BESIDE THE DARK POOL - a memoir
Fiona Kidman –Vintage - $37.99

By any standards Fiona Kidman is a towering figure on the New Zealand literary scene.
She has written more than twenty books, mainly novels and collections of short stories. Her most recent novel, The Captive Wife, was a joint winner of the Readers’ Choice Award and a finalist for the Deutz Medal for Fiction at the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
The Book of Secrets won the fiction category of the awards in 1986. She has been awarded a number of prizes and fellowships, including the Mobil Short Story Award, the Victoria University Writers Fellowship, and the OBE for services to literature. In 2006 she was the Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Fellow in Menton, France. She is the 2008 Creative New Zealand Michael King Fellow.
Fiona Kidman is a Dame Commander of the New Zealand Order of Merit. She lives in Wellington.

Here is a list of her published work:
Novels
A Breed of Women (1979)
Mandarin Summer (1981)
Paddy’s Puzzle (1983, also published as In the Clear Light)
The Book of Secrets (1987)
True Stars (1990)
Ricochet Baby (1996)
Songs from the Violet Café (2003)
The Captive Wife (2005)
Short story collections (as author)
Mrs Dixon and Friend (1982)
Unsuitable Friends (1988)
The Foreign Woman (1993)
The House Within (1997)
The Best of Fiona Kidman’s Short Stories (1998)
A Needle in the Heart (2002)
Short story collections (as editor)
New Zealand Love Stories: An Oxford Anthology (1999)
The Best New Zealand Fiction 1 (2004)
The Best New Zealand Fiction 2 (2005)
The Best New Zealand Fiction 3 (2006)
Non-fiction
Gone North (1984)
Wellington (1989)
Palm Prints (1994)
At the End of Darwin Road (2008)
Poetry
Honey and Bitters (1975)
On the Tightrope (1978)
Going to the Chathams (1985)
Wakeful Nights (1991)
Play
Search for Sister Blue (1975)

One of the great benefits of reading the autobiography of a fine writer of fiction,(and no mean poet as well), is that the work reads so beautifully.
I was enchanted with Beside the Dark Pool.
As well as the dazzling prose there is the author’s frankness and honesty about all aspects of her life. And what an interesting life it has been.

Unsurprisingly I guess, (when I consider that the author and myself were both war babies and have both spent most of our adult lives in the New Zealand bookworld, albeit her being first a librarian and then an author and me being first a bookseller and then publisher), many of the people who populate her book are people I know and admire, while others I have admired from a distance.
Last week I launched the autobiography of another prominent woman in the NZ bookworld, Dorothy Butler,(All This and a Bookshop Too-Penguin) and while there is little in common in these two women’s lives, both books provide an interesting history of books and book people in NZ from the 60’s through to the present day. Dorothy Butler’s life revolved around bookselling and the writing of books for young children whereas Fiona Kidman’s life has been very much in the world of adult books.
But in common both have large extended families, both have allowed us to look inside their rich family lives, both have shared with us their highs and their lows, their happinesses and their sorrows. Both have been lifelong advocates for literature and literacy. And both have provided in their books a generous number of interesting photographs.

In her book Fiona Kidman tells of the many Writers Festivals in which she has participated, of the acquisition of Randell Cottage and the Writers’ Trust that administers it, being on the Arts Board of Creative New Zealand, her long-time involvement with the NZ Book Council, the establishment of Writers on Wheels, Writers in Prison, the Wellington Writers’ Walk, her presidency of PEN and the rift between the Auckland and Wellington branches of that organization, her interview with Fay Weldon at the Beehive during the time she was banned from the precincts of Parliament, her relationship with her publishers, and a whole heap more.
Along the way we meet an enormous array of book world people – Alex Hedley, Andrew Mason, Jennifer Beck, Tony Reid, Patricia Grace, Terry Sturm, Witi Ihimaera, Michael King, Anna Rogers, Lois Daish, Michael Gifkins, Ann Mallinson, Bill Payne, Max Rogers, David Heap, David Ling and Bridget Williams to name but a few.
Then there are the authors she meets at Festivals and on author tours including Fay Weldon, Ursula Le Guin, Timothy Findley, Angela Carter, Marion Halligan, Lawrence Hill, Craig Raine, and Peter Ustinov among them.

The part of her professional life, which has clearly caused her great grief, and which she deals with in significant detail, indeed a whole chapter is given over to it, some 14 pages, is what is called the “Bloomsbury affair” over which she and C.K.Stead,(also a towering figure on the NZ literary scene), had a major falling out. There was widespread dissension within the writing community over this issue at the time and even now 20 years later the matter continues to raise its head. Interestingly enough in Stead’s collection of critical and personal writing, Book Self, (2008 AUP), he also writes about the issue and of his relationship with Fiona Kidman over the affair.

So far I have referred only to the professional side of the author’s life but of course there is much about her personal life and her diversely talented family as well, along with the love affair that she and husband Ian began with Asia in 1990 after going to Thailand on holiday. They made annual trips to Asia for several years during which time Ian became keenly involved with Cambodia and its people. There is also the wonderful story of the author and her adopted son searching in Greece for his birth father. I found the family section of the book very moving at times, filled with happy occasions as well as times of great drama usually involving health issues, her husband almost dying on two occasions.
Then there was the Kidman involvement in opposing the 1981 Springbok Tour which she relates superbly and which I am sure will be added to the history of that dramatic, now historical rugby tour.
I could write much more but I think I have said enough. This is a wonderfully written work that is both honest and detailed and it will find a wide readership. It is absolutely essential reading for all authors, publishers, booksellers, librarian and teachers but more than that it is a bloody good read for all New Zealanders, and also for those further afield who have an interest in NZ literature.
Footnote:
I have one quibble with the publishers, non-fiction titles MUST have an index. This is an important work of biography and social history and the author deserved an index, as do the readers.
See also author/bookseller/teacher Mary McCallum's blog for her speech delivered at the book's launch in Wellington last evening.