Title: The New Zealand Novel 1860-1965

Author: Joan Stevens

Publication details: Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd, 1966

Digital publication kindly authorised by: Sylvia Johnston

Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

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The New Zealand Novel 1860-1965

New Names

New Names. New names among romancers include Doris Addison, Menie Archibald, Marama Brent, Joyce Dingwell, Annette Eyre, Margaret Fenwick, Catherine Hay, Douglas Lord, Sally T. Ollivier, D. M. Owen, Clarice Robertson, Nora Sanderson, Harold Valentine.

A new area has been opened up by several writers who offer the "hospital novel", basically a love story spiced with tonsillectomies, blood transfusions and graver occasions. Will staff nurse Kate elope with Dr Peter? Has Matron really fallen in love with the hospital porter? Who will snap up the youngest house surgeon, or the so-wealthy and handsome accident case in Ward Three? This romantic sub-type offers possibilities, for the closed setting of hospital life promotes that clash of personalities which is the stuff of fiction, while the drama of life and death is a readymade background. Something more than mere entertainment may be made of it yet. Marion Kennedy's melodramatic The Wrong Side of the Door, 1963, is clearly meant to be informative as well as thrilling. It is a first-person story of the training of a psychiatric nurse.