Book review: Telling Tales: A Life in Writing, by William Taylor

The notion of a memoir can often scare potential readers off - and with good reason. This slippery category can be the midwife for screeds of self-indulgent twaddle, or chapter upon chapter of sycophantic name-dropping peppered with the occasional "juicy" personal divulgence.

This memoir by New Zealand children's author William Taylor is, I am delighted to report, an endearing collection of his experiences, told with a wry wit and a pretty sure hand on the self-editing tiller.

He unveils his self-deprecating streak in the introduction, where he assures us he was conned into writing the book by a pleasantly pushy Tessa Duder, along with a few other well-meaning women. The reading public should be grateful for their persistence.

Taylor is also very keen to tell us what his memoir is not, that as an ex-teacher and children's writer, "it is not a treatise on how to write fiction for the young. Nor is it a recipe for teaching practice". Nor, take note, is it a "literary memoir".

He thus sets up our preconceptions, deliberately of course, the wily old chap, and the first line proper tells us what to expect in terms of style, content and surprises: "When I was seven years old I saw Jesus in our garden at Roslyn Road, Levin. It was a surprise because we didn't get many visitors." Cute.

And so he remains through a life of prolific writing, teaching in small-town schools, raising two boys single-handedly and, oddly, being the Mayor of Ohakune (unveiling, with Jim Bolger, the big carrot).

If nothing else, this book will serve to enlighten the many who don't know Taylor, as he is perhaps less renowned in literary circles than he should be, especially given the success of his books both overseas and locally.

In doing so the book may reignite interest in some of his work. As an historical account of teaching in tiny towns in the lower North Island it is alone worth reading: whatever he discusses, and his mind and subject matter range far, Taylor is deft, articulate and often unintentionally funny.

My one complaint would be that some tighter publisher editing would have removed the occasional indulgent passage, along with his tendency to overuse exclamation marks for effect when none is needed.

Despite the glib tone, too, he is careful to shield us from any real insights into his personality; the pendulum of his swinging sexuality, as he puts it, remains largely unexplored but, for a man for whom family is clearly the source of his greatest pleasure, he wasn't going to set out to cause pain through what, to him, would be unnecessary and unseemly revelation.

No, he has it all under tight control, yet does it all in a style that is free-flowing, with a chronology best described as whimsical and with a fervent respect for those he has worked with or for whom he is fortunate enough to share a bloodline.

Considering his obvious reluctance to put pen to paper, this charming man has delivered a sometimes wistful and always entertaining tale.

Michael Larsen is an Auckland reviewer.

* Telling Tales: A Life in Writing, by William Taylor (HarperCollins $39.99).