Author(s): Fiona Kidman (ed.)

New Zealand Fiction

'I discovered with joy a truth I had long suspected, that we are, after all, a nation of passionate people.' - Fiona Kidman

The first mention of the term 'love stories' conjures up images of couples who meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after. However, as Fiona Kidman astutely shows in this collection, many New Zealand Love Stories confront or subvert the happy-ending stereotype. Conventional love does not always guarantee happiness; love between adulterers continues to fascinate.

Moving well beyond the stock story of romantic love, this anthology offers accounts of many kinds of love, most of them committed to the point of passion. It covers questions of obsession and betrayal, and separation and loss, and illustrates that love can be a fleeting experience or one in which constancy prevails until death. Readers will also find a number of stories that deal with platonic love and the power of love within families, as well as those of a more erotic nature.

Fiona Kidman offers a collection of thirty-eight love stories that includes some of New Zealand's finest writers from the late nineteenth century to the present. Such talented exponents of the short story form as Katherine Mansfield, Frank Sargeson, and Maurice Duggan are represented, together with such established contemporary writers as Janet Frame, Barbara Anderson, Witi Ihimaera, Vincent O'Sullivan, C.K. Stead, and Patricia Grace, and such younger writers as Emily Perkins. Rich and diverse in range and theme, this collection demonstrates the captivating pervasiveness of the theme of love in New Zealand's literary short fiction.

First published 1999.