The momentum is finally building in New Zealand for Lynne Truss's punctuation guide Eats, Shoots & Leaves: it’s the lead book story in the current Listener, with an excellent interview by Terry Snow. (Since we first noted ES&L near the beginning of December last year and have profiled it twice 1 2 since, we’ll say no more.)

Andrew Fagan, best known as the poster boy from The Mockers (Forever Tuesday Morning) and today an extremely accomplished sailor, reviews Wrecked On A Reef by Francois Raynal.

It’s the story of the Grafton, “a small sailing schooner from the Australian coast, [that] had the misfortune to become a total write-off in the Auckland Islands in 1864.”

Fagan reckons it’s

an articulate account written with great attention to the accurate recording of all the nasty, demanding details of their ordeal ... It's better than Robinson Crusoe, although no one gets eaten.

Tamsin George reviews Heart of Coal, Jenny Pattrick’s sequel to her bestselling New Zealand historical novel The Denniston Rose:

Each character comes alive with their personality and perspectives. There's the wise and thoughtful school teacher Henry, practical Janet, adoring and almost overbearing Bella, sprightly Willie Scobie and intense Brennan. All of whom are like Rose's guy ropes – steadying her as she flits about in a storm. They need her just as much as she needs them.

George doesn’t seem to offer a concrete opinion of whether Heart of Coal is any good, but we guess she likes it:

There's more than a slight tinge of sadness to the novel; we know that eventually the incline will close, the families pack up and move down the hill – and all that they are fighting for moves on. To a third book in the series?

Steve Braunias continues to pound the local beat with more New Zealand Books: New and Noted.

• The Fair Beginning Of Time by Bill Parkes is “an often hilarious romp that tells of the author's doctoring, and many various horsings around, between 1950 and '80.”

• Delving Deeper by Moira Lipyeat is “a first-rate history of the NZ Speleological Society, which was formed in 1949.”

• In A Latvian Kiwi, Guntar John Elepans “writes dramatically of war” but “drones on about his accountancy career”.

• Words Of Wings: An anthology of New Zealanders is edited by Jim Hopkins, and offers “compiled writings by and about New Zealand airmen, including Pearse, Batten and Fred Ladd”.

• In An Innocent Abroad, Warwick Thomson “tells of his first voyage, at 16, in 1950, on the SS Waimana, from Auckland to Glasgow. The language is pleasingly ripe”.

• In The Sentimental Salesman by Jeanette Galpin, “A dutiful daughter becomes the dull biographer of her father Bill Hart, a Wellington salesman and Worshipful Master of the Herbert Teagle Masonic Lodge No 300.”

• Who Planted The Tree? by Christine Chaplow is a “quite remarkable exercise in history writing”.

• A Magpie Stole My Heart: Ten years of the Whitireia writing programme is edited by Sue McCauley. Braunias likes About a photo, a poem by Grant Robinson, and short stories by Wendy Marett and Carmel Hurdle.

• El Milagro De Medellin Y Otros Poemas is a collection by Ron Riddell of poems written in Spanish and English. ”Sample verse: No tienes que desearme/para acariciarme./No tienes que callarme/para escucharme. Which sounds lovely, but translated is: You do not have to want me/to cherish me./You do not have to silence me/to hear me." Oh dear.

• More poems are in Falling Away From Blue by Vaughan Gunson. Plus “many references to Bob Dylan, and a lot of bold social conscience".