Here & There, Now & Then

- Blurb -

In this richly textured collection Isa Moynihan weaves a tapestry of places and times, past and present. In New Zealand on a Sunday afternoon in spring the serpent whispers fantasies of murder, cross-dressing, adultery and exotic lovers. On a summer beach a couple recognise the end of the golden weather. On another beach a child watches a drowned girl being carried ashore. A country grandmother fights back against family and other threats to independence. A mother is tempted to destroy her adult daughter's image of Daddy dearest, and in 'True Colours' an artist and his child paint their pictures of separate realities. In our South Pacific playground a writer looks for more quirky angles and a perfectionist looks for more malleable raw material for his ideal woman. Farther afield on a cruise in the Greek Islands a New Zealand family is almost collected by a strange 'family' from a yacht, and in Finland a New Zealand writer tries to turn straw into gold. In 1957 in upcountry Malaya a Thai woman offers a spell for lonely wives, and two young women, one Kiwi, one Irish, compare their colonial pasts and plan for the future. In contemporary Singapore an expatriate finds herself out of place and, finally, out of time. In an imaginary world a kindly giant solves the problem of upwardly mobile women, And in the distant future on separate planets, men and women breed creatures for different purposes.