{"id":463,"date":"2009-01-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T22:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=463"},"modified":"2025-05-03T17:00:36","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T05:00:36","slug":"forbidden-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/01\/17\/forbidden-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"Forbidden Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Paula Morris<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Penguin<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, January 17th 2009<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">After making her name with novels such as <em>Queen of Beauty<\/em> and <em>Hibiscus Coast<\/em>, Paula Morris\u2019s new story collection <em>Forbidden Cities<\/em> establishes her as one of those rare writers who can tackle both long and short fiction successfully. Written for publications from Landfall to the Listener, the stories have a diversity of voice, style and setting, but are also able to speak collectively. The clue to what unites them is contained within the title itself.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Other reviewers have commented on Morris\u2019s ability to capture the essence of place, but for me, the \u2018forbidden cities\u2019 are not so much the reflections of urbanity but the relationships within them.\u00a0 Characters are either involved in illicit or destructive interactions, or are standing on the outside looking in.\u00a0 The stories also exhibit the author\u2019s ability to move between genres.\u00a0 In the most haunting, \u2018Many Mansions\u2019, an estranged ex-wife attends the funeral of her former mother in-law, and an entire novel is layered into the space of a few short pages.\u00a0 By comparison, \u2018Testing\u2019, about a failing unit of production-line exam markers, is a deft satire on the use(lessness) of standardised testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Like any collection, some stories are stronger than others, but weakest of them are as good as you\u2019d find anywhere, and the best are stunning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paula Morris<br \/>\n<br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review January 17th 2009<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[88,370,500,18,277,375],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-88","tag-fiction","tag-nz-author","tag-odt","tag-paula-morris","tag-short-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}