Barbara Anderson |
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Barbara Anderson was born in Hastings, NZ and graduated B.Sc. Otago University (1947) and BA Victoria University of Wellington (1984).
In August 2009 she was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature from the University of Otago in recognition of her outstanding contribution to New Zealand literature.
She has worked as a medical technologist and teacher in Hawkes Bay and Wellington. In 1983 she attended Bill Manhire’s creative writing course at Victoria University of Wellington.
Her autobiography Getting There was published in November 2008 and Kate de Goldi called it the best New Zealand autobiography since Janet Frame's.
She is however best known as a novelist and short story writer. Her latest
novel is Change
of Heart (VUP 2003). The
Swing Around was published in November 2001 and was
nominated for the 2003
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her short stories
have been published in many magazines including Metro, Landfall,
London Magazine, Sport and the Listener. Barbara has also written
for the stage. One of her unpublished plays won the J.C. Reid award
in 1985 and several have been broadcast.In 1991 Barbara was Writing
Fellow at Victoria University of
Wellington.
Her first collection of short stories, I think we should go into the jungle
was shortlisted for the Wattie Award in 1989 and the 1990 New Zealand Book
Award for Fiction. Portrait
of the Artist’s Wife won the Wattie Award in 1992 and has been reprinted
6 times, most recently in October 2002 with a beautiful new cover by award-winning
designer Sarah Maxey.
In November 2005 Barbara's Collected Stories were published. This collects work previously published in I think we should go into the jungle and The Peacocks and also some unpublished stories.
Barbara Anderson is among New Zealand’s most respected
and best-selling authors. All her books have been published and well received
in the UK.
‘A quite irresistible writer with a microscopic eye for telltale detail
– and a dazzlingly accurate ear for dialogue as it is really spoken.’ –Dirk Bogarde
‘Barbara Anderson is a born writer.’ –Nick Hornby
Praise for Change of Heart
This is Barbara Anderson really on her game...
The plot is beautifully handled, with enough twists to maintain pace without seeming ludicrous. Anderson somehow manages to imbue the plot with the conviction that reality really is stranger than fiction, and combines a series of bizarre coincidences and miscommunications into an entirely believable situation.
Anderson compassionately trains her magnifying glass on human behaviour and gently illuminates the potential in us all to change and grow.
The ending is satisfyingly bizarre, and it was with regret that I put the book down.
Laura Keddell THE PRESS
This novel could perhaps be accused of being quite slight. But it is also a delightful book which can be guaranteed to make you forget much of the weariness of daily life.
Peter Wells NZ HERALD
The book's Dickensian denouement, involving love, marriage and inheritance, could seem too poundingly big-hearted, but Anderson manages it with considerable aplomb. A skilful mixer of comedy and compassion, she clears the blocked arteries of preconception in her readers as well as in her protagonist.
David Grylls SUNDAY TIMES (UK)
Praise
for The Swing Around
Anderson writes some cracking dialogue and is astute as well as funny. She is adept at creating near-farcical situations, but invests her characters with enough depth to make her readers care what becomes of them.
Pam Barrett SUNDAY TIMES (UK)
While this is a lighthearted, funny and at times improbably farcical story,
there is a serious thread running through it. Found in all of Anderson’s
novels, it draws upon the infinite variations of courtly, friendly and
passionate love between people.
Penelope Bieder NZ HERALD
. . . it fizzes and crackles with Anderson’s comic vision - savage
and compassionate by turns - which makes it a pleasure to read.
Margot Schwass EVENING POST
...Anderson’s cleverness is a withering combination of acute, mischievous
observation of human frailties (especially those of self-deception and
self-preservation), expressed with a precision rarely seen in the English
novel since Austin. . . . This book is a delight.
Jane Stafford NZ LISTENER
The Swing Around is a clever twirl through a series of political events
and personal relationships; it is funny, warm and wry, with some acute
observation. Anderson brings wisdom as well as wit to her work.
Denise Irvine WAIKATO TIMES
Praise for Long Hot Summer
.
. . it's blithely told, warm and charming, but it's also loaded with sly
humour and twists.
Karin Warnaar THE PRESS
. . . it's a damned good read.
Denise Irvine WAIKATO TIMES
Her
world of rocky headlands and Anzac biscuits and beach picnics simply provides
a reassuringly familiar backdrop for a fresh new story.
Sarah Quigley EVENING POST
At last, like rain after a drought, a new Barbara Anderson novel, cool,
fresh, penetrating.
Molly Anderson OTAGO DAILY TIMES
In
Long Hot Summer, Barbara Anderson does what she always does so well. As
usual, the characters are beautifully and sparingly drawn. . . words are
precisely, exquisitely chosen. . . the dialogue crackles and hums, and
the alternative narrative voices are well differentiated and sustained.
. .There is a well-rationed emotional energy that gives the narrative
moments of powerful gravity to counterpoint the comedy.
Margot Schwass LANDFALL
This is writing of a high order, which amply confirms Barbara Anderson's
unusual talent.
Elizabeth Lowry TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Anderson's
view of the world is both clear-sighted and kind. This is a rare combination
and rarer still to find it expressed in such beautiful, delicate, resilient
prose.
Jane Shilling TELEGRAPH
Barbara Anderson's new novel Long Hot Summer bears the title of a steamy
blockbuster but the New Zealander's fluid prose shows her to be a subtle
and humorous writer.
Patricia Deevy IMAGE
A fine and sharp intelligence infuses Anderson's characters and dialogue.
This is comedy with edge, bite and purpose. . .
Elizabeth Buchan THE TIMES
Long Hot Summer is a joy to read.
Mark Sanderson TIME OUT
In breathtakingly honest and funny prose, Anderson creates a world that
simply jumps with life and meaning, with joy and disappointment and hope.
Kirsty Gunn HERALD
. . . it is an utterly satisfying read. It is the sheer depth of the characterisation,
the enviably masterful handling of dialogue. The people, the people, the people.
It would be so much easier to review if I could pick away at its little faults.
But dammit, it has none.
Linda Burgess NEW ZEALAND BOOKS
Praise for The Peacocks
Here Barbara Anderson shows how . it's done. And people who want to read short
stories for pleasure, to be charmed and intrigued, need look no further than this
book.
Joan Curry PRESS
Economical, probing, and original, Anderson is an immaculate stylist.
Joy Mackenzie SUNDAY STAR TIMES
The skillful arrangement of these stories, the vivid descriptions of life in New
Zealand - at the beach, in the city or small towns - and Barbara Anderson's art
in balancing complexity with humorous compassion, make this collection very satisfying.
Catharina van Bohemen EVENING POST
No false notes here, but thoughtfully crafted stories. . . which leave you musing
over meanings.
Patricia Thwaites OTAGO DAILY TIMES
The stories are studded with precise telling images that stand out like clean-cut
jewels. . .
Margot Schwass LISTENER
Barbara Anderson is a wonderful short story writer.
DAILY POST
. . . you're in for a treat.
Elizabeth Crayford DOMINION
Praise for I think we should go into the jungle
. . . this must be one of the sharpest collections in English since Carver's Cathedral
in 1984. Anderson has an important gift: she notices everything. She's been compared
to Flaubert, and the comparison does not seem senselessly extravagant. She is
able to convey how people get on with each other in the briefest of dialogues.
. . Barbara Anderson's stories are about love, grief and everyday emotional erosion;
about our intuitive sense of larger meaning; about the daily preoccupations that
block our view of those intuitions. They are freighted with experience, fresh
with insight, told with a mature economy that knows where civilised behaviour
stops and the jungle within begins.
Michael Hulse GUARDIAN WEEKLY
Her work has the assurance , the verbal dexterity, and the solidity of specification
that marks the professional.
Paul Day WAIKATO TIMES
Never portentous, never trivial, marvelously comic but with grey skeins of pathos,
this is surely among the most powerful collections of stories produced in New
Zealand. Its unerring economy of effects suggests at times the quality of a Flaubert,
a Patrick White,a Grace Paley. To have achieved such brilliance in a first book
is remarkable.
Ian Reid LISTENER
Praise for Girls High
Barbara Anderson is an important writer with a unique voice.
Margaret Chistensen WAIRARAPA TIMES-AGE
. . .a wonderfully observant, amusing, and finely crafted novel.
Cathy O'Connell WAIKATO TIMES
Anderson writes this with a wild, inventive glee which puts her among the forefront
of female writers who are enjoying women's newly recovered. . . sense of humour.
Fiona Kidman DOMINION SUNDAY TIMES
She has a gift for shrewd observation, acerbic comment and clever comedy which
moves easily from near slapstick to subtle wit.
David Eggleton OTAGO DAILY TIMES
The prose of Barbara Anderson prods, darts, dazzles on the page. Girls High, her
first novel, is thrilling to read.
Mary Varnham LISTENER
Praise for Portrait of the Artist's Wife
Portrait of the Artist's Wife is full of love and wisdom, of immense understanding
of what really happens between women and men.
Stephanie Johnson EVENING POST
She really is world class — her writing's like a richly detailed painting,
she gets the details just right.
Sharon Crosbie EVENING POST
It is a testament to Anderson's style and skill as a writer that these places
and decades are brought to the page with such energy, yet also with such a finely
judged mix of humour and sympathy.
Caroline Wilder SUNDAY STAR
Barbara Anderson treats her readers like favored guests. She entertains with skill
and panache; she is never boring or long-winded, and she subtly flatters us by
implying that we share her worldly and trenchant views on certain types of human
beings. She charms us with words.
Sue McCauley LISTENER & TV TIMES
. . . understated brilliance
Sally Staples INTERNATIONAL EXPRESS
This is well written and filled with honesty, comedy and sadness. I enjoyed it
immensely.
Lyn McDonald WAIRARAPA TIMES-AGE
Barbara Anderson has produced here an accomplished, enjoyable and eminently
readable novel.
Margaret Quigley PRESS
This is a moving, universal novel, a pleasure to read.
Sophy Kershaw TIME OUT
Barbara Anderson's novel is a rarity; an unadulterated, unpretentious, enjoyable
read.
Julie Morrice GLASGOW HERALD
This is a fierce and funny book . . .
Kathryn Mead SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
She has a magician's touch for transforming the mundane into the compelling and
can lace even her saddest scenes with the right touch of comedy.
Sally Staples SUNDAY EXPRESS
The promise that was evident in Girls High has been splendidly fulfilled, and
now it seems only a matter of time before Wellington replaces New York as the
literary capital of the world.
Nick Hornby SUNDAY TIMES
It is an enormously entertaining book with perceptions so true they leave you
glowing in startled recognition.
Patricia Thwaites OTAGO DAILY TIMES
Praise for All the Nice Girls
. . . a romp of a novel, spiked with surprises.
Graeme Lay NORTH & SOUTH
Anderson has woven a wonderful love story set against the mundane rituals of everyday
life in New Zealand. It is a story told with humour, and compassion.
Suzanne Chetwin WAIKATO TIMES
. . . quite simply, a gem.
Mary Raphael LISTENER
. . . one of the most rewarding novels of recent years.
Iain Sharp SUNDAY STAR
It is tightly written, closely observed, beautifully constructed — a novel
by a writer who has mastered her craft.
Ian Gordon NZ HERALD
Praise for The House Guest
. . . a rich, likable, intelligent novel
Philip Tew PRESS
. . . plausible, well told, fast and fun
Lydia Wevers EVENING POST
This is an excellent books from an accomplished writer.
John Daniell CAPITAL TIMES
Anderson writes an enthralling story. While there is plenty to ponder on, the
light touch of a writer working at her assured best means that the reader is treated
to a wide range of philosophical and social observations in a constantly entertaining
way. The combination of family history and literary whodunit has hardly been better
achieved anywhere.
Simon Garrett DOMINION
. . . Barbara Anderson's new novel is a colourful, quirky, lively creation. The
direct, unpretentious style of this New Zealand writer belies her complex seriousness
and makes The House Guest a pleasure to read.
Katie Owen SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
Every character in this novel is a little masterpiece, brought to life in Anderson's
idiomatic, jumpy sentences. This is a writer with flawless observation and an
offhand knack of making you forget just how clever she is.
Penny Perrick TIMES
Praise for Proud Garments
She is a novelist of great talent, well qualified to write black comedy.
But she has, too, the comprehension of human incomprehension, the pity for human
pity, that makes it possible to write tragedy.
Penelope Fitzgerald TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
She brings a considerable wisdom to the craft, combining generosity and tenderness
with an unflinching eye. To the last line, her story and characters continue to
reveal themselves.
Carol Birch INDEPENDENT
Anderson's writing is emotionally intelligent, forgiving of human nature and gently
funny.
Gill Pyrah SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
Proud Garments is a great pleasure: the plot is energetic and satisfyingly coherent,
the characters are full of surprises, and above all there is the Anderson wit,
that sharp eye and sharp ear for the peculiar within the ordinary.
Kate Grenville LANDFALL
Reading Anderson is exhilarating.
Leo Colston TIME OUT
Proud Garments will be enjoyed by admirers of Barbara Anderson's deft, witty
and often pungent prose.
Graeme Lay NORTH & SOUTH
What a writer this woman is! I love her astringent wit and wisdom, her comic gift,
her respect for language, her earthy humanity. She writes as an artist paints,
seeing the shadows beneath the surface, the spaces in between.
Molly Anderson OTAGO DAILY TIMES
This is not so much a book review as a gush. I loved Proud Garments . . . I realise
that I need to be a little more analytical about this book, and indeed it seems
to me a perfect text to demonstrate the kind of pleasure the reading of fiction
constitutes. From the first sentence . . . one feels complete confidence - not
just in the story, or in the characterisation, which are both absolutely skillful,
but in the style, the tone, the atmosphere, those intangibles which envelope and
reassure the reader.
Jane Staffford EVENING POST