Patricia Grace DCNZM QSO (b. 1937) is a significant Māori writer of novels, short stories, and children's books and her work has won multiple awards and is widely translated. The Oxford Companion to New Zealand tells us that she is:

... of Ngati Toa, Ngati Raukawa and Te Ati Awa descent, and is affiliated to Ngati Porou by marriage. She has gained wide recognition as a key figure in the emergence of Māori fiction in English since the 1970s. Her work, expressive of Māori consciousness and values, is distinguished also for the variety of Māori people and ways of life it portrays and for its resourceful versatility of style and narrative and descriptive technique.

In 1975 she published Waiariki, the first collection of short stories by a Māori woman writer, and in 1978 she followed that with one of the first Māori novels, Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps. Wikipedia lists the novels that followed as

• Potiki, (1986); see my review


• Cousins, (1992); see my review


• Baby No-eyes (1998) see my review


• Dogside Story (2001). Long listed for the Man Booker Prize;


• Tu (2004); see my review


• Ned and Katina, (2009) and


• Chappy, (2015) see my review.

But the inclusion of Ned and Katina as a novel is an error. It's not a novel, it's a double-biography, and it's not even a work of creative non-fiction using imagination to fill in the gaps. Much as I have enjoyed all of her other books, this one is a bit of a disappointment. The book was commissioned by the sons of Ned and Katina, who met when he was on active service on Crete in WW2 and she was a village school teacher in a place that made heroic efforts to protect allied servicemen from the Nazi Occupation. But the book suffers, in my opinion, from the uneven focus on the two protagonists.

What soon becomes apparent is that despite an abundance of letters, photographs, voice and video recordings, interviews, log books, articles and memorabilia, Katina's voice is mute. The book primarily focusses on Ned's Māori family history; his service in a Māori battalion and its cultural mores*; his service history including being separated from his unit; his time on Crete evading capture but finally being taken as a POW; his repatriation to England due to injury; and the anguish of his unanswered letters to Katina back on Crete. There is background about her family, and village life, and the dangers faced by villagers supporting the allies, but almost none of this is in Katina's words, and very little of it is from her personal perspective.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/07/12/ned-and-katina-by-patricia-grace/ ( )

This book brings the New Zealand participation in World War II down to a personal and family level. It makes the events on Crete so much more meaningful through Ned and Katina. It is also a story of how other cultures have enriched New Zealand society. The family trees/whakapapa and other information are invaluable. ( )

This book did not deliver as I had hoped. The characters were not "fleshed" out enough and I was left wanting to know more about them as people, rather then the differences in their cultures. ( )

I was disappointed by this book because I wanted to know the characters better. Lengthy genealogies don't give me that. The action stays remote from the personalities, especially Katina, who was probably an interesting person.

OK if you want to know more about the battle on Crete and the role of the Maori battalion. ( )