SYNOPSIS (Reviews)

The Book of Secrets (Vintage)
An account of my life in Waipu and the writing of The Book of Secrets appears in:

Palm Prints, Autobiographical essays by Fiona Kidman (Vintage, Random House NZ)
Pride of the Lion, Waipu The People and the Place ed. Wynne Haysmith, Jackie Langsford and Bevan McKenzie (Waipu 150 Trust)

What the critics said about The Book of Secrets:
In the craft of her storytelling and in her compassionate gutsy tough expression of female experience, she is the best we have.' NZ Listener

'The Book of Secrets' is ..being hailed as Fiona Kidman's best and most ambitious novel to date. It traces familiar ground in her work, women's lives and intertwined histories, but lifts them into a wider and more reverberative fabrication' Dominion Sunday Star Times

'The novel is truthful in the ways that history never is, in creating the lives of ordinary, important people' Christchurch Press

The Book of Secrets won the Fiction category of the New Zealand Book Awards in 1986. It has been in print ever since, and the latest edition is a Vintage Random House publication. (cover illustration available)