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Steven Carroll and Cameron Woodhead cast their eyes over a batch of books from recent times. Here, they share their recaps and reviews.
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Crying in H Mart,
Picador, $32.99
There is an H Mart that specialises in Korean food just outside Philadelphia where Michelle Zauner, lead singer of indie band Japanese Breakfast, communes with her past. The food in all its rich variety becomes a kind of Proustian Madeleine through which she revives her dead Korean mother. This is highly evocative (smells seem to steam off the page), a vivid combination of reflective essay and memoir – but essentially a homage to her mother.
Ross Giblin/Stuff Smith then sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. In their decision, Justices William Young, Susan Glazebrook and Mark O’Regan found there was evidence that a published interview would cause distress to Smith’s victims. They upheld the Court of Appeal’s decision that withholding approval for the interview was not a “disproportionate limit on the Smith’s right to freedom of expression”, when balanced against the impact on the victims. In 1996, he was sentenced to life in prison for murder, paedophile offending, aggravated burglary and kidnapping. He had molested a 13-year-old boy over a three-year period, and later stabbed the boy s father to death.
At the hearing early in December, Smith appeared by video link from prison to argue his own case for the interview request to be reconsidered. Smith’s life imprisonment was imposed in 1996. He has been considered for parole several times since 2009, but so far parole has been declined.
Phillip John Smith argued for his freedom of expression. Smith’s case to be released was harmed when he absconded while on leave from prison in 2014, and reached Brazil before being recaptured and returned to New Zealand. The Department of Corrections refused the request of
Stuff journalist Harrison Christian to interview Smith in November 2017.