In review

Grand is a confronting and compelling memoir exploring broadcaster and writer Noelle McCarthy’s relationships with drinking, her mother and her mother’s drinking.

In vignettes surrounding her Mammy’s illness and death, Noelle examines the rage and pain her family experienced under their complex matriarch. There’s a clear sense of time and place to the writing as we follow Noelle through pubs and kitchens in Cork and Auckland towards becoming a mother herself.

While the subject matter is dark, Grand is rich with reflection and light.

GP and writer Dr David Beaumont’s radical imagining of a more holistic healthcare system is outlined in this thought-provoking book.

Drawing on his experience both as a doctor and a patient, David proposes an overhaul of how we think about and treat patients: a shift away from a “deficit” model, where we deal with a lack of health, towards an “abundance” model, focused on enhancing health and wellbeing.

Inspired by Sir Mason Durie’s Te Whare Tapa Whā model, and with a foreword from Sir Mason himself, Positive Medicine is a vision of how doctors can become equal partners with patients in the management of their health.

What does it mean to be Pākehā – itself a Māori word – in contemporary Aotearoa? In this timely memoir, award-winning author and academic Alison Jones looks at how Pākehā find their own meaning and identity in a bicultural nation.

Using anecdotes from her life, Alison explores the complexities and subtleties of the relationship between Māori and Pākehā.

Now a professor at Te Puna Wānanga, the School of Māori and Indigenous Education at the University of Auckland, she challenges Pākehā readers to better understand Aotearoa’s history of colonisation and how its ripples are still being felt today.

Your Money with Mary Holm

This fortnightly dispatch from Radio New Zealand, hosted by Aotearoa’s straight-talking financial guru Mary Holm, helps Kiwis sort out their own finances. Covering financial news and answering listeners’ questions, Mary’s pragmatic approach helps clarify jargon, decode the headlines and empower listeners to make better financial decisions.