The Open World
  • Published: 5 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9781869797836
  • Imprint: RHNZ Vintage
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $32.99

The Open World

Formats & editions
EBook
5 Apr 2012
Tr. Paperback
5 Apr 2012
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A fascinating novel about secrets, finding a home and early colonial New Zealand.

A fascinating novel about secrets, finding a home and early colonial New Zealand.

'I miss my smiling son more than any other man before or since.'

London 1866.

Elizabeth Smith is struggling to survive when she hears that her former New Zealand employers, Judge and Lady Martin, are returning to England. Accompanied by her dear friend, the lunatic Reverend Cotton, she makes a pilgrimage to settle old scores. Elizabeth is also accompanied by liberal doses of opiates and two small ghosts, walking by her side, whispering, murmuring, calling her.

Award-winning writer Stephanie Johnson lovingly peoples a landscape of the past. Mid-century New Zealand, London and the spa town of Buxton are vividly evoked in a novel about motherhood, earliest colonial days, pharmacology and poreirewa - the yearning for absent loved ones.
  • Published: 5 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9781869797836
  • Imprint: RHNZ Vintage
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $32.99
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About the author

Stephanie Johnson


Stephanie Johnson is the author of several collections of poetry and of short stories, some plays and adaptations, and many fine novels. The New Zealand Listener commented that ‘Stephanie Johnson is a writer of talent and distinction. Over the course of an award-winning career — during which she has written plays, poetry, short stories and novels — she has become a significant presence in the New Zealand literary landscape, a presence cemented and enhanced by her roles as critic and creative writing teacher.’ The Shag Incident won the Montana Deutz Medal for Fiction in 2003, and Belief was shortlisted for the same award. Stephanie has also won the Bruce Mason Playwrights Award and Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, and was the 2001 Literary Fellow at the University of Auckland. Many of her novels have been published in Australia, America and the United Kingdom. She co-founded the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival with Peter Wells in 1999. She is the 2023 recipient of the Prime Minister's Award for Literature.

The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature describes Johnson’s writing as ‘marked by a dry irony, a sharp-edged humour that focuses unerringly on the frailties and foolishness of her characters . . . There is compassion, though, and sensitivity in the development of complex situations’, and goes on to note that ‘a purposeful sense of . . . larger concerns balances Johnson’s precision with the small details of situation, character and voice that give veracity and colour’.

portrait photo of Stephanie Johnson

Also by Stephanie Johnson

Kind
Everything Changes
The Writers' Festival
The Heart's Wild Surf
The Whistler
The Writing Class
The Night I Got My Tuckie
See all

Praise for The Open World

What a triumph! Elizabeth Smith is still in my head & will be for days. What a woman! You have brought her, & all the characters, vividly to life.You have also created the life of the times, both in NZ & UK, absolutely brilliantly, with wonderful language & detail. And I love the way you have so subtly explored colonial attitudes...This is a fantastic book...!

an Auckland bookseller

Johnson's writing is skilful, insightful, witty and she has a truly light touch.

New Zealand Herald

This is a very well-researched novel that paints a picture of colonial life in mid-19th century New Zealand . . . The Open World is worth a read, not so much for escapist pleasure, as for a well-crafted novel that brings to life an important and tumultuous period in New Zealand history.

Jodi Yeats, NZ Doctor

Johnson's work is marked by a dry irony, a sharp-edged humour that focuses unerringly on the frailties and foolishness of her characters . . . There is compassion, though, and sensitivity in the development of complex situations . . . A purposeful sense of such larger concerns balances Johnson's precision with the small details of situation, character and voice that give veracity and colour.

The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature
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