REVIEWS OF BREAKING SILENCE: THE KAHUI CASE BY IAN WISHART
(to purchase online, visit Amazon US, Amazon UK or Howling At The Moon Publishing Ltd . For a list of NZ bookshops stocking it, click here)
HIGHLIGHTS (Full reviews after the break)
'Breaking Silence' is not on my recommended read list. I firmly believe it is compulsory reading for anyone over 18." - Albany Buzz business magazine
"the book has real value" - Larry Williams, Newstalk ZB
“I found it an incredibly surprising book, and a very relevant book, and a very important book”. - Anna Smart, Newstalk ZB
"I had no particular views on the case before this book came out but I have to say it's a powerful read. An influential read, one might say...All those people who poured out their invective when it became known the book was about to hit the book shops really should just read it for themselves. It may not be quite what they think." Helen Hill, The Marlborough Express
"Breaking Silence is a chilling narrative and the most important I have read. Adults may need to read the story to gain any understanding. Younger people should read in it a warning: that it is the way we make decisions early on that may determine the course of our life and the lives of those entrusted to our care." - Pat Veltkamp Smith, Southland Times
"The book so many maligned before it came out reveals a mother we haven't met. When I last wrote about Macsyna King, I said I didn't think I'd like her. I've changed my mind. I certainly think she outclasses the Wellington radio announcer who posted on Facebook that after receiving her advance copy of "Breaking Silence", she had "spat on it, wiped my ass on it, and ripped it up". - Tapu Misa, NZ Herald
"Actually, the rumours of Wishart's death as an investigative journalist turn out to be greatly exaggerated. Breaking Silence will likely enhance his reputation considerably. As we said at the outset--we are very, very glad to have read the book." - John Tertullian, Contra Celsum
"The Albany Buzz":
Harrowing, Painful Honesty
The book Breaking Silence: The Kahui Case by Ian Wishart is due out next week and has nothing enjoyable to recommend it.
The book is about “Macsyna King and the real story of the murder of her twins”. This story is a warts and all recount. These warts are not good.
Where ‘Once Were Warriors’ got its story done in an entertainment format, King’s is drawn out in a sprawling landscape of ugly violence and vile, bitter mistrust.
From her own early childhood to life beyond the murder trial and Coroner’s inquest, King makes not one single excuse nor deflects an ounce of blame and rightly sheets home to herself, her failures as a mother, a partner and a human being. She has become her own most fierce critic and lays this out unsparingly.
King does not accept blame for the murder of her twins. You’ll find in this book evidential argument that she could not have been there to commit this hideous crime. You’ll find laid out here a possible case for the prosecution of the twins father, Chris Kahui. He was acquitted by a jury who deliberated for one minute.
That is the book. It will provoke outrage and argument as predicted. Perhaps justice may begin to be served ice cold and naturally; at least partially repairing a void left where a jury and the media have been so massively misguided.
Books do not exist if they are not read, and it is the reader’s world which is seriously confronted by this book. The reader’s range of experiences as their eyes work their way through 'Breaking Silence' are entirely predictable. Shock – disgust – loathing: how could they live like this? Fear – this isn’t me or us, but it’s really happening and what kind of a society are we in? Distrust – how can a justice system fail to prosecute; how gullible as a public are we if media can be led and lead so wilfully?
The most telling range of emotions which many readers will experience and struggle with is the sense of accountability King gives. King holds a mirror and spares no aspect of herself from criticism. This searing account of her life and the events is brutally honest and self-critical. She has had almost no moral guides up to 2008 and has since then begun discovering her own morality and the integrity it requires. In this account she has clearly drawn a set of standards for herself which are seated in values of decency, ownership and human good. King now demonstrates answers about a profound human question.
How do we react to questions of accountability everyday in our lives?
And myself? And you? And they? And us as a society? Do we exercise integrity in our thoughts, words and actions? Are we willing to stand and be examined with intrusive brutality as she was and is?
'Breaking Silence' is not on my recommended read list. I firmly believe it is compulsory reading for anyone over 18.
Larry Williams, NEWSTALK ZB:
"Ian Wishart's book on Macsyna King was banned by some bookshops. It turns out from experts in the child abuse field that the book has real value. It was wrong to ban it. Bookshops got swayed by hysteria."
Tapu Misa, NZ HERALD:
The book so many maligned before it came out reveals a mother we haven't met. When I last wrote about Macsyna King, I said I didn't think I'd like her. I've changed my mind. I certainly think she outclasses the Wellington radio announcer who posted on Facebook that after receiving her advance copy of "Breaking Silence", she had "spat on it, wiped my ass on it, and ripped it up".
Broadcaster Mike Hosking was more polite. He remained unmoved after he'd "flicked through" the book. But then he already knew what King was going to say. We get the story you'd expect, he says. "A story of neglect, of misery, of violence, of despair, of a hopeless mother and a tragic individual."
Detractors have read the worst possible motives into King's desire to tell her story in her own words, and publisher and journalist Ian Wishart's desire to give her the space to do it. They fixate on the fact that King may gain financially from the book, despite Wishart's repeated denials.
I say prove him a liar, folks, or move on.
I don't know Wishart, but I find the sanctimonious pronouncements on him nauseating.
Is it possible that Wishart has chosen to tell King's story because he sincerely feels, as I do, that King has been victimised enough, that she's been tried and convicted by a media juggernaut ready to believe the worst of her on the skimpiest of evidence, and that she deserves the chance to salvage some dignity, to fight back against a portrayal that tells only part of the story?
...
Oh, how we've loved to hate her. But the woman who emerges from the book is a far more complex human being. There isn't the space here to list the ways in which she's been unfairly maligned. Yes, she made incredibly dumb choices. But she's smart, hard-working, big on cleanliness and loved her kids.
...She swore, too, that she'd be a different kind of parent - and for the most part she was. It was Macsyna who insisted that she and Chris Kahui move out of the Kahuis' Clendon house before their premature twin boys came home from hospital.
So when the story of Chris and Cru's deaths broke, and the Herald reported on the "small, shoddy" three-bedroomed house where the twin babies were thought to have lived with 12 people who were "drinking, smoking dope and cigarettes, partying, fighting - and sleeping in rotating shifts" - an image that became embedded in most people's minds. We were wrong.
They lived in a warm, clean house in Mangere, where Macsyna had seen to it that the babies had their own nursery. That's what she was doing when hospital staff were judging her for not visiting her babies often enough... This is not a woman who would have harmed her babies, or delayed taking them to the hospital.
And despite the calculated and professional dismantling of King's reputation by Chris Kahui's defence team, the weight of evidence has never pointed in her direction.
Read the full Herald review here.
FROM CONTRA CELSUM:
Firstly, we are very glad to have read it and thankful that Wishart (and King) have written it. Wishart has done the entire body politic a great deal of good. We would, accordingly, encourage everyone to read it.
Secondly, the book is not an apologia for Macsyna King, although a great deal of the text is King's account of herself and her life. It is a warts and all portrayal--and there are plenty of them. King is neither defensive nor offensive--and all the more credible for that.
Thirdly, there is a great deal of new information about the twins and the trial and the new information which came to light at the recent coroner's inquest. There are also some disturbing and provocative matters about child abuse and how it is "handled" by public authorities in New Zealand. Certain public health policies with respect to infant care are placed under scrutiny and found wanting. These are matters eminently worthy of debate and analysis. As is so often the case, real life turns out to be stranger than fiction, and much, much more complex. There is far more involved in the King-Kahui case than initially meets the simplistic eye.
In the fourth place, having read the book, what do we really think of Macsyna King? An acid test is, Would we be willing to have her in our home? Leave our children with her? Extend warm hospitality to her? We have answered those questions for ourselves--you will have to do the same.
Finally, as expected, there is a picture of life in the underclass in New Zealand which makes for very grim reading. The "system" has failed--as it always will when it attempts to play God and do things for which it will always be incompetent. In fact, the system has made things ten times worse. Just how bad it is in the underclass is clearly portrayed in this volume. But, and this is one of the most positive aspects to Wishart's book, one is compelled both to sadness and compassion. Repeatedly, as you read, the cry wells up from the heart, "Lord, help us. As a people we are so, so lost."
The Commentariat has tut tutted and expressed its faux outrage against Wishart daring to publish Breaking Silence. We recall the following from one member of the effete liberal set:
Of course the book should not be banned. Banning books is a horribly, slippery slope. We, as consumers have the freedom to buy the book or reject the book. That means we can boycott the book, and any other books by this publisher – Howling at the Moon. Wishart could have redeemed himself. If he had published this book with the intention to bring justice in this matter or to hand over the guilty killer. Sadly, Ian Wishart has positioned himself as sensationalist, and undermined any previous reputation he had for investigative reporting.
Hah--and that august, weighty, grave verdict was delivered without reading the book. As the proverb has it--there are none so blind . . . .
Actually, the rumours of Wishart's death as an investigative journalist turn out to be greatly exaggerated. Breaking Silence will likely enhance his reputation considerably. As we said at the outset--we are very, very glad to have read the book. True, we are sadder--but hopefully more wise as a result. And that has to be a good thing, non? - from ContraCelsum, read more here
A boycott-supporting Newstalk ZB radio host interviews Ian Wishart here
CELIA LASHLIE, THE LISTENER:
Ian Wishart’s Breaking Silence: The Kahui Case…is not a book to ban, but one to read for whatever it can add to our understanding of child abuse.
The sentence that sits under the title on the front cover of Ian Wishart’s Breaking Silence: The Kahui Case reads “Macsyna King and the Real Story of the Murder of Her Twins”. It is not how I would describe the contents. The word I am most inclined to use after reading the book is “sadness”, because it is possible to see so many strands of sadness come together in one place.
I feel sad that we seem to have entered a time in New Zealand society where for many it is acceptable to attempt to ban the sale of a book before knowing its contents and I wonder at the motives of those who have joined efforts to stop bookstores stocking it. Could it be we have reached a point where to make ourselves feel better we have to find someone to hate, to direct our fear and uncertainty about the future of our world towards, and that for now, at least, Macsyna King is that person? Could it be that underlying the public discussions about the need to stop the book being read is a deep-seated fear that reading it will in some way leave us all with the question of what part we as members of New Zealand society played in the death of these babies? Not in the sense of “Who was in the room?” but in “Have we really reached this level of disconnection in our communities?”
HELEN HILL, MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS
Wishart, in tandem with King's narrative, writes about the facts of the case, the media coverage, the evidence presented at Kahui's trial and more recently at the inquest, and practically gives the reader a diploma course in paediatric care.
King analyses at length what she says she knew of the circumstances surrounding the twins' deaths, how she came to know things, how she felt about what was happening and how she was treated by the professionals involved.
And she has plenty to say. Listening to her would probably be a daunting experience. I had no particular views on the case before this book came out but I have to say it's a powerful read. An influential read, one might say.
Wishart's intention from the start was to put King's side of the story and clear her from the blame and innuendo directed her way over the death of her baby twins, and he has certainly done a thorough job.
All those people who poured out their invective when it became known the book was about to hit the book shops really should just read it for themselves. It may not be quite what they think
PAT VELTKAMP-SMITH, SOUTHLAND TIMES:
...Because one thing this disturbing tale does is remind the reader of how easy it is to see problems as those of other people, different people, other cultures, maybe different colours, other races.
Macsyna King, famously described via the Facebook site as the most despised mother in New Zealand, is a tragic figure, the abandoned daughter of dysfunctional parents, growing up, like them, unable to commit to anything like a loving relationship.
The tiny twins, whose deaths moved the whole of the country, were hardly ever viable infants: premature, suffering from a lack of vitamin C, their little bones so brittle that CPR administered by a panicky adult man could fracture them.
Their father, Chris Kahui, had neither skill nor confidence in handling babies so small and fragile that most of us would be daunted at having them left in our care, yet even Plunket acknowledged the parents were doing their best. In hindsight, it is obvious their best was never going to be good enough.
Our understanding of the Kahui saga seemed fuelled by so many prejudices as we read of injuries inflicted by caregivers, absent parents on drink or drugs, the stonewalling of police inquiries, the eventual charging and later acquittal of Chris Kahui.
An awful picture was painted of the family; much of it was true.
But the twins, delivered by Caeserean section after the miscarriage of the third baby some weeks earlier, weighed just two kilograms each, their early removal from the womb precipitated by an oxygen alert.
And there's more. Breaking Silence is a chilling narrative and the most important I have read.
Adults may need to read the story to gain any understanding.
Younger people should read in it a warning: that it is the way we make decisions early on that may determine the course of our life and the lives of those entrusted to our care.
Comments