Hastings

A loving memoir set in small-town New Zealand

‘If I’d been asked to vote on it I would’ve said I’d landed at the centre of the universe. Standing on our corner of Sylvan Road and Victoria Street, with Te Mata Peak, the Tukituki River and the mad wilderness of Windsor Park to the back of me and the distinctly non-wilderness of Cornwall Park and the misty vista of the Ruahines in front of me, I was the master of all I could barely survey.’

So writes the much-loved painter Dick Frizzell in this charming, big-hearted memoir. It’s an endearing, and at times hilarious, love letter to his home town, Hastings, and the weirdly innocent world of the 1950s and early 1960s.

To look inside, click here.

‘A celebration of landscape and culture, history and everyday objects’ — John Daly-Peoples, New Zealand Arts Review

‘Will leave you both laughing and longing for a time when boyhood was one grand adventure’ — Chris Reed, NZ Booklovers

‘For readers of Frizzell’s generation, born during World War II, such as myself, the book is alive with endless reminders of how things used to be – the feeling and smell (to choose a random example) of wet woollen bathing suits with modesty flaps in front, which disappeared maybe sixty or seventy years ago. I was constantly impressed by the author’s vivid recall of the sensory experiences of childhood, from saveloys and iceblocks to Gene Autry and Donald Duck’ — Peter Simpson, Kete Books