Come On Shore
A new book by Christina Thompson
What they're saying
Other authors
“A charming blend of travel writing, cultural history, anthropology, and memoir, this intriguing book honors the nineteenth-century explorers’ narratives that are its inspiration.”
-Andrea Barrett, Ship Fever and The Voyage of the Narwhal
“Few readers will forget their first meeting with the author, with her Maori husband, and with the historical context that swirls around them. Thompson writes beautifully, and, even more remarkably, she surprises us on every page.”
-Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Interviews and Reviews
PRI's The World: World Books
Click to hear author and critic Helen Epstein in conversation with World Books Editor Bill Marx about three recent memoirs by women, each with a distinctive international flavor. The pair evaluate Jan Wong's A Comrade Lost and Found, Christina Thompson's Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, and Jane Alison's The Sisters Antipodes.
Radio New Zealand National
Click to listen to an interview with Christina conducted by Kathryn Ryan of Radio New Zealand National’s “Nine to Noon”
Radio New ZealandThe Book Show on ABC Radio National Australia
Click to listen to an interview with Christina conducted by Radio National’s Ramona Koval
ABC Radio NationalThe San Francisco Chronicle
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.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
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.
The New York Times Book Review
Thompson’s ... observations about the enduring effects of colonization can be penetrating. She puts her vantage point of insider-outsider (she’s never lived in New Zealand yet has an intimate connection with it) to good effect, tracing the genealogy of racial stereotypes and cutting through some of New Zealand’s most cherished myths about itself.
The Boston Globe
[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.
The News-Leader
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.
The Sunday Times (London)
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.
The Economist
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.
The New Statesman
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.
The Telegraph
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.
Maclean's magazine (Canada)
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.
Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
Now in Paperback
