BridgCover - Thorndon by Kirsty Gunnet Wil­li­ams Books pub­lishes a series called BWB Texts, “short books on big sub­jects by great New Zea­l­and writers”, and two new ones will be launched next Thursday at Unity Books. Mar­tin Edmond’s Bare­foot Years recounts child­hood memor­ies of life near Ohak­une, while Thorndon: Wel­ling­ton and Home, My Kath­er­ine Mans­field Pro­ject by Kirsty Gunn (Rain, The Big Music) will be of par­tic­u­lar interest to Wel­ling­to­ni­ans. This slim book “zig-zags across Thorndon streets, Wel­ling­ton hills and New Zea­l­and child­hoods to explore the mean­ing of home,” and you can join Gunn with her zig-zag­ging for a walk­ing tour of Thorndon on Wed­nes­day the 8th.

Thorndon’s not just about polit­ic­al gos­sip, right-wing alpacas and the long shad­ow of Te Ahu­mair­angi Hill. Our own Alf Rune has teased out some of the stor­ies—of law­yers’ duels, “Gay Going’s-on”, bohemi­an affairs and expres­sion­ist Brutalism—that lie under the gen­teel sub­urb­an sur­face. I like to think that the pub­lish­er­’s choice of the phrase “zig-zags” is a ref­er­ence to “the asphalt zig­zag where the fen­nel grows wild” in Mans­field’s ‘The Wind Blows’: a path that Alf also tra­versed on his trek between sky­ways and under­passes. Gunn is an incis­ive writer, and I’m no doubt that both the book and the tour will delve deeply into the rich veins of mean­ing beneath Thorndon’s zig-zag­ging streets.