{"id":8245,"date":"2019-11-26T09:30:56","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T14:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8245"},"modified":"2019-11-27T07:40:53","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T12:40:53","slug":"this-mortal-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8245","title":{"rendered":"*****This Mortal Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"justice\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Fiona Kidman \u2013 Based on a true story of one of the last executions in New Zealand, Fiona Kidman\u2019s historical crime novel, This Mortal Boy<\/a><\/em>, concerns a young man found guilty of murder is a powerful question mark. When is the death penalty justified? How does politics affect \u2018blind justice\u2019? Fundamentally, what is justice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the novel takes place in New Zealand in late 1955,\nits thought-provoking issues are still germane to the United States and to the\nmore than 50 countries where the death penalty exists today, countries where\nmore than 60 percent of the world\u2019s population lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s remarkable about this book is how Kidman brings forth the issues involved like specimens under a strong light, showing them in all their complexity, without ever preaching or becoming polemical. You are reading a compelling and disturbing story, not an essay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Albert Black is a young man from tension-filled, divided\nBelfast, who leaves his parents and younger brother to immigrate to New Zealand\nfor a fresh start and a better life. In a bar fight, he stabs Johnny McBride,\nthe bully who\u2019s been tormenting him. From his Auckland jail cell he reminisces\nabout his upbringing on the other side of the world and his life during the two\nyears since he left Northern Ireland. The vivid descriptions of these various\ncommunities and his circumstances, as well as his actions, make him a fully\nrounded person. While Kidman doesn\u2019t romanticize him, he inspires empathy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He feels he\u2019s an outsider in New Zealand. That feeling turns\ninto grim reality when he\u2019s on trial, and jury members hold his Irishness\nagainst him. He\u2019s \u2018not one of ours,\u2019 the judge says. Kidman also reveals the\nmindset of the jurors (\u2018set\u2019 being the operative word) and the high-level\ndiscussions amongst the legal establishment regarding capital punishment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She skillfully uses the frame of the trial to enable\ncomparison of retold events to witness testimony, and while there\u2019s no doubt\nthat Black attacked McBride, the circumstances make both the situation and the\ncause of death more ambiguous than they first appear or than the court ever\nhears. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Albert Black was hanged 5 December 1955, and, as Kidman says\nin an Afterword, \u201cA tide of disgust against the penalty overtook public\nperception after the hanging of Albert Black.\u201d When a new government took over\nin New Zealand in 1957, all death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment,\nand in 1961, the death penalty was abolished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Mortal Boy won the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the NZ Booklovers Award, the NZSA Heritage Book Award for Fiction, and the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. Dame Fiona Kidman, DNZM, OBE, was born and lives in New Zealand and is the award-winning author of novels, poems, plays, and short stories. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Mike Gifford, creative commons license<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Fiona Kidman \u2013 Based on a true story of one of the last executions in New Zealand, Fiona Kidman\u2019s historical crime novel, This Mortal Boy, concerns a young man found guilty of murder is a powerful question mark. When … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"*****This Mortal Boy - riveting story of the death penalty and the search for justice for young Albert Black, written by one of New Zealand's top authors.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[53,366,40,266],"tags":[1145,564],"class_list":["post-8245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal","category-drama","category-fiction","category-history","tag-courtroom-drama","tag-new-zealand"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-28Z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8246,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions\/8246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}