many stories of childhood or family. Instead, she conveys with clarity in some of these stories the complexes of colliding emotions people experience, as those of the mother in childbirth — the awake dreams of a whole variety of characters.’
Bernard Gadd
‘One of those rare books you’ll want to reread straight away.’
Tu Tangata
Potiki
Patricia Grace
Winner of the fiction prize in the 1987 New Zealand Book Awards.
In a small coastal community threatened by developers who would ravage their lands it is a time of fear and confusion – and growing anger.
The prophet child Tokowaru-i-te-Marama shares his people’s struggles against bulldozers and fast money talk. When dramatic events threaten the marae, his grief and rage threaten to burst beyond the confines of his twisted body. His all-seeing eye looks forward to a strange and terrible dawn.
Patricia Grace’s second novel is a work of spellbinding power in which the myths of older times are inextricably woven into the political realities of today.
‘This author tells vivid and mesmerising stories as she blends tribal myth with political realities, and offers shrewd insights into human nature.’
Publishers Weekly, US
Every marketeer and property developer in the country deserves a copy of Potiki. Patricia Grace sees straight but are we listening?’
Sue McCauley, Listener
Electric City and other stories
Thirteen new stories by Patricia Grace, in which the joys of discovery are tempered by the knowledge of a harder, colder world. Sunlight, childhood and nature set against conflict and misunderstanding, in the ever-present shadows of the spirit of the land.
‘Reveals a writer at the height of her powers … These are stories about ordinary folk, largely Maori, leading ordinary lives. That they are so illuminated (and illuminating) is a mark of Grace’s incomparable skill and competence.’
Michael King, Metro
‘Never before have I read in a short story so many layers of relationships in such a compact form. Never before have I been told so much without it being directly stated. And so elegantly.’
Warwick Roger, Auckland Sun
‘Electric City has remarkable power for such a little book. Each word seems to work harder and carry more weight of meaning than one usually expects of prose.’
Ann French, New Zealand Listener
Electric City was one of the ten shortlisted finalists for the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Award for 1988.
Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps
Patricia Grace
‘Stainless and shining, and as pure as the night of Mutuwhenua when the moon goes underground and sleeps.’
This is the story of Ripeka, who leaves her extended family and its traditional lifestyle to marry Graeme, a Pakeha schoolteacher. In the strange world of the city Ripeka discovers that she cannot make the spiritual break, that the old ways are too strong.
‘There is an innocence that permeates Patricia Grace’s writing which, in the harsh light of today’s realities gives Mutuwhenua an unworldly, almost fairytale quality … The emotions of compassion and gentleness so skilfully evoked in these pages will I feel sure, remain with the reader for a long time.’
NZ Bookworld
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Literature Committee of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council while writing Cousins.
For conversation and information, my love and thanks to Joyce Gunson, Frances Warren, Harata Solomon, Dick Grace, Edith Tipuna, Mihipeka Edwards, Mary Mataira, Tungia Baker, Irihapeti Ramsden, Jensen Parata, Paparangi Reid, Rosemary Parker and Phyllis Grace.
About the Author
Patricia Grace is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated writers. She has published six novels and seven short-story collections, as well as a number of books for children and works of non-fiction. Among numerous awards, she won the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards in 1986 for the much-loved Potiki, which also won the New Zealand Fiction Award in 1987. She was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001 with Dogside Story, which won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Prize. Tu won the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Awards Fiction Prize and the Deutz Medal for Fiction and Poetry. Her children’s story The Kuia and the Spider won the Children’s Picture Book of the Year and she has also won the New Zealand Book Awards For Children and Young Adults Te Kura Pounamu Award. Patricia was born in Wellington and lives in Plimmerton on ancestral land, in close proximity to her home marae at Hongoeka Bay.
Also by Patricia Grace
Novels
Mutuwhenua, The Moon Sleeps
Baby No-Eyes
Dogside Story
Tu
Chappy
Short-story Collections
Waiariki
The Dream Sleepers and Other Stories
Electric City and Other Stories
Selected Stories
Collected Stories
The Sky People
Small Holes in the Silence
Non-fiction
Wahine Toa
Ned & Katina: a True Love Story
Books for Children
The Kuia and the Spider/Te Kuia me te Pungawerewere
Watercress Tuna and the Children of Champion Street/Te Tuna Watakirihi me Nga Tamariki o te Tiriti o Toa
The Trolley / Te Toneke
Areta and the Kahawai
Maraea and the Albatrosses/Ko Areta me nga Kahawai
Haka/Whiti te Ra!
Unter Dem Manukabaum (Book of stories selected for young readers and translated into German)
PENGUIN
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Penguin is an imprint of the Penguin Random House group of companies, whose addresses can be found at global.peng
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First published by Penguin Books (NZ), 1992
This edition published by Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2021
Text © Patricia Grace, 1992
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover design by Katrina Duncan © Penguin Random House New Zealand
Cover images (actors from top): Ana Scotney; Hariata Moriarty; Tioreore Melbourne; Te Raukura Gray, Mihi Te Rauhi Daniels, Keyahne Patrick Williams.
Photography by Raymond Edwards and Libby Hakaraia
Text design by Richard King © Penguin Random House New Zealand
Author photograph by Grant Maiden
Prepress by Image Centre Group
Cousins has been adapted for the screen. The film was produced by Miss Conception Films and Whenua Films, directed by Ainsley Gardiner and Briar Grace-Smith, screenplay by Briar Grace-Smith and Patricia Grace.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.
ISBN 978-1-74-253969-0
penguin.co.nz
THE BEGINNING
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