FEAST OR FAMINE

The Parihaka Woman (2011) is set in New Zealand among the Taranaki Maori in the 1870s and 1880s.   The narrator is in his seventies recounting the history of approximately a thousand English migrants arriving in six ships and settling on his ancestral land between 1841 and 1843. Trouble started when the British wanted more land. His descendant Erenora, the Parihaka woman, wrote an unpublished manuscript about the battle that occurred when she was four years old – the Pakeha war – the conflict between the Taranaki Maori and the Pakeha (white New Zealanders) and the confiscation of Maori land.   At the time, there were more British troops in New Zealand than in any other country in the world: ‘that’s how great the odds were against the Maori.’   This is Erenora’s story.    At thirteen, Horitana, the boy who became Erenora’s husband, joined the fight. It made him a man – and ‘a hardened killer.’ But the British troops were too strong: ‘By musket, sword and cannon,...

  The Last True Poets of the Sea (2019) is set in the coastal town of Lyric, Maine, in America in contemporary times.  Violet Larkin is a tall lanky partying teenager when her younger brother Sam is in a psychiatric ward for treatment. Her parents send her from New York to the quiet seaside town of Lyric in Maine to ‘chill’ – but she thinks she is in ‘exile.’  Lyric is her mother’s home town, where Violet and Sam go every summer holidays. There is a lot of family history in that town. When the ship  Lyric  sank in 1885, her great-great-great-grandmother Fidelia was the only survivor. Fidelia swam to shore and stayed where she established the township of Lyric – and the shipwreck was never seen again.  Violet is seventeen, and gets a volunteer position at the Lyric Aquarium, where her ‘sea friends’ are not only the creatures in the tanks – she also makes friends with the marine biologists, especially handsome Orien Lewis.  But Orien has a partner –...

Miss Benson’s Beetle (2020) is set in New Caledonia in 1950. Margery Benson is ten years old in 1914 in England when she falls in love with beetles, especially one her father mentions, that might exist: the Golden Beetle of New Caledonia. French New Caledonia is an island archipelago in the South Pacific. At the age of 46 in 1950, Margery seeks funding from the Royal Entomology Society in London for an expedition to Fench New Caledonia to find the Golden Beetle. Both the Foreign Office and the Royal Entomology Society advise Margery against the expedition. With her own meagre amount of money, but lots of enthusiasm, Margery takes a ship to New Caledonia, via Australia, with her young assistant Enid Pretty.  First the pair need to find the location of the tiny beetle. It lives in a small, white orchid. To impress the Royal Entomology Society, she needs to find three pairs of specimens, dead and undamaged, ‘correctly pinned’ with detailed drawings and notes.  In her pretty pink...

The World Beneath: The Life and Times of Unknown Sea Creatures and Coral Reefs  (2019) is set in the coral reefs and lagoons in the tropical waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans in 23 countries. It covers the author’s experience and research from 2007 to 2019.   The British author takes a multi-layered exploration of coral reefs – ‘the rainforests of the sea’ and the epicentres of biodiversity. He begins at the very beginning – the Triassic period, some 24 million years ago, and the formation of the reefs. He writes of animals that move – from the ocean floor to mid-waters to surface swimming – and animals that are sessile – attached to the sea floor or elsewhere that never move.    He writes of photosynthesis, metamorphosis, and symbiosis. He writes of the shift from coral dominance to algal dominance. He looks at creatures great and small, from larvae to worms to sea stars and molluscs, and from crustaceans to cetaceans. Even reptiles, such as sea sna...

MARTINA NICOLLS Website Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES    MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of:  The Paris Residences of James Joyce   (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

  The Octopus and I (2020) is set on the Tasman Peninsula in rural Tasmania, Australia.    Written in three parts, it is about the developing relationship between Lucy and an octopus.   Lucy is an animal conservationist, researching cancerous facial tumours in Tasmanian devils, native marsupials of the region. She is recovering from major cancer surgery, and has been living with Jem, an abalone diver, for the past seven years.   Walking along the coast, Lucy sees two old women—Flo and Poppy—catching an octopus, which they do for a living to sell to local restaurants. Lucy becomes fascinated with octopuses—with their long limbs, dexterous suckers, large eyes, translucent ectoplasm, as well as their intelligence and shape-shifting abilities.    In Part Two, after an accident in which Lucy is nearly killed trying to save a pregnant octopus, Flo is helping Lucy with her knitting when Flo’s son Harry returns to his hometown permanently.    This is...

Sharks in the Time of Saviours (2020) is set from 1995-2009 in Kailua-Kona Hawaii.  The first narrator is Nainoa Flores’ mother Malia. Nainoa (nicknamed Noa) is eight years old. When he was seven, and swimming in the ocean, sharks surrounded him. Malia is writing about the past year, since the day the sharks saved her son’s life.  The sugar cane plantation, where the family had worked, collapsed and her job at the warehouse ceased. The family could barely afford food: ‘if we could’ve poured our money into a cup that cup would be half empty.’ The day of the sharks was like a message from the ancient Hawaiian gods. A day of hope and salvation. Each character—Malia, Nainoa, Nainao’s nine-year-old brother Dean, his four-year-old brother Kaui, and his father Augie—narrate their lives over the years since the day of the sharks.  Everything revolves around Noa. He is the saved one. His life is destined for eternal protection. But what of his brothers? Di...

 = MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author of:-  Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).