- Published: 1 October 2012
- ISBN: 9781775530305
- Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 222
A Needle in the Heart
- Published: 1 October 2012
- ISBN: 9781775530305
- Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 222
The first story ‘A Needle in the Heart’, starts at the races in 1925 with Queenie, who is getting too hot in her race day finery, but it quickly jumps a generation to Esme, her daughter, who brings in her own precious income with skilled dressmaking at home. She marries a railway signalman and they got to live in Railway Row in a small, claustrophobic central North Island town with a view of the mountain. When the emergency sirens to denote a railway accident go off in the town, Esme breaks a needle on her machine and a piece gets lodged in her thumb, Throughout the rest of her life she feels at times as if the needle is passing through her heart. It is the ordinariness of lives that Kidman renders dramatic, the daily suffocation that is suddenly replaced by a shattering letter, the subtle shifts of power in families as generations take each other’s place.
NZ Herald
[Kidman] earns her place among the greats for the way she has surpassed her peers and influences to produce works authentically her own.
NZ Books
Each story is rich in dialogue, characterization and evocative imagery of our heartland and its people.
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