STORY OF A NEW ZEALAND SAGA

Some books seem destined to be referenced more often than they’re read. This year marks a century since the first publication of Jane Mander’s The Story of a New Zealand River, a novel that gave “more pain than pleasure” when it appeared, yet it’s probably still linked in most minds with Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano and the ugly claims that Campion somehow plagiarised parts of a story that was already more than 70 years old then.

Mary Jane Mander was born on April 9, 1877, in the handsome brick house that her father, Frank, built on Auckland’s Great South Rd near Ramarama. Maternal grandmother Mary had to help mother Janet with the birth.

Frank (“Francis” when he wanted to be grand) was restless and entrepreneurial. When Jane was five, he moved the family to Kaipara to buy land for timber milling. He reportedly gave his wife one day’s notice to prepare herself, three kids and the household goods. It was the first of several ventures that brought Janet to the edge of a nervous breakdown and turned young Jane into a habitual itinerant.

“I am an Aucklander by birth and a North Aucklander by environment,”