Book Review: Hello Darkness, by Peter Wells

Available in bookshops nationwide. 

Peter Wells felt unwell while on a trip overseas and on his return to New Zealand made an appointment with a doctor who ordered a PSA test. When it came back he was told he had prostate cancer and it had spread into his bones, giving him the symptoms he had experienced while on holiday.

He soon found himself in Auckland hospital to undergo intensive treatment in an attempt to arrest the cancer. He began writing of his experience on daily posts on Facebook, which were also reprinted on The Spinoff, and later published into this book, Hello Darkness.

In his Foreword, Wells explains ‘This book, then, is the story of six months in my life, told in diary segments… not merely the sum of the original FB posts and the Spinoff version… I have added in private diary musings I did not put up on FB.’

The November 15, 2017, post is accompanied with a view from Wells’ hospital room and the photographs throughout the book include many from his youth, as well as friends and family and special places which have helped shape the man, and add to the story.

Six months later Wells records on his FB post ‘I had lost most of my hair; my eyebrows had gone fugitive; I was the weight I was when I was in my twenties…but the fact was I was alive, I could walk, my cancer had been challenged, called to a halt – be it momentary or permanent, nobody knows.’

Peter Wells is an award winning author and filmmaker, and most recently Hello Darkness won the 2018 Media Voyager Award for best personal essay,  the work being described as ‘Wry, acute and confessional but, most of all wise.’

I found this an interesting but at times an agonising read, having brothers as well as my husband requiring treatment for prostate issues. It is however a beautifully written, honest account of a man who at times was in great pain but still clinging desperately to life. In his final chapter entitled Down to Daybreak, Wells said ‘I began to see daily life itself was a form of a gift- just to be alive was a prescient thing…I also had this constant almost shrill sense of astonishment at just being alive.’

So it’s a book about taking stock, looking back to what matters in life, but also forwards, towards coming to terms with the remainder of life.

Reviewed by Lesley McIntosh

Hello Darkness
by Peter Wells
Published by Mighty Ajax Press
ISBN 9780473451622

We publish this review of Peter’s last book a few days after his death, in Auckland, of cancer. A service for Peter will be held at St Matthew-in-the-City Anglican Church, Corner of Hobson and Wellesley Streets, Auckland City on Monday 25 February at 10.30 am. Vale Peter Wells, who did so much for so many. 

 

 

AWF18: Dear Oliver – Peter Wells

AWF18: Dear Oliver – Peter Wells

The brilliant mind of Peter Wells was out in full force in his session, where he was in conversation with writer and producer David Herkt. Herkt introduced Wells as ‘an author who writes both with a fountain pen and mobile’ – an apt and literal descriptor of a man who has penned – and typed – in venues both traditional and modern.

As the session name – Dear Oliver – suggested, the primary focus was on Wells’ most recent release, Dear Oliver, while also touching on his cancer diaries, which recently won him the gong for Best First-Person Essay or Feature at the Voyager Media Awards.

‘Wells has never simply been an writer, not that writing is ever simple,’ Herkt said, and Wells agreed.

‘In terms of the shape of my career, it has this social activist impulse threaded through it – it’s not a strictly literary career in that way.’

Herkt rattled off just a few of the different aspects of Wells’s background – from his involvement in the early days of gay liberation in Auckland, to his ‘instrumental’ role in saving the Civic Theatre from demolition, to co-founding (with Stephanie Johnson) this very festival.

Peter Wells, photo courtesy and copyright Auckland Writers Festival

Such a path has not been without challenges.

‘New Zealand has a really abrasive culture. It’s not particularly supportive for those in the arts,’ Wells commented (to nods around the audience). Expounding on his literary and artistic influence, he went on to comment that ‘probably the most important thing in my life in relation to my writing was my keeping a diary. I kept a diary from childhood onwards – religiously through my morbid teenage years and episodically through my adult years.’

Segueing from discussion of using his phone and Facebook to write what became the ongoing cancer diaries, Herkt asked Wells about the 140-characters or less, Twitter-esque version. ‘Well, I’m not so sure about Twitter,’ Wells hedged. ‘But it’s the history of Pākehā New Zealand told through one family.’

The title Dear Oliver is taken from the fact that the book is addressed to Oliver­ – ‘a young boy growing up in San Francisco with two gay mothers… with the hope that he would understand some of his New Zealand past.’

So it dove deeper into his family history, in Napier, positioning the book as part of a pseudo-trilogy of sorts about Napier (following on from The Hungry Heart (his book on William Colenso) and Journey to a Hanging (a portrait of Kereopa Te Rau). But this title was intensely personal and close to home, as he described some of the influences feeding into its writing and its tone.

‘[Moving to New Zealand] was quite a dystopian experience for most Pākehā migrants… they left everything behind,’ he commented, making specific reference to the economic positioning and according history of his own British tīpuna. ‘Because middle class families wrote so many letters, you tend to get a history of the middle class. But this family was sort of lower-middle class, so we ended up with a story that isn’t told as much.’

But now it is. And if the discussion around it – and the readings from it – are anything to go by, it’s a story very well told. This blogger definitely needs to put it on her to-read list!

Peter Wells, photo courtesy of and copyright of Auckland Writers Festival

There was also some briefer discussion of ‘Hello Darkness’, the title Wells has given to his cancer diaries. Wells commented that Hello Darkness has many of the same characteristics as Dear Oliver – the same highly personal tone, for one. In introducing how it came about, Wells self-aware-ly said that ‘on November 12th last year, I found myself in hospital with a “very bad case of cancer”, which sounds ridiculous’ – but was, ultimately the truth of it. ‘I had prostate cancer, and it had gotten into my bones without me being aware of it.’

Understandably, such a diagnosis provoked an emotional response. ‘I began questioning my own mortality and mortality in general.’ The Facebook posts started simply as a way of making sense of his situation, and sharing his goings on with his friends – and obviously grew significantly in audience and appreciation from there.

The overall tone of the event was upbeat, a sense of banter between friends despite the ‘Big C’ looming over things. Herkt had plenty curveballs to send Wells’ way. ‘In some ways, it’s a writer’s duty to blab, is that what you’re saying?’

‘To be truthful, yes,’ Wells replied – an almost agreement, and a suitable summary of his art of the non-fiction craft.

 

 

Reviewed by Briar Lawry

Dear Oliver
Published by Massey University Press
ISBN 9780994147363

Book review: The Hungry Heart by Peter Wells

This book is in stores now and is a finalist in the New Zealand Post Book Awards.

“In winter, the milk freezes in the pantry, and the water in the bedroom.” William Colenso.

As I write this, these words ring a truth for me and others I know – student living, not all it’s cracked up to be.

When Booksellers NZ asked me to review a book from the New Zealand Post Book Awards shortlist, I immediately jumped to the non-fiction –my favourite genre. There I saw The Hungry Heart, and vaguely recognised the name Colenso. Intrigued, I requested, and was given.

Most know William Colenso as the missionary that protested the Treaty of Waitangi (he interrupted Hone Heke as he moved forward to sign), was kicked out of the church for fathering an illegitimate (‘interracial’) son, and for causing controversy when a new high school wanted to be named after him in Napier. In The Hungry Heart, Peter Wells mentions all of these things, while piecing together and creating a truly fascinating and detailed biography of Colenso.

As a publishing student, I was pleasantly surprised to read of Colenso’s added profession as a printer. He hand-set all 356 pages of the 1837 New Testament in Maori, and printed it on a press that required two waka lashed together to reach his house in Paihia – “It must have seemed as momentous as the arrival of the Trojan Horse inside the gates of Troy.” Colenso picked up the Maori language very quickly; this helped him create printed texts for Maori, as well as helping the job he actually came to do, be a missionary.

He also managed to create huge scandals in his life, and found himself in the middle of many confrontations, some verbal, others physical. I don’t want to ruin it for you, but Colenso was all over the place.

The remarkable thing I find about this book is Peter Wells’ ability to bring Colenso back so easily to a modern, and mostly commercial, audience. While reading, Wells involves you in every aspect – as he discovers more, you discover more about Wells’ life and journey to find Colenso, and about Colenso’s life. There are constant uses of ‘let’s’ – “Let’s look a little further…” Wells doesn’t mind reminding you that you’re reading about him writing about Colenso, the subtitle Journeys with William Colenso really does fit. You’re following Wells’ journey to find Colenso, who really was on his own life journey.

In the most basic way I can say it – I thought this book was fantastic. Wells has done an amazing job of research and writing to create it, and for that I thank him.

The one downfall is the physical weight – the book is filled with stunning photography, pictures, letters, all of which are printed on a lovely glossy and heavy paper to make each page stand out. I completely understand the need for this, but when it makes my bag weigh twice as much, I’m less likely to take it as my everyday book.

The book travels through all of Colenso’s life, focusing on his life in New Zealand since this is where he spent the majority of it. This is really the time that defined him; I have no doubt Colenso would agree with that. He had some serious highs and lows throughout his life, but without all of these, would New Zealand still know who William Colenso is today?

Reviewed by Kimaya McIntosh

The Hungry Heart
by Peter Wells
Published by Vintage, Random House NZ
ISBN 9781869794743 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781869794750 (Ebook)