Click to listen to an interview with Christina conducted by Radio National’s Ramona Koval

ABC Radio National

This offbeat, intimate and absorbing history of Maori and European encounters is not all about killing and cannibalism. There is that, true, and more: gruesome details about tattooing, for example, and head preservation. But it is really a story about mutual incomprehension, illuminated, if not dispelled, by the author’s own romance with the Maori, and with one in particular, a man called Seven, whom she married ... The book is a lesson in the limitations of rational expectation.

Spontaneity is at the core of how Thompson defines an "interesting personal history": Freedom, risk and the "charm of the unexpected" are its essence, and indeed for her the essence of life itself. How she created hers, and the complexity, dynamism and ambiguity that followed, are the focus of "Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All," a multilayered, highly informative and insightful book that blends memoir, historical and travel narrative.

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is a highly unusual blend of personal memoir, travel writing and anthropology, and I like to think it’s the happy result of a scholarly writer looking round at this particular theoretical minefield and deciding to make it her home ... Her book is about stereotype and the limits of understanding.

If it were nothing more than a memoir, Thompson’s first book would make fascinating reading as the story of a mismatched but loving pair making their way in a world where they can never really be at home ... Charming, insightful, honest, balanced, the book offers a unique look at the pressures of marriage across cultural, racial, and geographical boundaries.

Thompson’s ... observations about the enduring effects of colonization can be penetrating. She puts her vantage point of insider-outsider...to good effect, tracing the genealogy of racial stereotypes and cutting through some of New Zealand’s most cherished myths about itself.

A fascinating glimpse into the adventure of cross-cultural relationships, whether personal or on the scale of British colonialism ... Come on Shore and We will Kill and Eat You All is a unique book that will appeal to readers on at least two levels. First, it is a memoir -- the story of a young woman who traveled far away from home and found love and adventure. Second, it is a history of relations between two very different cultures and an examination of how the present is a child of the past.

A thing of beauty...enjoyable and descriptive...Thompson manages in her memoir to do what good fiction does…this book will certainly entertain those who want to learn more about Pacific history.

[Thompson] was powerfully drawn to her husband's Maori world precisely because it was a realm so utterly different from her own. If all that sounds hopelessly romantic, there's another side to Thompson's purpose. Much of her impetus to understand her husband's culture is powerfully intellectual.

A love letter to a man and a culture…elegant and intelligent...In the space of 250 pages … she gives us a great complex of rippling stories spanning centuries and continents and the great Pacific Ocean. The book’s success, its pleasure and wisdom, come from the love that acts as the connective tissue, bringing her to a new centre and us to a new understanding.

A sedulous animation of what historians call ‘the subject position’, which underlines the way historical truth can be apprehended only subjectively...A superb book, full of gravity and power and truth.

Thompson’s story ends with a heartfelt letter to her children on their mixed heritage and her real legacy will be this lucid study of their forefathers.

For a book that's equal parts New Zealand history, cultural contemplation and personal love story, the unusual title is easily appropriate. The phrase comes from shouted warnings of Maori warriors to early European explorers of New Zealand. And one of the book's most interesting turns is its look at the enduring appeal of the myth of the Noble Savage.

This book stands out because of its sharp, fine writing and the fresh glimpses it gives of New Zealand. It also goes beyond, covering a broader canvas that includes Australia and Polynesia and reaches across the Pacific to the American Midwest and New England ... Her story is told with a strong and compulsive narrative drive.

Thompson provides a marvellously atmospheric description of the first "contact encounter" between the West and the Maori ... Indeed the book is full of good things: I was shamefully ignorant about the history of exploration in the southern hemisphere, and learned a lot from Thompson's intelligent, lucid narrative.

It's this human connection that makes this book so potent a work...While Tasman arrived first at the crossroads of history, Thompson has chosen to make her home there.

In this unusual hybrid of history and memoir, Harvard Review editor Thompson examines the historical collisions between Westerners and Maoris through the lens of her marriage to a Maori man ... A sensitive observer and polished stylist, Thompson is never dully tendentious or dogmatic. The narrative moves smoothly by way of well-told anecdotes both personal and historical ... her prose never disappoints.

Perceptive, endearing look at the often fraught contacts between Maoris and Westerners, both in history and in the personal life of Harvard Review editor Thompson ... Honest, forthright self-examination engenders a well-wrought sense of shared destiny.