New Zealand Writers
KIDMAN, Fiona
Many of her novels and short stories involve outsiders in a narrowly conformist society. This outsider status is often dramatised by sexual transgression and punishment.
Author entry from The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, edited by Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (1998). About the Companion entries View list of Companion contributors
KIDMAN, Fiona (1940– ), is a versatile writer and one of the most popularly successful of contemporary serious novelists. Born in Hawera, she has worked as a librarian, writer, producer and critic. Her first novel, A Breed of Women (1979), is the story of an unconventional young woman’s confrontations with a narrow-minded small town society characterised by the grim judgment, ‘There’s no way outa Ohaka, ’cept by flying young, or dying here’. Mandarin Summer (1981) has a more exotic setting—the subtropical north of the North Island—and a more exotic cast—the ‘China Set’, colonial expatriates, whose Gothic family relationships are seen through the eyes of a young girl, Emily, whose parents work for the family as housekeeper and handyman. Paddy’s Puzzle (1983, issued in USA under the title In a Clear Light, 1985), is set in Hamilton during the Depression and Auckland during World War 2. It tells the story of Clara, her childhood and adolescence, and her attempt to escape from the confinement of her upbringing. The Book of Secrets (1987) is based on a historical account of Norman McLeod, a Scottish preacher who led a band of immigrants to Nova Scotia and subsequently Waipu in the Bay of Islands. It focuses on three generations of women, and deals with issues of transgression and nonconformity within a moralistic culture. True Stars (1990) is unusual in Kidman’s oeuvre in its specifically political slant, being an uncompromising critique of new right economics and the changes that New Zealand society underwent in the 1980s. Ricochet Baby (1996) is an examination of the effects of post-natal depression on an individual and a family.
Kidman has published three short story collections: The Foreign Woman (1993); Mrs Dixon and Friends (1982); and Unsuitable Friends (1988); and four collections of poetry: Honey and Bitters (1975); On the Tightrope (1978); Going to the Chathams: Poems 1977–84 (1985); and Wakeful Nights: Poems Selected and New (1991).
Her writing is concerned with the effects of suburban and provincial lower middle-class life, its morals and its hypocrisies. Her style is realist, often filtered through the consciousness of the main (usually female) character. Many of her novels and short stories involve outsiders in a narrowly conformist society. This outsider status is often dramatised by sexual transgression and punishment. Kidman writes, ‘As a writer I don’t believe I am wholly responsible for the choices my characters make; they are lodged somewhere in my psyche, in my personal histories.’ Her poetry tends to be descriptive, autobiographical and confessional, with a strong undercurrent of feminist self-discovery and fulfilment.
Kidman’s non-fiction works include Gone North (with photographer Jane Ussher, 1984), and Wellington (with Grant Sheehan, 1989). Palm Prints (1994) represents a range of her non-fiction— autobiographical pieces, speeches, literary journalism dating from 1969. She has written a radio play, Search for Sister Blue (published 1975), and a semi-documentary radio series, ‘Fire of the North’ (1972).
Kidman is a powerful advocate for writers and literature. She has been active in several national organisations concerning literature. She was the national president of PEN from 1981 to 1983. She has been involved in the New Zealand Book Council since its inception in 1972, being its first secretary, and president from 1992 to 1995. She writes of the council as ‘a concept which held such a profound vision for books in our lives’. She has played an active part in book festivals such as the Women’s Book Week, and the Writers and Readers Week of the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts. She was involved in the United Women’s Conventions in the 1970s, and was particularly influenced by 1975 International Women’s Year. She writes, ‘No story of the last two decades of women’s writing in this country is complete without recounting the events of that year.’
She has won a number of awards and scholarships: the Ngaio Marsh Award for Television Writing (1971), the 1988 New Zealand Book Award for Fiction for The Book of Secrets, and the Literary Fund Award for Achievement. She has been awarded the Scholarship in Letters on a number of occasions. In 1988 she was the Victoria University writing fellow and was awarded the OBE, and in 1998 was made a Dame of the Order of New Zealand for services to literature. JS
Comments on Companion Entry
The correct title of Kidman's 1998 DNZM honour is Commander of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
Updated information
Recently published works include New Zealand Love Stories edited by Fiona Kidman (2000) and The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories (1998).
Fiona Kidman received the A.W. Reed lifetime achievement award at the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
A Needle in the Heart (2002) is a collection of six stories linked by a central issue in the lives of the main characters. They are generally stories about country women, whose children have grown up and moved away to the cities, while they have remained surrounded by tight communities and an enfolding countryside.
In 2003 Kidman travelled to the Brisbane Writers Festival as part of a Book Council Trans-Tasman Exchange.
Songs from the Violet Cafe (2003). A woman rows across a lake with a small part-Asian child. The woman is Violet Trench, who in future years will run the Violet Cafe with an iron will. Those who work for Violet Trench come from a diverse range of backgrounds, but none ever forget the flavour of the summer working at the Violet Cafe - the surprising allure of the truffle that infused the cafes' food.
Fiona Kidman took part in the 2003 WOW (Writers on Wheels) in the City, tour of Auckland.
The Best New Zealand Fiction Volume 1 is edited by Fiona Kidman (Random House, 2004). This superb new anthology of short fiction offers a lively and fresh sampling of New Zealand writing now.
Kidman's latest novel is The Captive Wife (Random House, 2005). Based on a true story, it is the fictionalised account of the kidnapping by Taranaki Maori and subsequent violent rescue of Betty Guard and her two children in 1834. As well as telling a story of love and the quest for freedom in the pioneering age, The Captive Wife reflects the social and sexual politics of early New Zealand. It was nominated in the 2006 shortlist for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
Kidman also edited The Best New Zealand Fiction Volume 2, published by Random House in 2005.
Fiona Kidman was the Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellow for 2006.
The Captive Wife jointly won the Readers' Choice Award in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Kidman edited The Best New Zealand Fiction Volume 3 (Vintage, 2006).
The first volume of Kidman's memoirs, At the end of Darwin Road (Vintage, 2008), has been published.
Writers in Schools
Fiona Kidman is available to visit high school students as part of the Writers in Schools programme. She enjoys discussing writing fiction, and the craft of writing in general, with the groups. She prefers to speak to only one class at a time.
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